Every year in Japan around Christmas time they pull out all the stops to decorate inside and outside the public spaces and shopping centres with the most dazzling Christmas trees and decorations. Young Japanese people dressed up as santa in Kyoto. A group of young Japanese women playing Christmas carols with a variety of different… Continue reading Christmas in Japan
Author: Jackson Tool
Such a simple looking knife, such a complicated process!
If Jules Verne and Steven Spielberg both put their heads together they couldn’t have conceived a scene like the following picture. What would you make with machinery like this – submarines for the Australian Navy?
A light to my path
Japanese paving is different in it’s informality, textures, materials but still beautiful and interesting in all it’s forms whether it’s leading up to a restaurant, a public building or meandering through a sublime Japanese garden.
Chop, chop
I came across a house building company in a quiet country location in the midst of preparing a house frame the Japanese way. They were using a combination of electric power tools and traditional hand tools to make intricate joints in the timber.
Autumn leaves – bring on the colour
An outside wall of Eikando-in Temple, Kyoto with a bed of the reddest of all Japanese shrubs. And…on the other side of the wall a serene pond with an arched granite bridge in the background. It was Thursday 12th November and the Japaese
Making a mortise using a Japanese mortising chisel
The Japanese Mortise Chisel (Tategu) – double layer blade laminated with White Paper steel , has a square cross section that tapers towards the end of the blade. Handles are made from Japanese White Oak. In Japan these
What do Australians do leading up to Christmas?
If you’ve run out of ideas you could always have a Crab Race, eh!
A hot day at Melbourne Zoo
We decided to visit the Zoo in Melbourne on a day when the mercury rose to 41.1deg C. We were among the few that visited on that day. Needless to say we didn’t see any Snow Leopards or other cold climate animals
One windy night
Is this what one expects to wake up to on Australia Day? Along with supplying Japanese Tools we also have a nursery growing plugs (a small plant in an individual cell) in trays. But on the morning of Monday
An ordinary street transformed
I couldn’t believe my eyes as I drove past this short street in The Gap this morning. The Golden Pendas (Xanthostemon chrysanthus) were in flower like I have never seen before. Rainbow Lorrikeets were flying