Japanese culture places special significance on water fountains. There are two main types of Japanese fountains: Tsukubai fountain, Shishi-Odoshi Fountain. Both of these fountains have rich cultural history.

Tsukubai fountain is a Japanese fountain usually found outside the Buddhist temples and Japanese tea gardens. Visitors are needed to “squat or crouch” i.e. to bend down, and go through the cleansing ritual before entering the temple. This cleansing ritual is conceptually similar to the ablutions ritual performed in Christian churches. This Tsukubai cleansing ritual involves hand washing and mouth rinsing. This cleansing ritual is performed prior to entering the Buddhist temples for tea ceremonies.

A Tsukubai fountain is usually made out of stone basin, known as chozubachi. The most prominent element of Tsukubai is a bamboo pipe also known as kakei. A small bamboo scoop is placed on top of the basin, ready to use for performing the cleansing ritual. Tsukubai fountains are usually found outside the Japanese tea gardens or in Japanese themed homes.

A stone lantern, also known as ishidoro, is placed near the tsukubai to provide light during the evening tea ceremonies. Arrangement of stones around the Tsukubai is critically important when it is designed. Green floras and bamboo plants make a great compliment to the area surrounding Tsukubai.

Simplistic in design, a tsukubai is beautiful addition to your garden or tea-house to increase it’s Zen-appeal and add cultural history to intrigue your guests and visitors.

Shishi Odoshi is another Japanese fountain that is very well known for its peculiar style and antique beauty. Shishi Odoshi literally translates into Deer-Scarer. Japanese farmers used the shishi-odoshi fountain to scare away the deer’s and pests that were destroying their agriculture.

As the Japanese culture progressed, Shishi-Odoshi was used more as a meditative element. It’s ability to create calm serenity in its surrounding is really appealing to the Zen Monks. Shishi-Odoshi is famous for the rocking motion of bamboo and its “clacking” sound. The bamboo rocks back and forth with water being filled and emptied from the spout. When the bamboo spout gently hits the surface of basin, it makes a “clacking” sound that is soft and refreshing. People performing meditation are especially fond of this soft clacking sound to focus and concentrate.

Japan is the second largest economy in the world. Japan is especially known for its engineering and manufacturing strengths which continue to buttress the importance of Japanese on the world stage. Nowadays, over 140 million people speak Japanese throughout the world. These things are enough to highlight important of Japanese and that is the reason for studying this language, too.

Japanese can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in virtually any business related to the semiconductor industry, electronics, engineering, manufacturing, certain agricultural industries, teaching, translation, interpreting, and travel. In the United States it can also lead to an increase rapport with Japanese employees especially in the engineering field, that may be learning English or with contacts with Japanese companies abroad. In a culture marked by a very traditional culture, learning Japanese greatly improves your chances of success in job markets dealing with Japanese companies. Studying Japanese can be a fun task, as well as an important one.

Even if your simply a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since most of the sign boards and instructions in Japan are naturally written in Japanese, though English is common. Studying the language to order food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.

Studying Japanese is one step to joining the ranks of businesses oriented toward the growing market of South America. Japanese is one of the great languages of the world. Studying the language is becoming part of a world-class education. Japanese is not an easy language to learn and there is no single method can insure that the proficiency will be achieved without investment of time. This is especially true since Japanese is written in Kanji script. So it’s important to vary your learning resources to insure that you maximize your Japanese language learning experience.

Studying Japanese doesn’t require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing process. While you cannot learn Japanese overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.In short, studying Japanese will bring you, who are all over the world, lots of advantages in life. Let’s begin courses of Japanese right now to start a journey to your success in career as well as widen your knowledge about the world around.