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November 24, 2024
 

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Chris Bamforth
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 19, 2005
Tourists are now the big catch for reborn Otaru
To think of a big city in Hokkaido is invariably to think of the place that fondly plants a prominent white, red or black star on the labels of the beers it brews. But back in the early part of the last century, the spot in Hokkaido that was top dog in terms of population and economic clout was not Sapporo,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 29, 2005
Caving in to the gods
If a foreigner happens to know just one Japanese myth, it's usually the one about Amaterasu and the cave. Amaterasu had long been tormented by her brother, Susanoo. But Susanoo, who believed there was no such thing as too elaborate a brotherly prank, went too far when he flung a flayed piebald colt into...
LIFE / Travel
Jul 22, 2005
Foreign writer who defined Japan has been carved into stone in Matsue
The name usually means nothing whatsoever to the vast majority of people overseas. But in his adopted country, Lafcadio Hearn is lionized among writers in the English language with the same kind of reverence normally accorded to authors of the ilk of Melville and Shakespeare.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 24, 2005
A prize catch for travel merchants
First impressions of a Japanese provincial town can be so thoroughly dispiriting as to make you inclined to believe that the developer of the station area set about his task grimly determined to bring a whole new meaning to the concept of drabness. And so it is upon alighting at Omi Hachiman Station...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 27, 2005
Get peace of mind . . . in the off-season
Arrival in some places doesn't always meet expectations. From stories I had read of Taketomi, I had built up a picture of a sleepy subtropical paradise. This island at the southwestern end of the Okinawan chain was, I learned, a place of coral-sand streets and quaint Okinawan life, an island where cars...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2005
Shopping for the little bookworms
It's bedtime and you're keen for the little ones to get off to sleep so you can return to that DVD you left on pause. For their story, you try winging it again with a Japanese picture book, but the version you concoct this time is different to what you told them before. Pointing out that you've got the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 22, 2005
Sipping on Heian history in Uji
In Uji, it's a tough job to go anywhere without consuming its famous product as green tea is liberally doled out on the streets.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 25, 2005
All fired up for ceramics central
Despite having saddled itself with the dire name of Centrair Airport, Japan's newest air facility, which opened last month near Nagoya, looks to have started off well enough.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 25, 2005
Historic port city famous for fugu
Located at the western end of Honshu, Shimonoseki is one of those places that people tend to travel through rather than travel to. With Kyushu only 700 meters away across the Kanmon Strait, Shimonoseki is the main access point to that island, and as visa-run veterans are aware, the Korean port of Pusan...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 28, 2005
Otherworldly Okinawan capital
Automatic doors open, you step through and the sleek monorail whisks you from the spanking-new air terminal to the profuse lights of the dense urban center. Except for having exchanged wintry weather for the almost-perpetual balmy summer of Okinawa, arrival in Naha at night can seem mightily like the...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Jan 16, 2005
Seek the Hemingway within at a concrete-jungle pond
"It was light. We stood by the pond. The fish were biting."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 14, 2005
Kobe: picturesque city by the sea
As last month's terrible tsunami off Sumatra and the subsequent tidal waves showed only too well, the shiftings of the earth's crust can lead to horrific natural calamities. Sitting atop one of the world's geological hot spots, Japan is of course no stranger to these phenomena. And the ever-present threat...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 28, 2004
So many deities for still many troubled lives
EIGHT MILLION GODS AND DEMONS, by Hiroko Sherwin. Plume Books, 2003, 320 pp., $14 (paper). When "The Name of the Rose" transformed Umberto Eco from obscure Italian academic to international best-selling author, a common complaint among readers of his dark novel was that only after wading through the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 26, 2004
Into Nagoya and onto Inuyama
As a destination, Nagoya is not the biggest tourist magnet, yet there is reason enough for dawdling here instead of just whisking through on the Shinkansen.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 21, 2004
Daring to break the rules: Japan's first modern novelists
TWO JAPANESE NOVELISTS: SOSEKI & TOSON, by Edwin McClellan. Tuttle, 2004, 166 pp., 1,500 yen (paper). Even if they do recognize the man, Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) for many non-Japanese is no more than the prim blue gent in the mustache that once peered out from the 1,000 yen bill. Yet Soseki is the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 29, 2004
Adventures abound in city's toy towns
It may be all Halloween pumpkins in the shops right now, but just around the corner is Christmas -- the season of peace, goodwill and bank accounts plundered for presents, both for your own progeny and for all those nieces and nephews you've somehow acquired. In the runup to the festive season, here...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 22, 2004
Following the way of the samurai in Akita's Kakunodate
For the Hollywood view of what life was like for the old warriors of Japan, go down to the video shop and take out "The Last Samurai." But for a more accurate glimpse of how the samurai lived and the kind of world they inhabited, take a trip to Kakunodate.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Oct 17, 2004
A purrfect day out
You're kitted out with Kitty. You have your Hello Kitty toothbrush and pencil sharpener, your little lunchbox and tissue-holder, but still you have this odd impulse to spend some quality time with a real furry, warmblooded feline.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 24, 2004
Northern delights of Sapporo
Despite its easy proximity, brought by the relatively short flying time from Tokyo, an air of remoteness still hangs over Hokkaido. Physically the island is more a last outpost of Siberia than an integral part of Japan. In Hokkaido, little rice grows, scant cherry trees bloom, no rainy season descends,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 27, 2004
Japan's big Little Italy
Local sobriquets are not hard to come by. A place that is home to a few dingy canals on which some dodgy craft manage to stay afloat gets tagged the "Venice of Somewhere." A town in Japan that manages to keep some old houses out of the predatory clutches of developers becomes the "Little Kyoto of Somewhere...
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
Tokyo police care for lost umbrellas, keys and flying squirrels
An employee at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo bags, tags and organizes thousands of items.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

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

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