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April 05, 2025
 

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Philip Brasor
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 26, 2004
The Black Keys: "Rubber Factory"
Though The Black Keys have been pegged as being part of the current garage-blues revival, they consider themselves a rock act, and Dan Auerbach has more in common with Jimi Hendrix than with any other past-master singer-guitarist. Of course, Hendrix was primarily a bluesman, too, but his flashy vocal-instrumental...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 26, 2004
Japan's abandoned kids live with the label
The murders of 4-year-old Kazuto Hayashi and his 3-year-old brother Hayato by an acquaintance of their father two weeks ago in Tochigi Prefecture has sparked outrage over Japan's insufficient child-welfare system. Though local police and child-welfare officials were aware the two boys were being beaten,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 19, 2004
"Discovered, Covered: The Late Great Daniel Johnston": Various Artists
It's not a new idea, but somehow it's more interesting with Daniel Johnston's songs than with almost anyone else's: one disc of covers by well-known musician-fans, and a second disc with all the same songs performed by the songwriter himself in the same order.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 19, 2004
Chaos theory you can dance to
Things are looking good for Grandadbob. The quirky house music duo of Dave Johnson and Vanessa Robinson released their debut album, "Waltzes for Weirdos," on Fatboy Slim's Southern Fried label to rave reviews in Britain last year and are about to tour Japan with the wild and crazy DJ himself. Now that...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 19, 2004
9/11 conspiracy theories enthrall Japanese audiences
Only three years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American mainstream media are providing scant coverage of ceremonies to mark the tragedy, according to Japanese reporter Akihiko Reizei on the Internet news service Japan Mail Media. A resident of New Jersey, Reizei said that unlike the...
CULTURE / Music
Sep 12, 2004
Joseph Fiddler
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 12, 2004
Adjusting McLuhan's reception of 'hot' and 'cool' media
Almost 25 years after the death of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian writer who coined the term "global village" and philosophized about the impact that television had on our minds and bodies, some of his theories are taking on a larger meaning.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 5, 2004
Bottoms up to those misfiring weather forecasters
Liberal Democratic Party honcho Ryutaro Hashimoto needs all the positive PR he can muster to counteract the bad press he's received since his alleged acceptance of a bribe from the Japan Dental Association came to light.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 5, 2004
Clinic: "Winchester Cathedral"
On the back cover of Clinic's third album is an image of an upright piano made up of separate photographs of parts of the instrument, like one of those David Hockney collages. It's an apt visual representation of the group's music, which is not organic but rather a mishmash of distinct components. Despite...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 29, 2004
Prince Po: "The Slickness"
Prince Poetry, who was Pharoahe Monche's better half in the influential rap duo Organized Konfusion, has abbreviated his moniker for his solo career, and it would be nice to think he appropriated "po" to distance himself from the overground hip-hop obsession with money. Taking up where OK left off, he's...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 29, 2004
Media nets gold in ensuring Olympic success
Anyone who has a TV could see that the attendance at the Athens Olympics has been spotty at best. Scalpers have been practically giving tickets away.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 22, 2004
Sim Redmond Band
Alot of bands form during their players' university years, but the Sim Redmond Band could be said to have congealed in the leafy college town of Ithaca, New York, back in the '90s. Starting from the kernel of brothers Sim (guitar, vocals) and Asa (drums) Redmond, the band grew into a truly organic outfit....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 22, 2004
N.K. officials bitten by bulldog Japanese journo makes good TV
One of the problems the Japanese government has to contend with in its dealings with North Korea is the fact there is interaction between the two countries that it can't control, such as that which travels over the airwaves. Being a totalitarian dictatorship, North Korea doesn't have the same problem,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 15, 2004
Still waiting for the final whistle in this Japan vs. China 'game'
A war of words is always preferable to any other kind of war, and for what it's worth the recent controversy over the behavior of Chinese soccer fans toward the Japanese national team at the Asian Cup tournament did offer an opportunity for the governments of the countries involved to express their views...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 8, 2004
Japan hopes to bear it out to gain a World Heritage Site
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization convened the 28th World Heritage Committee in Suzhou, China in early July to screen candidates for World Heritage sites, which are cultural or natural treasures meant to be preserved intact forever. The big news out of the session was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 1, 2004
David Grubbs
'I'll choose what's next," David Grubbs sings repeatedly on the opening cut of his latest album, "A Guess at the Riddle." The Kentucky-born guitarist seems to accept the inevitable, which is one way of looking at his unusual career. Having begun by making fairly conventional indie rock in a group called...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 1, 2004
Koizumi: Robot? Dummy? Dictator? All three?
A comedy troupe called The Newspaper has recently been lampooning Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's performance at the last G-8 summit. According to the weekly magazine Aera, in one skit, a member dressed as Koizumi explains why he committed Japanese troops to a multinational force without first consulting...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 25, 2004
Little Wings: "Magic Wand"
Portland, Ore.-based singer-songwriter Kyle Field, who performs under the alias Little Wings, initially comes across as one of those new folkies, like Will Oldham and M. Ward, who appropriate old-fashioned religious imagery for purely dramatic purposes. However, with his fragile, druggy voice and gentle,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 25, 2004
Home is where the financial heartbreak is
If you have a dedicated telephone line, you probably receive calls from sales people pitching new condominiums or single-family homes in your area. The pitch always starts the same way: "Do you rent? Do you pay more than 100,000 yen a month? If you were paying that much a month for a mortgage, you could...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 21, 2004
Staying ahead of the name game
More than 250 artists will be playing at the Fuji Rock Festival and Summer Sonic this year. You've probably never heard of most of them, and since so many bands have similar-sounding names you might wonder at times if what you're hearing is what you thought you came to hear. No one will mistake The Whyte...
U.S. tourist arrested after bringing a handgun into Japan
Hyogo police believe the handgun a U.S. tourist inadvertently brought into Japan slipped through security procedures at Kansai International Airport in Osaka Prefecture.
3D printer used to construct train station building in Japan
A train station building (front) is assembled from parts printed using 3D printer technology, in Arida, Wakayama Prefecture, on Wednesday.
Japan’s leader didn’t read the job description
Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party leader Shigeru Ishiba is facing a political funding scandal that has damaged his reputation and sparked speculation that internal efforts to remove him are underway.
Japan promises 'bold and speedy' response to Trump’s surprise 24% tariffs
U.S. President Donald Trump unveils new U.S. tariffs at the White House in Washington on Wednesday.
Tokyo’s KK Line to close for decadelong overhaul as public greenway
People enjoy running and yoga on Tokyo Expressway’s KK Line, a 2-kilometer elevated expressway cutting through the capital’s commercial Ginza district, when it was opened as a pedestrian space in May last year.
Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
Nintendo to launch the Switch 2 on June 5
The controllers for the Switch 2 will attach to the console magnetically rather than sliding on rails as with the original device.
A new human trafficking trend emerges from Myanmar scam centers
Victims of scam centers who were tricked or trafficked into working in Myanmar gather at a compound inside KK Park, a fraud center on the country's border with Thailand, after a multinational crackdown in February.
Meiji says sayonara to bottled milk, a staple of Japan's bathhouses
Meiji bottled milk lined up in a fridge at Kosugiyu, a bathhouse in Tokyo. The sticker urges patrons to enjoy the milk one last time before it’s gone.
A Canadian made a weekend trip to Costco a Japanese pastime
Under the watchful eye of Ken Theriault, Costco representative director and Japan country manager, the American membership-model wholesaler has flourished in Japan.

Podcast

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

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan
By Johan Brooks

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