Making Each Day Count

Hello, October! I was eagerly awaiting this month because it was finally time for our annual vacation to Japan. Our destinations for this trip were Himeji, Kurashiki, Hiroshima and Osaka, hence my absence from WordPress for the last two weekends. This post is a prelude to a Japan 2024 Kansai-Hiroshima series of blogs, and today I feature some of the kawaii manholes that caught my attention during our most recent trip.

I didn’t know about the meanings of these cute and artistic manhole designs, and as far as I can remember I got to notice them the first time when we went to Matsumoto in 2019.

Since then, I’ve been on the lookout for these in all subsequent trips to Japan. I did a quick internet search to get more insight on their history and came across these webpages: Japan Manhole Cover Society and Manhole Covers in Japan | Neocha – Culture & Creativity in Asia.

Himeji, Japan

Kurashiki, Japan

Hiroshima, Japan

Osaka, Japan

Discovering the regions’ landmarks or highlights through these manhole covers deepened my appreciation of Japan’s blending of art in everyday functional objects. If you are curious to see more of these artistic manhole covers, I recommend checking out the webpages I linked above.