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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Aug 21, 2009

Timothy Saccenti: Garden of Unearthly Delights

Diesel Denim Gallery, Tokyo
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2009

Traveling through a symphony of art

Several weeks ago at the Fuji Rock music festival, I realized that I might be in the wrong game. The art world is about the object: You look at a work, often something inert, and attempt to discern from it an emotion, a meaning or a truth. But music irresistibly moves you, it mysteriously reaches through...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 21, 2009

Indie hardman opens the tear ducts

Sion Sono is Japan's edgy indie director par excellence, whose internationally acclaimed films expose social ills and challenge taboos in a variety of genres and moods, from the death-trip chills of "Jisatsu Circle" ("Suicide Club," 2001) to the black-comic laughs of "Ai no Mukidashi" ("Love Exposure,"...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 21, 2009

Be a fool and dance Bon-odori

If you spend your life stuck in one of Japan's concrete jungles, you may have never seen a Bon-odori (Bon-dance) performed at the summer Bon festivals held all over the country in towns and villages, where people dance in a circle or in line, making the same moves together to traditional Japanese music....
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2009

Battery-boosted bikes a hit with moms, firms

Tokyo housewife Chie Igawa, 38, is part of a trend that's transforming the streets, zipping her kids around on a battery-boosted bicycle without breaking a sweat or having to worry about traffic rules.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2009

A dream venue for new artists

"I'm still a housewife so its amazing that an amateur can do something like this," says DanDans founder and organizer Kazuko Aso, now presenting the contemporary art cooperative's fifth exhibition titled "A Midsummer Dream" until Aug. 30 at Chinzan-so in Mejiro, Tokyo. "Maybe it's because I have such...
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2009

Focus for many is on how big DPJ win might be

Most observers are betting the Democratic Party of Japan will win the Aug. 30 Lower House election, with their focus now on just how big the DPJ's victory will be.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Aug 18, 2009

Power harassment plagues workplaces

Dear Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Yoichi Masuzoe, I can still recall the phone conversation with my spouse on June 2, when I was crying profusely due to harassment at work. Earlier that day, the manager of my unit asked me to resign, stating that one of the deputy managers didn't like me. On...
EDITORIALS
Aug 16, 2009

Lonely shoplifters

The rapid rise in theft by elderly people has caught the police and Justice Ministry off guard. A Justice Ministry report revealed that over 30,000 people over 65 were convicted of theft in 2007, with crimes by the elderly in 2008 rising to the highest level ever.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 16, 2009

Sakai's twin personalities were falling apart before bust

The advice column in the Aug. 1 Asahi Shimbun ran a letter from a 30-year-old woman who despaired over her obsession with male idols, wondering if it was the reason she didn't have a boyfriend. The guest adviser was University of Tokyo Professor Chizuko Ueno, who told her to relax. She'd survived 30...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 16, 2009

Japanese attacks provoked a seismic 'me-too' shift Down Under

"On 27 December [1941], with his government a mere 12 weeks old, [Prime Minister John] Curtin stood Australian foreign policy on its head by declaring that the country now 'looked to America' for protection from the Japanese. Until this ringing pronouncement, Australia, in truth, barely had a foreign...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 16, 2009

Fishery fair nets shoals of hopefuls

The recruiters and job-seekers gathered recently in a hall in central Tokyo looked serious but excited as they sat facing each other and talking across tables. But this wasn't an event pitching young men in suits against corporate managers.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 16, 2009

Back where they belong

High in the fork of a tall tree on a wooded slope close to narrow rice paddies on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan off Nigata Prefecture was a flimsy, ragged nest made of twigs.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 15, 2009

Appreciating a sense of space — a Japanese fine art

"Your relax space," "Life style space," space this, space that. What was I saying?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 15, 2009

Former AIG manager cooks up new career as chef

The collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and other U.S. financial giants changed people's lives around the world, and David Cisan, a former manager at American International Group in Japan, is one of them.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2009

Higashikokubaru rues ultimatum

Miyazaki Gov. Hideo Higashikokubaru said Friday he regretted the political turmoil that resulted from his wavering over whether to accept the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's offer to put his name on its ticket for the Aug. 30 Lower House election.
BUSINESS
Aug 15, 2009

Demand for services rises due to stimulus

Nationwide demand for services rose unexpectedly in June as government stimulus measures spurred consumer spending, another sign that the economy is emerging from the recession.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 14, 2009

Film center commemorates Tsuchimoto

The National Film Center in Tokyo's Chuo Ward presents the works of Noriaki Tsuchimoto (1928-2008), a postwar documentary filmmaker, who is best known for an extensive series of films on Minamata disease, one of the worst industrial pollution-related illnesses in Japan's history.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 14, 2009

Playwright Tomohiro Maekawa finds the uncanny in the mundane

In February this year, 35-year-old Tomohiro Maekawa's reputation was given a boost when he was nominated in both the best-playwright and best-director categories of the prestigious Yomiuri Theater Awards. Although Maekawa didn't walk away with an award; the nominations, coming just six years after he...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 14, 2009

The spiritual side of making wine

Between the cold steel of enormous fermentation tanks and the state-of-the-art equipment in the tasting rooms of today's modern wineries, it's hard to believe that there is any element of the winemaking process that is not governed by the strict dictates of science. So imagine my surprise when, visiting...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 14, 2009

'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl'

Japanese filmmakers will almost always tell you that they make films for the domestic market first and foremost. If foreigners happen to like them too, that's a nice little bonus, like an after-dinner mint.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 14, 2009

Dancing to N.Y. and back

Trying to rate the energy levels of a troupe of Broadway performers is like looking at a group of ants and trying to work out which is walking the fastest. They all seem to be going at 120 percent.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / TAKING A CHANCE
Aug 14, 2009

High quality proves key ingredient to success

High-priced but good-quality products will win the hearts of customers every time. This is the belief of Masamichi Toyama, founder of Soup Stock Tokyo, and so far he has proved it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2009

Mexico's search for an artistic identity

What kind of art would best represent a rapidly developing country coming out of the social upheaval of a violent revolution — especially when it had, only a century before that, just thrown off the yoke of colonial rule? Twentieth-century Mexico faced just this question — how it attempted to answer...

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