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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 11, 2006

Grappling with gravity

At the Dairakudakan performance space in Kichijoji, a group of female performers move with the particular deliberateness of the butoh dance style. Their partners in the dance are snow-white noh masks, fully true to tradition but with one important modification: lurid red tongues extend and curl from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 5, 2006

Man from Wareika returns

During a break in a Tokyo recording session, Rico Rodriguez puts down his trombone to lark around on the roof with the teenage members of Oreskaband, the all-girl ska band he's been working with. That, at 72 years old, he is now old enough to be their grandfather doesn't even faze him.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 14, 2006

Sigur Ros warm to a wider world

When Sigur Ros proclaimed from their remote, treeless, volcanic island in 2000 that they would "change music forever, and the way people think about music," there was something mythical about their otherworldly sound and the made-up language of their lyrics that had some listeners actually believing...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 28, 2006

Takao Tsue

Takao Tsue, 80, is the Honorary Chief Priest of Osaka City's Imamiya-Ebisu Shrine, famous for the Toka Ebisu festival held every January, which attracts over 1 million people over three days. According to legend, the shrine was established in AD 600 by Shotoku Taishi, and written records show that Tsue's...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Mar 12, 2006

Three homers not enough for Japan

PHOENIX -- Team Japan couldn't have done less with three home runs.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 12, 2006

Women's voices

This story is part of a package on women in Japan. The introduction is here.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2006

McGowan speeds into town

Canadian-born Michael McGowan is a filmmaker and writer, but long before that, he had been a runner.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 23, 2006

The real Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The genius, the divinely inspired child, the idiot savant, the skilled populist craftsman, the underappreciated artist in his time who died tragically young in anonymous penury. Every generation makes of him what they will; the legends abound. And 250 years after his birth in...
Japan Times
Features
Feb 19, 2006

One man's drive to clean up the Earth

Every foreigner in Japan learns one thing pretty quickly: This being the land of harmony, courtesy trumps candor. Hanging back works best, everywhere and every time.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2006

Traditional prewar houses finding favor with manufactured home-weary

Architect Jun Hirai, 35, lives and works in a refurbished traditional "minka" house built during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) in Obama, Fukui Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Feb 14, 2006

Nobuko Mitsumori

Nobuko Mitsumori, 37, works with her mother in their small accounting office in Tokyo's Chuo Ward. With one assistant and myriad clients, the three are always happily overworked. Nobuko studied classical literature and didn't think that math was her strength, but thanks to her talent, the numbers somehow...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 10, 2006

The man who couldn't quit

With "Hoop Dreams" having just been inducted into The National Film Registry (of the Library of Congress), Steve James is clearly one of America's most respected documentarians. And with good reason: The 43-year-old, Virginia-born filmmaker brings a sensitivity and sustained focus to his films that few...
CULTURE / Music
Jan 27, 2006

A band that plays along with the joke

Test Icicles have been in Japan for less than 24 hours, and nearly a quarter of that has been spent talking to journalists. Rory Atwell, the band's eldest member at the ripe old age of 25, is still somewhat game, but his younger bandmates, both just 20 years old, have a different agenda. Devonte Hynes,...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 25, 2006

Saving our environment one step at a time

Having ended 2005 with a rant (see below), let me begin 2006 on a more positive note by introducing some valuable environmental education resources.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 22, 2005

Completely useless objects

It's 6 p.m., it's the end of the work day at a busy Kanda office block. OLs have been furiously tapping away at their keyboards, and connections have been made in the meeting rooms. Power players in their suits have been clinching make-or-break, win-win deals. Suddenly, the doors of the elevator open...
EDITORIALS
Dec 18, 2005

Everyday marvels of design

Winter has a way of slowing things down. Animals hibernate. Ponds freeze over. And the human brain turns sluggish, resisting even repeated infusions of double mocha espresso. Then a funny thing happens. As the mind struggles to focus, elemental objects suddenly loom large. With the peculiar concentration...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 29, 2005

Soaking in benefits of a chocolate spa

The Service: chocolate spa The Hype: slimmer figure: smooth skin: stress relief The Lab Rat: a thirty-something female chocolate lover with irregular eating habits The Results: thighs slimmed by 1.1 cm; feeling of relaxation: and - though connection can't be proven - a sudden desire to go shopping.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2005

Old textbooks, games bring spark of memory to those suffering dementia

Reprinted editions of old elementary school textbooks on Japanese language and other subjects are providing an additional tool in the treatment of senile dementia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 18, 2005

Best of friends kick up a storm in the fun house

Nothing frustrates a music critic more than a band that refuses categorization. Lots of bands, intoxicated with their own creativity, might make the claim. Not many, after a few records, resist a formula or a style that isn't easily pigeonholed in a pithy phrase or two.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 13, 2005

Companies fixing sights on elite as 'lower class' refuse to spend

Boosters of corporate-led globalization like to say that markets are more efficient economic equalizers than governments are. Whether or not you believe this, it only makes sense if you also believe that everyone in the world has the same desire to buy things.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 12, 2005

Christine Ishikawa

Within the first month of her arrival in Japan in 1989, Chris Ishikawa joined the Yokohama International Women's Club. She was a foreign bride then, living in a Japanese neighborhood, and feeling lonely. She said: "I read a writeup in a local newspaper about YIWC's outing to an antiques dealer. I went...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2005

On the precipice in Iraq

WASHINGTON-- How are things going in Iraq? The short answer, unfortunately -- based on Brookings' Iraq Index and my own assessments -- is not very well. There is still considerable hope, and much that does go well in Iraq. But on balance, there is more reason for worry than optimism right now.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 14, 2005

Playing in the shadows

"Self-effacing" is not an adjective one normally uses to describe a rock band, but everything about the English quartet Electrelane seems designed to draw attention away from the individual players. In Electrelane's case this is particularly significant since all four members are young women, and there...
COMMENTARY
Oct 8, 2005

Stellar play fosters globalized mindset

LOS ANGELES -- Some things are just nice to see, and there's not much more to it than that. In America around this time every year, one of the nicest things to see -- especially for the inveterate sports fan -- is the invariably engrossing finale of the long Major League Baseball season.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Oct 4, 2005

What are you doing to protect the environment?

Katharina Mueller Au pair, 19 I unplug things, hand wash dishes and I hang washing outside. People should rely less on all of the conveniences like dishwashers, turn the lights off and try opening the windows instead of the air conditioner.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 2, 2005

Killing your career in the media to keep your superiors happy

The vocation of journalism in Japan is not exactly the same as it is in the West. The "kisha club" system makes reporters beholden to the bureaucrats and politicians they cover rather than to the public they're supposed to serve, while the Japanese corporate tradition of on-the-job training means that...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 2, 2005

Harumi Kurihara: Homing in on success

As a cook and lifestyle guru, Harumi Kurihara has often been dubbed Japan's answer to America's Martha Stewart or Britain's Delia Smith. But in February this year, she scaled new heights when the English-language edition of her book "Harumi no Japanese Cooking" -- titled "Harumi's Japanese Cooking" --...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 30, 2005

Growl heard loud from New Orleans

Dr. John has been a central icon of New Orleans music for the past four decades. Though famed for his keyboard playing, he started out on guitar in his teens as a studio musician in 1950s New Orleans. He later switched to keyboards and put together his own special flavor of traditional-meets-funk music...
Features
Sep 25, 2005

Shinobazu Pond

"Listen," said Nishizawa-san.

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