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Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 17, 2010

Fuji veteran brings kids English Adventure

If you hike in the Chichibu mountains this summer in Saitama Prefecture, you may stumble across an American-style summer camp with huge tents and 50 to 60 school kids exploring nature with walks and tree-climbing adventures and enjoying campfires and roasting marshmallows.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 2, 2010

There's always a missing piece

The daughter of actor/director Eiji Okuda and sister of actress Sakura Ando, 28-year-old Momoko Ando has a deeply international background, including a nine-year stay in Britain, as well as thorough fluency in English. In person she was also articulate, straightforward, and gracious enough to give The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 5, 2010

A rogue on high

In real life, Ishikawa Goemon was the leader of a band of burglars in Kyoto who was caught in the summer of 1594 trying to kill Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the foremost politician of his day, and was duly executed at age 36 along with many members of his family and his gang.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 14, 2010

A winter's tale of time-warp Takayama

After a while you tire of the easy destinations — the usual spots with their inevitable touristic clutter. So you decide on somewhere different — somewhere that's far from the madding crowds and far, too, from the yet more madding megaphone-toting tour guides.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 22, 2010

Depp the magical mystery man

HOLLYWOOD — It's no surprise Johnny Depp is starring in a fantastical new movie titled "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," which opens in Japan on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BY THE GLASS
Dec 11, 2009

Make merry with top festive wines

In case you haven't noticed, it's the season to be jolly. If you aren't yet decking the halls with sprigs of holly here's just the thing to get you in the spirit: a Christmas wine guide, which will take you from pre-Christmas party to post-Christmas stupor in four easy stages.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2009

What lies behind the eccentric?

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote that what is "familiarly known" is not "properly known," just for the reason that it is familiar. The familiar historical image of the Edo Period Eccentric painters, one of whom was Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800), is no exception. They are remembered...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 15, 2009

Shades of Greece on the Inland Sea

The windmill is the first thing I notice, its delicate white blades gleaming against the cloud- flecked sky. Nearby, a semi-circle of polished Doric-style columns occupies prime position overlooking the glassy sea. As a breeze blows gently through olive trees on the shady hillside, it's easy to imagine...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2009

'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'

Wayne Wang, often described by U.S. film critics as "our resident Chinese filmmaker," has returned —if not exactly to his roots then a turf where he feels especially comfortable. After drumming up ubiquitous crowd pleasers like "Maid in Manhattan" and "Because of Winn-Dixie," it looks as though Wang...
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 3, 2009

Demography vs. demagoguery: when politics, science collide

Last June, I attended a symposium sponsored by the German Institute of Japanese Studies. Themed "Imploding Populations: Global and Local Challenges of Demographic Change," I took in presentations about health care, international and domestic migration, and life in a geriatric society.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 3, 2009

Demography vs. demagoguery: when politics, science collide

Last June, I attended a symposium sponsored by the German Institute of Japanese Studies. Themed "Imploding Populations: Global and Local Challenges of Demographic Change," I took in presentations about health care, international and domestic migration, and life in a geriatric society.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 30, 2009

'Mother'

Korean auteur Joon-ho Bong's latest, "Mother," combines the calculated suspense and sophisticated psychological thrills of his breakthrough work "Memories of Murder" (2003), with observations of East Asian motherhood gone over the edge.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2009

Beneath a city of chaos lies a dark psychological realm

At times, Tokyoites appear to be some of the most poker-faced people on the planet. But what exactly is going on behind those apparently emotionless expressions? The art of Mikiko Kumazawa suggests maybe quite a lot.
COMMENTARY
Oct 22, 2009

Does Japan really want to stay competitive?

LONDON — The reported remarks to members of the foreign press in Tokyo on Oct. 14 by Shizuka Kamei, Japan's minister for financial issues, made me wonder whether he was living in the real world — where nations are interdependent and must compete to survive.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 9, 2009

It is in the East and Juliet is a ballet dancer named Shoko

Shoko Nakamura, the 29-year-old principal dancer of the Staatsballett Berlin, is back in Japan for a well-earned vacation and to make her debut in a classic role.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 29, 2009

Murakami: Titan of postwar literature

Haruki Murakami is probably the most internationally acclaimed and influential contemporary Japanese author alive today. Over a career spanning 30 years, he has illustrated the apathy and ennui enveloping postwar Japan through sometimes wildly fantastic storytelling with surreal twists and turns, sprinkled...
COMMUNITY
Sep 12, 2009

College head finds magic where he can

The Rev. Frank Howell, president of Sophia Junior College, Catholic priest, educator and debate team coach, finds serenity in an unexpected location amid the bustle of his busy life. He hops a train and heads to another land — Tokyo Disneyland.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 11, 2009

Back from extinction

Few rock bands in Japan are as legendary as Unicorn. From their inception in 1986 at the height of Japan's "band boom," which saw the balance of chart power shift from idoru (idol) pop to real bands, through to their split in 1993 and subsequent reunion this year, the Hiroshima five-piece have left a...
COMMENTARY
Aug 28, 2009

American paranoia insults Muslims' dignity

CHENNAI, India — It did not come as a surprise recently when well-known Indian movie star Shahrukh Khan was detained at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Ironically, he had just finished shooting a film in the United States about racial profiling.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 28, 2009

'Ballad: Namonaki Koi no Uta'

Takashi Yamazaki was known primarily as a computer-graphics whiz when he directed the ensemble drama "Always Sanchome no Yuhi" ("Always: Sunset on Third Street," 2005). True to form, the recreation of 1950s Tokyo by Yamazaki's team at the Shirogumi effects house was hyper-realistically detailed, while...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Aug 9, 2009

Swim legend Furuhashi inspired Japan at tough time

There are historical icons in every nation. But only a few individuals can be considered symbols of a nation's collective psyche during a particular era.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2009

Dick El Demasiado

Dick El Demasiado is, by his own admission, an impostor. Born Dick Verdult in the Netherlands in 1954, the musician and media artist has become a pivotal figure on Argentina's experimental music scene thanks to an elaborate hoax.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 17, 2009

'Futoko'

Since its start in 1978, the Pia Film Festival has served as a proving ground for young Japanese indie filmmakers, with many of its prize winners going on to greater fame, if not always fortune. Among them are Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Gururi no Koto"), Shinobu Yaguchi ("Happy Flight"), Naoko Ogigami ("Kamome...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 5, 2009

Why Murakami's best-selling '1Q84' is worth the wait

When Shinchosha decided not to run a pre-marketing campaign for Haruki Murakami's new and highly anticipated two-volume novel, the publishing house must have banked on the book creating its own hype. It worked. The void soon filled with publicity and media speculation about the book's only available...
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2009

Taking an Izu Islands tonic

Through half-closed eyelids, the sea sparkles. A bamboo screen dapples the sunlight, and the world is reduced to contrast, to flashes of light and shade. The air is a hot, distilled essence of summer. Each time the salt dries on my skin, I make the small commute from towel to waves and dive in. The water...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2009

Taking an Izu Islands tonic

Through half-closed eyelids, the sea sparkles. A bamboo screen dapples the sunlight, and the world is reduced to contrast, to flashes of light and shade. The air is a hot, distilled essence of summer. Each time the salt dries on my skin, I make the small commute from towel to waves and dive in. The water...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
May 26, 2009

Waseda academic confident country's charms are to be had by the open-minded

Paul Snowden came to Japan 40 years ago — thinking that his visit here would only last for two years, after which he would go back to his native England and settle down as a grammar school teacher.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 16, 2009

Fated winds turn path to cyclone-hit Myanmar

When Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar just over a year ago on May 2, Naomi Kato was in Japan, wishing she wasn't. As life ended for some 140,000 people and changed drastically for countless others, the Yokohama native found herself on the brink of a far-less tumultuous change, in between jobs and about to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 15, 2009

Gauguin: 'I shall never do anything better'

Was he just a "Sunday painter" who abandoned his wife and five children for a bohemian life in a distant island paradise — where he died of syphilis and poverty in the arms of a teenage mistress?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2009

'Gran Torino'

You can take Clint Eastwood out of the "Dirty Harry" movies, but you can't take Dirty Harry out of ol' Clint. So it would seem upon viewing "Gran Torino," an Eastwood-directed film in which the 79-year-old plays a tough retiree who goes vigilante to take on gangbangers terrorizing his neighborhood.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake