{"id":4491,"date":"2026-04-13T07:01:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T07:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/4491\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T07:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T07:01:49","slug":"video-misawa-air-base-marks-arrival-of-spring-with-return-of-japan-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/4491\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: Misawa Air Base marks arrival of spring with return of Japan Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8c51b527-ab54-4fae-85d8-dd276fe412e2.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese women playing the koto (Japanese traditional musical instrument).\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\tPlaying koto (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"storyline-p f4 \">Misawa Air Base opened the gate on April 11 for cultural exchange at the annual Japan Day. &#13;<\/p>\n<p class=\"storyline-p f4 \">The event dating back to 1988 serves to uphold the strong tradition of sharing cultures and blending the Misawa on-base and off-base communities. This year, festivities at the Misawa Club included karate, naginata, nebuta and other traditional performances, a kimono fashion show, live music and other great activities. &#13;<\/p>\n<p class=\"storyline-p f4 \">Outdoors, food vendors served up some delicious Japanese festival foods like yakitori and ramen. Traditional rickshaws were also available for fun rides and eventgoers also tried calligraphy, koto practice, pottery making and more.&#13;<\/p>\n<p class=\"storyline-p f4 \">\u201cA lot of visitors in family enjoyed performances and festive foods,\u201d Yoshihito Morita, a Misawa Commissary employee said. \u201cDuring the festival, calligraphy and balloon art booths were especially popular, with long lines of visitors. My American friend was very delighted, too, to have his name written in kanji.\u201d&#13;<\/p>\n<p class=\"storyline-p f4 \">The event kicks off the upcoming spring festivities including the long-awaited cherry blossom season which is forecasted to arrive in the coming weeks to the northern portions of Japan\u2019s mainland.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/c93d7432-8792-4070-a103-62d190214342.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese girls in traditional clothes holding a U.S. flag and a Japanese flag.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\t (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/310cdf53-246b-4cdf-91e8-ef967e6233ca.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese girls in traditional clothes dancing.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\t (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/85e92736-424f-4d7b-8eb5-fd27b16635b3.jpg\" alt=\"A girl in karate uniform chopping a wooden board.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\tKarate (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8278cdc7-9fa5-49ff-88d7-5565872d5551.jpg\" alt=\"Girls showing the use of naginata (Japanese polearm).\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\tNaginata (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mb2-plus4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/86a085e4-5ed4-4fc1-bb1c-3dcd91d1e74f.jpg\" alt=\"An American man, an American woman and an American girl in kimono; a girl is holding an Japanese umbrella.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"default-font lh-default ma0 mh3 mt0 pb3\">\n\t\t\t\tKimono fashion show (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan)<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing koto (Photo by Yoshihito Morita\/Stripes Japan) Misawa Air Base opened the gate on April 11 for cultural&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4334,4340,4338,4326,4324,4333,8,4323,17,2827,4341,4328,4332,4339,4182,4322,4321,4327,4329,4330,4325,4336,4337,241,4331,4335],"class_list":{"0":"post-4491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-activieties","9":"tag-balloon-art","10":"tag-calligraphy","11":"tag-cultural-exchange","12":"tag-evnets-in-misawa","13":"tag-fashion-show","14":"tag-japan","15":"tag-japan-day","16":"tag-japanese","17":"tag-japanese-culture","18":"tag-kanji","19":"tag-karate","20":"tag-kimono","21":"tag-koto","22":"tag-live-music","23":"tag-misawa-ab","24":"tag-misawa-air-base","25":"tag-misawa-club","26":"tag-naginata","27":"tag-nebuta","28":"tag-on-base-events","29":"tag-ramen","30":"tag-rickshaw","31":"tag-spring","32":"tag-traditional-performances","33":"tag-yakitori"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}