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November 23, 2024
 

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Philip Brasor
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Sep 2, 2009
Super-fluous banking perks
It pays to read the fine print in your bank account passbook.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 30, 2009
Annals of cheap: Garigari-kun
Garigari: It's amazing what a brand rethink can do for ice and sugar on a stick.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 30, 2009
War over whaling takes to Japan's airwaves
In early August, director Louis Psihoyos told The Toronto Star that his documentary, "The Cove," had been submitted to the Tokyo International Film Festival and rejected. In the article he quoted an unnamed TIFF "director" who said that the festival receives funding from the Japanese government, which...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 29, 2009
Goodbye Work
With unemployment rates at an all-time high, it's easy to see an incoming wave of newly homeless.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 23, 2009
Sling some mud and have some election fun
Nothing I've read exemplifies the misdirection of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's campaign for the Aug. 19 Lower House elections better than a letter that appeared in last Tuesday's Asahi Shimbun from a reader who said he had to look up sekinin-ryoku after seeing it used in various LDP ads.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2009
Aimee Mann clicks into a disturbed world
The title of Aimee Mann's latest album, "@#%&*! Smilers," does a good job of conveying the tone of the singer-songwriter's output, not to mention her wry sense of humor; which isn't to say Mann has nothing to smile about. After years of hassling with major record labels about the direction of her music,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 18, 2009
Got those rental blacklist blues
It's a buyers market in Japan but “yachin hosho kaisha” (rental guarantee companies) tried to flex their muscle by attempting to blacklist of rent scofflaws.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 16, 2009
Sakai's twin personalities were falling apart before bust
The advice column in the Aug. 1 Asahi Shimbun ran a letter from a 30-year-old woman who despaired over her obsession with male idols, wondering if it was the reason she didn't have a boyfriend. The guest adviser was University of Tokyo Professor Chizuko Ueno, who told her to relax. She'd survived 30...
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2009
Summer Sonic: 10 years zoom by
Japan's biggest urban rock festival, Summer Sonic (SS), held simultaneously in Chiba and Osaka, marked its tenth anniversary last weekend by expanding from two days to three. All three-day tickets for the Chiba end at the Chiba Marine Stadium and Makuhari Messe complex in Chiba were sold out before...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 12, 2009
Option to owning
Owning a car in Japan isn't cheap, but these days, renting has become a smart and reasonable option.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 10, 2009
Free java, no jive
Step back Starbucks. McDonald's is making a power move on the coffee market in Japan with free java.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 9, 2009
Enter a fantasy world of Zen-like bedroom gymnastics
A few weeks ago, BBC News ran a report on how love hotels were one of the few business sectors in Japan doing well in the current recession. The report stressed the unique trappings of these hotels and actually raised more questions than it answered about their socioeconomic significance.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 2, 2009
No brains when it comes down to transplants
The bill to revise the Organ Transplant Law, which cleared the Upper House on July 13 and thus gained full Diet passage, is a rare example of bipartisan agreement. Known as Plan A, the new law has three significant features: It recognizes brain death as legal death, allows the harvesting of organs from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 31, 2009
Going to the country for a bit of Fuji Rock
Whether or not you believe Kiyoshiro Imawano, who died in May, was Japan's King of Rock, he was the Mayor of Fuji Rock, having appeared almost every year until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 26, 2009
Japan's maglev on track for financial crash
About 40 people are crowded onto the observation deck of the Yamanashi Linear Test Line Center, holding their cameras at the ready and waiting for the world's fastest train — an experimental maglev model that's called a "linear motor car" (LMC) — to make its appearance.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 19, 2009
Questions over degree of child abuse remain in Japan
Last April, a 34-year-old woman and her 38-year-old live-in boyfriend were arrested for allegedly burying the corpse of the woman's 9-year-old daughter in a Nara graveyard. Osaka police believe that the child had been a victim of abuse at the hands of the boyfriend. School authorities had earlier suspected...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 12, 2009
'Campaign' star no longer life of the party
Takafumi Horie, the former CEO of Livedoor Inc., has nothing to do with the documentary "Campaign," which had a special public screening at the Rise X theater in Shibuya the morning of June 30. However, the subject of the movie, politics, is close to his heart, so he agreed to discuss it with the film's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 10, 2009
Measuring influence in Funky Meters
Funky Meters is a good name for any band. However, the band that actually calls itself Funky Meters contains two original members of the legendary New Orleans R&B quartet The Meters and basically plays the same repertoire. In that regard, affixing "funky" to Meters is like calling snow "cold."
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 5, 2009
Flashing the cash while the majority suffer
There haven't been many silver linings to the dark cloud of the recession that descended more than a year ago. One is the media's general loss of interest in ostentatious displays of stuff that most of us could never afford anyway. Nowadays, it's easier to boost TV ratings with features about places...
CULTURE / Music
Jul 3, 2009
Japan was Jackson's other Neverland
Last Friday I watched the second half of the two-hour tribute special to Michael Jackson on Fuji TV and after it was over started surfing to see if there were any others. NHK's BS-2 channel was airing a retrospective of performances by the late singer Hibari Misora, and it occurred to me that June 24,...
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
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.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
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.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.

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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