A traditional Japanese festival is being adapted for poodles and Pomeranians, amid a booming pet industry and a dearth of ...

ISE, Japan (AP) -- Deep in the forests of the Japanese Alps, Shinto priests keep watch as woodsmen dressed in ceremonial white chop their axes into two ancient cypress trees, timing their swings so ...

ISE, Japan — Deep in the forests of the Japanese Alps, Shinto priests keep watch as woodsmen dressed in ceremonial white chop their axes into two ancient cypress trees, timing their swings so that ...

TOKYO (AP) — Almost weekly Momo Nomura makes time to visit Shinto shrines. She performs the prescribed rituals — cleansing her hands, ringing a bell, bowing and clapping. But her main purpose is ...

American Kit Cox, 35, works as an electrical engineer and enjoys biking and playing piano. But what some might consider surprising about Cox, who was raised as Methodist, is that she practices the ...

CHICHIBU, Japan — As fireworks light up the winter night, scores of men, women and teenagers crying "washoi, washoi" haul the last of six towering, lantern-covered floats up a small hill and into the ...

ON THE MORNING of April 30th, then-emperor Akihito, decked out in a puffy brown robe, entered Kashikodokoro shrine, in the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo. He washed his hands, rinsed his ...

Deep in the forests of the Japanese Alps, Shinto priests watch as woodsmen, clad in ceremonial white, fell two ancient cypress trees. Their axes strike from three precise directions, timed with ...