Traditional Japanese Toys

A student brought some traditional Japanese toys and introduced them to me in his lesson.. They were the koma, beigoma, kendama, otedama and byunbyungoma. It was nice to see and learn a little bit about these toys, some of which we have in Britain. We have the koma or spinning top as it is called in Britain, however, the Japanese use a length of string which they coil around the top in order to spin it in a whipping motion after throwing it. My student was actually able to throw, whip and catch the spinning top on his hand! The beigoma was very small in comparison with the regular koma, and it was made of solid metal. I was surprised to see that string was also used with that one too, giving that it was so small. I tried my hand at it, but I couldn't even coil the string around it properly. The otedama is just like a hand sized bean bag. He confessed he didn't know much about how to play with it because only girls play with otedama. The kendama was quite interesting and surprisingly difficult to do. I also hear that it has become popular outside of Japan to some extent. Lastly the byunbyungoma, this was mad from card and had a piece of string running through the centre. The byunbyungoma was given the name because of the type of sound it makes when you wind it and release it. It was the first time I had seen it before, and yet a few days later, I was surprised to see a documentary in which I learnt that byunbyungoma toys were actually given away in cereal boxes in Britain many years ago!