“Nature,” including all things embodied within nature, is referred to in Japan as Shizen. I discovered soon in my time in Japan that Shizen is an integral part of that culture, a central aspect of everyday life. Shinto teaches that spirits inhabit the water, the trees, and all of the natural world that surround us. For this reason, reverence for the observation of nature is a common attitude among the Japanese. In the springtime people gather around cherry blossom trees (known as Hanami), and in the autumn they travel to see the red leaves of the maple trees that grow throughout the Japanese countryside (known as Momiji).