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Angela Jeffs
After 26 years in Japan, Angela is currently test driving the Scottish winter. Describing herself as a “people person,” she wrote weekly profiles and features for The Japan Times between 1987 and 2011. For writings since 3/11/2011, see www.embrace-transition.com/. Her first book, "Chasing Shooting Stars – A South American Paper Trail into the Past," was published in paperback in January 2013.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 3, 2001
Howling Loochie Bros. R&B to benefit Amnesty
It took as long to read Robin (Loochie) Suchy's name card as it took him to lock up his bike outside Ben's Cafe in Tokyo's Takadanobaba. Following "Singer * Song Writer * Vocal Recordings * Narrations * Actor * Vocal Coach * Producer" were two contact addresses, in Naka Ochiai and British Columbia. Not...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 27, 2001
Introducing 'nihonga' to the British art scene
I meet Sarah Waite in June, just days before she returns to the U.K. after five years in Japan. We talk about the exhibition she will have in London in October as part of the Japan Festival 2001, agreeing to run the interview then. So now, here we are in autumn, and the time is ripe.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 20, 2001
Food from home, direct to your door in Japan
Chuck Grafft spends much of his life surrounded by the stronger sex. Not that he is complaining. As president and CEO of the Foreign Buyers Club (FBC) in Kobe, most of his staff are women -- women representing nine cultures, including Japanese. Also, wife Kelly, now back to work, with four daughters,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 13, 2001
Healer's rainbow journey brings your spirit home
British psychiatrist and healer Dr. Brenda Davies was 4 when she saw her first angel, a shining being that she regards as her first spiritual experience. From that time, she was able to see light emanating from and around people, commonly known as auras, and within them, vortexes of energy, the chakras....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2001
Puppet opera for adults and the Shinoda she-fox
Now here's an intriguing collaboration. A troupe of puppeteers from Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture and a group of musicians from the small farming village of Hartland in Devon, southern England, have come together to perform a puppet opera, based on a traditional Japanese story about a fox that transforms...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 29, 2001
Online: Buddhist perspective on the new holy war
David Loy is a professor of philosophy and religion in the faculty of international studies at Bunkyo University in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. He is American, and proud to be so. He is also a practicing Zen Buddhist.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2001
Dyeing to make a difference with fair trade clothes
The world this week is sadly less of a global village than it was 10 days ago. At least Kusum Tiwari is back in India, safe and sound after her first trip to East Asia, and two weeks in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2001
Finding market niches to make really good books
Ivan Vartanian makes books. He is not a publisher, nor a commonplace packager. Rather he identifies a niche in the market, lines up the most suitable backing, and then physically puts the book together himself under the company name Goliga Books. All within the constrains of a tiny apartment in Tokyo's...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 8, 2001
Martial arts in Roppongi? Meet the Karate Bros.
Some interviews are straightforward and others are not. And some are just plain funky. I believe I'm meeting two brothers. In fact I meet an extended martial arts family, all of whom have something to say. It's more like chairing a meeting -- or a succession of meetings.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 1, 2001
Prize-winning poet and the Japanese connection
By today, Ken Taylor will be back in his native Australia after a month in France and three weeks in Japan. He says he always learns something from his trips here -- 17 to date -- but at our time of meeting has no idea what that is. "The process can take a long time, or I may know when I step off the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 25, 2001
Where there's a will (to return), there's a way
Endre Hules is fretting about his kids. "I never imagined it would be so hard to leave them with a baby sitter. I feel incomplete."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 18, 2001
Iron your troubles away and keep taking herbs
My local Japanese doctor was blunt: Bad knees? It's osteoarthritis, and can only get worse. Forget cycling, yoga -- all forms of exercise.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 11, 2001
Playing chicken with telecommunication big boys
To some he is a hero. To others an anathema. For this writer, who lives in trepidation of meeting with Japanese CEOs because (sorry guys) they tend to be so predictable, Sachio Semmoto is a breath of fresh air.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 4, 2001
Reflections on a most unexpected career abroad
So often you hear of people who come to Japan for a few months and wake one day to find that many years have flown by. How comforting then to find that it also works in reverse.
COMMUNITY
Jul 28, 2001
Sufi focuses on forgiveness, healing
It is not often you meet a Sufi. Nor conclude the evening with him and his interpreter dossing on your floor. With last Friday a national holiday, and Kamakura booked to the brim, it was a case of back to my pad or sleep on the beach. And I could hardly leave Sheikh Ingo Taleb Rashid to such a fate;...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 21, 2001
Life through the lens in Seoul, Paris and Tokyo
It is hard to imagine Mi-Yeon producing art prints of such emotion and refinement amid the familial clutter of her apartment, but maybe this is the mark of the true artist: beauty can be created against all odds. "My daughter's at kindergarten," she offers as explanation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 14, 2001
Red Army daughter seeks to set record straight
"My parents named me after the month of a certain political action," explains May Shigenobu. "But in Japanese I am known as Mei, which means 'life.' " The specific political operation to which she is referring? The bombing by Japanese leftwing radicals of Lod Airport in Tel Aviv on May 30, 1972.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 7, 2001
Sharing corporate vision of women and money
Whoever said women were the weaker sex has not met Kaori Sasaki. Not only is she president of UNICUL International Inc. and president and CEO of eWoman Inc., a new Web site for women. She is the brains behind the 6th International Conference for Women in Business, to be held at the Daiba Hotel Nikko...
COMMUNITY
Jun 30, 2001
The Three Sisters Inn: owned by three sisters
It is not as if Kikue, Sadako and Terumi Yamada have not been interviewed before. Not so long ago it was for The New York Times, which really put them on the map.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 23, 2001
Philosophy of languagelessness blows atomic mind
For someone who believes that internal silence is the key to peace and happiness and even God, professor Anil Vidyalankar talks a lot.

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