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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
Jul 6, 2002
Aussie cameraman's show highlights art of nature
Journalist Paul Murray was slightly thrown when his photographic teacher told him to forget using a macro lens. "He said the best photographers technically were Japanese, so I might as well give up before I started."
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 4, 2002
Solving the nation's waste problem and raising bilingual kids
Everyone is aware of the problem of garbage. With Tokyo alone throwing away 6,000 tons of food a day, kitchen waste in particular is a practical as well as a moral concern.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 29, 2002
Cheering on Special Olympics, seeking volunteers
It is confusing to discover that Kayako Hosokawa has three offices in a building in Tokyo's Kasumigaseki. Two are neighbors -- "so convenient," she observes, nipping to and fro. The other is on the fifth floor, below. It is even more confusing to learn she has a fourth office, in Kumamoto, close to the...
COMMUNITY
Jun 22, 2002
Don Carmine: a great team for food and attitude
Welcome to Don Carmine in Tokyo's Nishi-Azabu, opened April 10 and described by its founders as an Italian restaurant with attitude.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 20, 2002
Making the right computer choice is no big struggle
In answer to Stephen Harris, who's seeking to finally enter the computer age and is looking for the right machine for him, this is a huge subject, and largely a matter of personal preference.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 15, 2002
The gallery, house, studio and reputation Jay built
Consider this e-mail sent in early May: "What a beautiful day . . . hope you're enjoying the sunshine. It was like living in a rain forest here last week. Finally all my guests have gone, I caught up on sleep, and feel refreshed. Lovely!"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 8, 2002
Making the leap from street art to mainstream
Here she is known as Bibi. It's the name she uses to sign her artwork -- lyrically humorous paintings in ink and watercolor that bring animals and children to life in ways that are engaging and respectful. It's who she is to her friends. It's the name students use in her yoga classes at two international...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 6, 2002
Communication need not be a medical emergency
In response to the newly arrived businesswoman seeking native English-speaking general practitioners/family doctors in Kansai and Kyoto, here is a quick round-up.
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2002
Ocean photographer passionate over dying seas
He stands on the prow of a ship, camera ready for the perfect shot of dolphins as they leap skyward. He directs film and video for movies and TV to amaze viewers with images of whales. And he dives with underwater equipment to record the life of the oceans. Meet Bob Talbot, indisputably the most respected...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 23, 2002
When it comes to giving money, just go with the flow
In answer to the reader in Mita-ku enraged with having to 'pay out' money for so many of the activities that at home she takes as freely granted (parties, weddings, funerals), best remember perhaps that everything has its price.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 20, 2002
World's first industrial designer creates a stir
Andrew McIntosh Patrick has a strong sense of history. He lives in a terrace row (derelict before British Heritage came to the rescue) dated 1728. Benjamin Franklin's house is just doors away, being transformed into a museum. And all in the shadow of London's Charing Cross Station.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2002
Coffee machines, bread, teas . . . whatever next?
Marcel Niederhauser is one happy businessman. In the lobby of Tokyo's Hilton Hotel in Shinjuku, visiting the small shop he opened with a Japanese partner just two weeks ago, he learns that the first day of Golden Week has been a bonanza. "We moved some 120 packs of tea. We're very, very happy with the...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 9, 2002
Welcome to a new page, welcome to a new column
Welcome to a brand new new weekly column that will provide a forum for readers to help one another, and for myself and Ken Joseph, of Japan Helpline, to help you. We will be printing your letters, offering personal input and bringing in experts on a regular basis to help answer your queries on living...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 4, 2002
Being a broad, living in Japan, pub crawling!
While most of the population sits back and takes a deep sigh over Golden Week, Caroline Pover will be working her socks off. True, next week she will be on the Izu Peninsula, within a stone's throw of a beach. But she'll be there also to work, not play.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2002
When a contract contracts, and what comes after
Visitors to Hakone last autumn are most probably still talking about it. How they were in a cable car and saw a Japanese man in another car, traveling in the opposite direction, standing on his head and swiveling his hips 180 degrees with legs splayed open.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 20, 2002
'Madame Butterfly' and the real Cho-Cho-san
Jan van Rij's interest in the story behind Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly" began on a visit to Nagasaki when he was working here in the 1980s. "I visited Glover Garden with all its confusions -- the ugly escalator, music coming out of the bushes. I could see he had a Japanese wife, with mixed-blood...
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2002
Support for foreign wives to make their own lives
Joanne Elbinger Higashi recalls the hardships of being newly married to a Japanese in the wilds of Mie Prefecture 20 years ago with a wry smile. "Returning here after visiting the States to show my 8-month-old son to my parents, it rained for weeks on end. It was a nightmare trying to get the diapers...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 6, 2002
Y.E.S.: An English teaching system that works
In 1994, Northern-Ireland born Douglas Young was running two small branches of his English conversation school Formula 1 in the pottery town of Kasama, Ibaraki Prefecture. He and his English wife then moved to Hitachi Naka, where Douglas opened a main office and Alison had her first child. The family...
COMMUNITY
Mar 30, 2002
Making music less than a job, more than a hobby
Donna Burke and Bill Benfield deserve to be sitting pretty. Just married (Dec. 28, in Australia), they live in a large apartment in Tokyo's Azabu-juban with three cats, and a flock of sparrows lined up on the balcony waiting to be fed every morning.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 23, 2002
Personal agenda with Taisho feminist literature
Woken earlier in the day, Anne Sokolsky was so sleepy she assumed me to be a Japanese woman speaking bad English rather than the other way around. A rocky start dispelled by the wide-awake vivacity with which she approached me at Tokyo's Yotsuya Station midafternoon.

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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?