Angela Jeffs - The Japan Times

August 15, 2024

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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.

COMMUNITY

Aug 17, 2000

Preparing to teach for the next 500 years

It is remarkable that in 150 years of mainstream education, there has been little serious investigation into how the human brain learns. An exception is the work of Bulgarian scientist Dr. Georgi Lozanov, who began studies and experiments in the 1950s.

COMMUNITY

Aug 13, 2000

Women! Enhance your lifestyles with Webgrrls

Talking with American Khristine (Khris) Schaffner lowered the heat in Tokyo's Nishi-Shinjuku by several degrees. She has that kind of tall, willowy, pale blonde beauty that acts as a psychological cooler even if she is talking 10 to the dozen and making a complete fool of herself over a Starbucks chocolate...

COMMUNITY

Aug 6, 2000

Founder of ballooning in Japan plans pioneering flight

A licensed hot air balloon pilot herself, Ichiyoshi Sabu's wife knows about fear. After her husband came close to losing his life trying to fly over Mount Everest, she put her foot down. No more daredevil stunts, she declared; you've a family to think of. This explains why he will be ground master of...

COMMUNITY

Jul 30, 2000

Getting the measure of a master suitsmith

Vijay Wadhwani is an international tailor. A very super-duper master craftsman, who runs a miniempire of cutters, machinists and hand stitchers in Hong Kong under the name "NobleHouse." His job is to travel the world to court customers, discuss clients' needs and take the full complement of 30 required...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Jul 23, 2000

I am, therefore who am I? An artist's search for self

What is the link between a 12-meter-long bronze snake slithering into the future as part of an exhibition for the physically and mentally challenged and the 20 brains (made from materials as diverse as pebbles and chili peppers), eight costumes, pieces of body armor and fragments of temple roof tile...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Jul 16, 2000

Book on classic parenting hits half-million nerves

As the Japanese birthrate falls to a new record low, and the media focus on disruptive youngsters and classroom chaos (with 17-year-olds coming in for especially harsh criticism), it comes as no surprise that so many young adults are rejecting marriage and fearful of parenthood. How will they manage,...

COMMUNITY

Jul 9, 2000

Funding films by finding housing for foreigners

Walking with Akio Sakurai to his real estate office in Tokyo's Chuo Ward, he told the story of an Indian couple -- the husband working for a major European bank -- for whom he had found an apartment. The day before they were due to sign the contract, the landlord rang and withdrew the offer. A Japanese...

COMMUNITY

Jul 2, 2000

Noh master calling U.K. college alumni

There was some initial confusion when Naohiko Umewaka requested help in finding graduates of Royal Holloway. What was he talking about? The only Holloway known to this Londoner is the district north of the River Thames best known for the prison of the same name. Now here was a story! Japan's best known...

COMMUNITY

Jun 25, 2000

Don't run for cover, go Zurich Insurance!

Sitting on the swishest sofa ever -- an L-shaped signature design in scarlet leather -- in the lobby of Zurich Insurance, I picked up a book from the sea-green plate-glass coffee table and began reading up on "The Swiss." What should I expect of the president of such a company? Having met any number...

COMMUNITY

Jun 18, 2000

Learn a new language (and how!) in two weeks

Setsuko Iki may have retired in 1998 as a professor at Sanno Junior College in Tokyo, but she has not stopped working. As the leading Japanese authority on Suggestopaedia-Desuggestopaedia, systems of intensive language teaching initiated by Dr. Georgi Lozonov in Bulgaria in the 1960s and then developed...

COMMUNITY

Jun 11, 2000

Cybird flies big plans for mobile Net future

Kazutomo Robert Hori It came as a very pleasant surprise when an old friend rang from Osaka to tell me that her son's business had taken off like a rocket. The last time I saw Robert was at his wedding seven years ago -- a spectacular if crazy event held on top of a mountain in Hiroshima Prefecture....

CULTURE / Stage

Jun 4, 2000

Chinese ballet master comes in from the cold

It was too off-the-wall to resist: the chance to meet a Chinese ballet master from Alaska. So we arranged to meet in front of Tokyo's Yotsuya Station (not as easy as it sounds, since he is newly arrived and a stranger to Japan) and find him somewhere to eat. Luckily there was a Chinese restaurant right...

COMMUNITY

May 28, 2000

Conductor says yes to noh style 'Don Giovanni'

Theaters in Nagoya were aghast when Yoko Matsuo came calling. Even though she was born in the city and is conductor and director of the Aichi Prefecture Symphony Orchestra, her plan to stage Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" in the style of Japan's most revered and challenging dramatic form, noh, created...

COMMUNITY

May 21, 2000

Monkey mugs teacher juggling long way home

After eight months traveling in Asia, Leslie Davis is back in Japan for 2 1/2 weeks. She is using this time "to get grounded": sorting out taxes and boxes, seeing friends and reorganizing her backpack for the next stage of her journey. This will take her through Indonesia to Australia, New Zealand...

COMMUNITY

May 14, 2000

Ex-garbage man bags career as pro caddie

If Jeff Mulberry has any aspirations beyond the odd hole in one, it is to lead as uncomplicated a life as possible. His needs are modest and his interests narrowing down as he focuses on pro golf. Not that he has his eye set on being a winning player, but rather on being the best caddie that friendship,...

COMMUNITY

May 7, 2000

Activist with gypsy soul returns to roots

Reading years ago that the majority of us end our lives within 30 km of where we were born, I remember thinking: Not me. But after meeting Margareta Weisser, who knows.

COMMUNITY

Apr 30, 2000

'English Patience' thickens plots

I found Yukichi Arai eating fruit sherbet in the lobby of the Tokyo Station Hotel. It was hot, I agreed, whereupon he ordered another. After four days sitting in a booth at the Tokyo Book Fair at Tokyo Big Site, promoting his book (titled in "katakana" as "English Patience"), he felt the world deserving...

COMMUNITY

Apr 23, 2000

Man of many parts puts dreams in action

It's not unusual to meet people who are adept at juggling. But dish-spinning is a whole new ball game -- the ability to conjure up one form of creative activity and set it in motion while starting up a second, third or more. Yet according to Milton Katselas, an American of Greek parentage based in Los...

COMMUNITY

Apr 16, 2000

Learn to draw on the right side

Once upon a time, there was a Japanese salaryman who truly believed he was 100 percent uncreative. Then he took an intensive workshop in Tokyo called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" with an American teacher named Kristin Newton. Every evening he returned home, moved beyond words to discover...

COMMUNITY

Apr 9, 2000

Financial services fly at Banner

Some loudmouth once said that anyone who was in Japan during the bubble years of the late 1980s and had not made money -- a lot of money -- was a fool. Well, that makes me a dunce of the first order.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.

In search of the ‘Japanese dream’

By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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