Search - text

 
 
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Dec 5, 2014

Lewis brings storied career back to track as coach

It's too early to know if Carl Lewis will one day be considered a legendary track coach.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Sep 11, 2014

Yoshida transcripts on Fukushima nuclear crisis released

The government finally discloses the transcripts of its investigative talks with the late manager of the doomed Fukushima No. 1 power plant after media leaks force its hand.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 11, 2014

'Jesus' Wife' papyrus fragment not a forgery, scientists say

Scientists who examined a controversial fragment of papyrus written in Egyptian Coptic in which Jesus speaks of his wife concluded in papers published on Thursday that the papyrus and ink are probably ancient and not a modern forgery.
COMMENTARY
Apr 4, 2014

African e-money is the next currency killer

All the talk of bitcoin in recent years has overshadowed the e-finance revolution in Africa, India and eastern Europe, where a service called M-Pesa has replaced banking for millions of people who don't have a bank account.
LIFE / Digital
Dec 24, 2013

Even our Facebook 'grunts' could be monetized

As Mark Twain observed: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." And that was a long time before the Web. Which brings us to a meme that was propagating last week though social media. Its essence was an assertion that Facebook monitored — and stored — not...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 23, 2013

From Mikimoto's pearls to ones of publicity wisdom

Having invented a method for creating cultured pearls in 1893, Meiji Era entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto set about selling them to the world. Apparently not one for understatement, he once announced he hoped to "adorn the necks of all women around the world with pearls."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 13, 2013

Brecht's 'Fatzer' underground in Kyoto

The term "metatheater" refers to devices in a play that break the so-called "fourth wall" — the illusion of theatrical reality — in order to involve the audience as critical participants in the production. Metatheatricality is a hallmark of early 20th-century Modernist drama, and is often associated...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 4, 2013

The latest gyaru-go: The top 10 words for gals on the go

The other day, I overheard two gyaru (ギャル, gals, i.e., fashion-conscious girls) talking, but I had no idea what they were saying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 20, 2013

Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?

Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn't work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that carries with it the curiosity of a detective who...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 25, 2013

Secrets deciphered as ancient Maya script meets the modern Internet

Researchers began decoding the glyphic language of the ancient Maya long ago, but the Internet is helping them finish the job and write the history of the enigmatic Mesoamerican civilization.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 8, 2013

Android 'fragmentation' leaves smartphones vulnerable

In late October, researchers at North Carolina State University alerted Google to a security flaw that could let scam artists send phony text messages to Android phones — a practice called "smishing" that can ensnare consumers in fraud.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 25, 2013

I still haven't found what I'm looking for ...

Thinking about Google over the last week, I have fallen into the typically procrastinatory habit of every so often typing the words "what is" or "what" or "wha" into the Google search box at the top right of my computer screen. Those prompts are all the omnipotent engine needs to inform me of the current...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 6, 2013

Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan

THE ART OF CENSORSHIP IN POSTWAR JAPAN, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 342 pp., $45.00 (hardcover) REDACTED: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University of California Press, 2012, 376 pp., $44.95 (hardcover) Censorship in Japan has long been hot-button...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 15, 2012

Despite flaws, Rakuten is 1-0 against Amazon in Japan's e-book wars

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall — and a head-to-head rival of Amazon Japan that also hopes to expand its business globally — launched its first e-book reader, the Rakuten Kobo Touch, on July 19, getting the jump on the long anticipated Japanese release of Amazon's Kindle.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jul 18, 2012

Japan's LINE social network could challenge global competitors

LINE is a cross-platform communication service and app, offered for free by Naver, from NHN Japan. The basic functionality allows users to send text messages and to make free calls with other users who have the app installed on their smartphones. The service launched just 13 months ago, on June 27, 2011,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
Reader Mail
Apr 12, 2012

Texting piece leaves bad taste

Even though the When East Marries West column for April 7, titled "Texting in the proper context," was short, I felt incredulous after reading it. I would have read it again, but the text-speak writing was atrocious and difficult to read. People don't actually text like that in English; it surely defeats...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 7, 2012

Texting in the proper context

What's wrong with this picture?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 24, 2012

Emmert shares beauty, power of noh dramas with a wider audience

Richard Emmert has endeavored for decades to share the beauty and power of noh with English-speaking audiences and performers through "English noh."
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2011

Three admit to throwing sumo bouts

Sports minister Yoshiaki Takaki told the Diet on Thursday that three people in the sumo world have admitted bout-fixing, further disgracing the Japan Sumo Association and jeopardizing its status as a certified public interest corporation.
EDITORIALS
Jan 3, 2011

Problematic prosecution report

The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office on Dec. 24 made public a report of an internal probe of how the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad handled the case in which a former welfare ministry bureau chief allegedly fabricated an official document to help an organization...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 11, 2009

Developing countries' differences briefly suspend summit

COPENHAGEN — A document suggesting that developing countries should do more to combat global warming continued to dominate discussions Wednesday at the U.N. climate conference, where talks were briefly suspended after a controversy erupted among developing countries over what level of greenhouse gas...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Nov 23, 2009

Japanese now a little less lost in translation

Yeah, some things still get lost in machine translation, but language barriers did grow a lot smaller in 2009.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 8, 2009

Definitive 'Record of Linji' well worth a wait of 40 years

The Linji-lu is one of the most influential of all Zen texts. Presumably a collection of the lectures and sermons of Linji Yixuan (died 866), founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism, it helped form the Rinzai sect of Zen in Japan.

Longform

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