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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 5, 2008

Cardiff band get Los in translation

Los Campesinos!, a pop septet from Cardiff, Wales, were an inspired choice to open the Marine Stadium stage at Summer Sonic Tokyo last month. Each tune kicks off with a catchy riff and proceeds to burn rocket fuel as lead vocalist Gareth twitches and yelps — nothing the band plays is slow, or even...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2008

Devo uphold their duty now for the future

As I sit down opposite the gray-haired man in a black shirt and glasses, someone comes to clear the clutter off the table — a stick-thin, retro-futuristic guitar that has been rigged for its strings to explode at the climax of a solo. His flame-haired partner takes a seat; he's wearing a full suit...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 29, 2008

Bands gather under Hokkaido's rising sun

"Go for it, guys!" the staff on the wristband checkpoint shout as people file past. "Have a good time!" As the day wears on, they grow more enthusiastic. High-fives are exchanged, with the more ebullient customers even getting a hug.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 28, 2008

Ainu musician Oki brings the world to Hokkaido

With a Japanese mother and Ainu father, the appearance of Oki on "The Rough Guide to the Music of Japan" with his Oki Dub Ainu Band presents a rare glimpse of the multiracial underbelly that Japan seems reluctant to own up to. Despite being indigenous to Hokkaido, or Ezo as it is known to them, the Ainu...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 24, 2008

Biomimicry: Natural by design

I magine being able to maintain a perfect temperature and humidity in your home year round, without spending a single yen in electricity or gas bills. That's exactly what Professor Emile Ishida of Tohoku University in northern Japan is striving to achieve — and he got the idea from termites.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 21, 2008

A linguistic boxing match from a true classic

Internationally acclaimed English theater director David Leveaux first visited Japan 20 years ago as the substitute director of "Dangerous Liaisons" after an English colleague had to pull out. Now Leveaux, 50, is back in his second home after a bewildering series of trips from his London base to Vienna,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 9, 2008

'Hyakunin' translations capture commission prize

In the same way that few British people have read all of Shakespeare's sonnets but many can quote at least a few lines of the lyric tradition, any adult who has gone through the Japanese school system is familiar with the Ogura "Hyakunin Isshu."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2008

Batman hits Tokyo

"Welcome to a world without rules" is the tag-line for "The Dark Knight," but, as usual these days, the press conference for the movie held at Roppongi Hills sure had a few. Rule No. 1, of course, was: Do not ask the stars questions about anything except the movie.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 7, 2008

The Ventures: Still rocking after 50 years

The Ventures have just finished playing 33 songs in the space of two hours in front of some enthusiastic, though seated, middle-aged fans at the Hokutopia concert hall in Tokyo. Kazushi Kojima, who calls himself a "philosopher," is there with his son. He's been attending Ventures shows for 30 years....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 5, 2008

Schools aim to cultivate returnee students' 'second culture'

Yuki, 7, zooms around the school lounge in her neon T-shirt, hugging teachers, gesturing wildly, making jokes and chattering away in perfect English. Yuki is Japanese and learned English when her family lived in Los Angeles for two years. She is affectionate and expressive, or at least she is on Saturdays...
Japan Times
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Aug 1, 2008

Sorimachi's squad faces big challenge

With its constantly changing cast and seemingly endless running time, Japan's Olympic soccer team has begun to resemble a TV soap opera.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jul 26, 2008

Darvish poised for spotlight at Olympics

Cuba beat Japan 4-0 in the final of the 2004 World Junior Baseball Championships, resulting in the Japanese starter that day ending the tournament 0-1 with a 7.11 ERA.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 25, 2008

Spiritualized beat the reaper

Jason Pierce almost died in July 2005. Hooked up to a ventilator and suffering from double pneumonia, Pierce — aka J Spaceman — shrank to 45 kg and spent two weeks in intensive care in a London hospital. Things looked so bad that his girlfriend was offered grief counseling.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 18, 2008

Pop Levi goes slightly wrong

"It was a very obsessive thing," says Jonathan Pop Levi about the recording of his new album of warped pop music, "Never Never Love." "It took six days a week for 12 hours a day for four months to get it to sound that way. Especially in the vocals; if a computer could do a perfect impression of a human,...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jul 11, 2008

NBA hires a general, NFL signs a colonel to tackle credibility crisis

NEW YORK — David Stern was deep in the bowels of Staples Center, holding an impromptu press conference next to the loading dock when he should have been in a luxury suite upstairs getting ready to enjoy Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 11, 2008

Americans finally getting to taste high-quality ramen

Nearly four decades after the first instant ramen factory opened in the United States, Japan's beloved comfort food finally is making inroads — even achieving cult status — in a nation where burgers and pizza still rule.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 8, 2008

Cherry farmers Mitsuyo and Shunji Ono

Shunji Ono, 71, and his wife Mitsuyo, 70, are farmers in Yamagata Prefecture's Sagae City. Besides taking care of the rice paddies their ancestors have tended for hundreds of years, the Onos are famous for growing Sato Nishiki, the sweetest and most expensive Japanese cherries. Developed about 90 years...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 26, 2008

CSS put their crazy show back on the road

It is January, and squeezed away upstairs in their favorite sushi restaurant in downtown Sao Paulo are the six members of CSS plus a stray boyfriend. (Turns out he belongs to producer-cum-drummer Adriano Cintra, the only fella in the group.) After 18 months touring the world, they are back home in Brazil...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 21, 2008

An up-close look at global intelligence

Jun Isomura is delighted to meet twice. The first time I am in the front of a car, taking notes, he in the back, out of sight, answering questions in impeccably accented British English. It is only when we disembark that we finally meet face to face.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jun 14, 2008

Quick start has Rami thinking big for Giants

Alex Ramirez hit home runs in consecutive at-bats during last year's All-Star series, which sparked an amazing late season performance, during which he won back-to-back monthly MVP awards in August and September.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 7, 2008

NPO brings smiles to the Philippines

Yokohama-based dental practitioner Dr. Kimio Miyake defines the turning point in his professional and personal life as taking place in the Philippines in 1983." I was dining at a terrace restaurant above the sea, and there were naked children on the rocks below diving for coins thrown by visitors. One...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
May 30, 2008

With trip to 2010 World Cup on line, time for Okada to be assertive

If national team manager Takeshi Okada has learned one thing from his side's recent Kirin Cup matches, it must be to trust his own instincts.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2008

Winding up in bondage

Consider, for a moment, tattoos. Removable and temporary tattoos are gaining in popularity. But there goes the whole cachet of tattoos, really. The very reason they're worth having is, in fact, the ordeal you go through to get them and the finality of the decision. Therein lies the line that separates...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2008

'The Bucket List'

One of the fuzzier concepts floating around the cloud of pop psychology that has descended upon America in the last decade —like some wizard's curse of stupefaction — is that of "closure." A term lifted from Gestalt psychology by way of grief counseling, its popular meaning has become merely the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2008

An aura of controversy in the chase for the new

Ever since 1917, when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to the Society of Independent Artists' exhibition, arguing that it was art, anything has become acceptable. Artist Chris Burden shot himself in the arm in a Los Angeles gallery in 1971; Piero Manzoni canned what was allegedly his own feces and sold...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
May 2, 2008

Big man Newton an integral part of Evessa's run at third straight bj-league title

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players in the bj-league — Japan's first professional basketball circuit — which is in its third season. Jeff Newton of the Osaka Evessa, who face the Rizing Fukuoka in Saturday's semifinal showdown at Ariake Colosseum, is the subject of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 22, 2008

Summit wicked this way comes

You've probably heard about July's G8 Summit in Toyako, in my home prefecture of Hokkaido. In case you're unfamiliar with the event, here's a primer from the Foreign Affairs Ministry:
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Apr 9, 2008

Life and left-handed meteorites

I wonder if Empress Gensho, who ruled Japan for nine years and died in 748, had something against left-handed people.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Apr 6, 2008

Tom Maschler: A storied life of luck and literary passions

Regardless of whether you take it with a pinch of salt or think this consummate professional is simply being modest, Tom Maschler says that throughout his celebrated publishing career, "luck" has often played a significant role.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 30, 2008

Hatching out some teaching blues

TONOHARU: Part One, by Lars Martinson. Minneapolis: Pliant Press, 2008, 128 pp., $19.95 (cloth) This account, in comic-book form, of an assistant English teacher's experiences working at a junior high school in the Japanese outback is not bad. Neither, however, is it as good as it might have been, or,...

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat