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Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jan 19, 2014

'Pilgrims' flock to site of death in Alaska's wilds

The old bus in which Chris McCandless died in 1992 in the interior of Alaska — made famous in Jon Krakauer's best-selling book "Into the Wild" and later in the Sean Penn film of the same name — long ago lost its windows to souvenir hunters.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 19, 2014

Want a one-way ticket to the red planet?

Since its announcement in May 2012, the Mars One project hasn't had an easy ride. Critics have questioned all aspects, from the technical feasibility to its funding model. But recent developments from the project seem to be bringing the goal of starting a human colony on Mars by 2025 a little closer....
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jan 1, 2014

NHK's yearlong drama 'Gunshi Kanbei' takes cues from Korean success stories

Strap yourselves in, you're in for a hair-raising ride.
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 30, 2013

Papa Obama laments time slipping by

When they vacationed in Hawaii just before President Barack Obama's first inauguration, Malia and Sasha were little girls doting on their dad — holding his hand on the beach, taking in a dolphin show and nuzzling up to him at the shave-ice shop.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 28, 2013

In memoriam: Those we lost in 2013

2013 saw the loss of a number of personalities who stood at the top of their respective fields. As the year quietly draws to a close, we reflect on those we lost, their contribution to the world and their ongoing legacy.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Dec 13, 2013

For Canadian traveler, last-minute meeting led to change of heart and new start in Japan

Michelle Takahashi works as an English teacher at a school for families who hope to raise their children in bilingual and multi-cultural environments. Together with Toru, a systems engineer at an IT-related U.S. company, and their two sons, she now lives in Kodaira, western Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2013

'Hajimari mo Owari mo Nai (No Beginning, No End)'

When I first saw a trailer for Shunya Ito's "Hajimari mo Owari mo Nai (No Beginning, No End)," an all-but dialogue-free film starring dancer/actor Min Tanaka, I thought it might be a 95-minute performance piece — and thus better reviewed by a dance critic than by me.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Dec 2, 2013

Between dreams and discrimination, Japanese build new lives in the City by the Bay

How are modern-day Japanese immigrants experiencing life in America — and in particular, San Francisco? What are their dreams, their struggles and rewards? And how do they handle the need to belong, the ceaseless negotiation between assimilation and roots?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 9, 2013

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The time line of Richard Flanagan's new novel, "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," slips back and forth from prewar Tasmania, Melbourne and Adelaide to postwar Sydney, among other locations. Yet there is only one stark, unrelenting and everlasting present — "the Line," the 415-km-long Burma-Thailand...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 6, 2013

'Absence' makes Mroué's ghostly work even stronger

Rabih Mroué is an internationally renowned Lebanese actor, director and playwright whose work often probes into representations of the real in an age of digital narratives — particularly in the context of conflict and revolution in the Middle East. His work is marked by its continual reworking of...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 1, 2013

Seven Unlucky Gods sowing misery across Japan

I have a theory about the conspicuous absence of the Seven Lucky Gods: They each have an evil twin.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 12, 2013

Kanpai! Sake through the ages

'A civilization stands or falls by the degree to which drink has entered the lives of its people, and from that point of view Japan must rank very high among the civilizations of the world.'
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2013

At 77, he flips burgers to earn his old hourly wage in a week

It seems like another life. At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 28, 2013

Biography of Masaoka Shiki excels in the expanded details

Haiku, the short Japanese poem now proliferating overseas, scarcely needs an introduction anymore. Its three great pillars, widely read even in translation, are the poets Matsuo Basho (1641-1694), its first creator, then Yosa Buson (1716-1784) and Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), who renewed it.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2013

Zaha Hadid: queen of the curve

Zaha Hadid was once flying to Frankfurt to give a talk. Her plane taxied out, developed a minor fault, and stopped. She refused to believe the reassurances that the delay would be brief, and demanded that she be put on another flight. Her wish was impossible — to return to the stand, to unload and...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Aug 30, 2013

High hopes for victims of female genital mutilation

A nondescript suburb on the outskirts of San Francisco. A plain brick building. Seven nervous women wait in the sunlight. They are here for surgery, which perhaps has as much claim as any other to describe itself as "miraculous."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 8, 2013

Marr's new message

"What I've done is revert to type. I've gone back to my nature." It has taken 26 years, but Johnny Marr is finally ready to embrace his past. It is a legacy of immense weight: The five years he spent as guitarist and co-songwriter with The Smiths, the most influential and enduring British indie band...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2013

The dead get their day as zombies go mainstream

My first zombie movie was "Night of the Living Dead," viewed at a midnight screening at the old Harvard Square Cinema, attended by a small coterie of late-night freaks and stoners. With its relentless dread and entrail-chomping ghouls, it was a film beyond the pale of normal, daytime moviegoers.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WEEK 3
Jul 20, 2013

On the trail of bear hunters' heritage

Takashi Yoshikawa is no easy man to figure out. Trim and well tanned, the 63-year-old owns a small ryokan (traditional inn) nestled in the foothills of the beautiful Shirakami Mountains which straddle 130,000 hectares of Aomori and Akita prefectures, and whose 17,000 hectares of beech forests were listed...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 7, 2013

Wave of state abortion laws returns issue to national prominence

As a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly years ago, Republican Scott Walker pushed two key measures to limit abortions. Neither was successful.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 5, 2013

Graca Machel: the impressive face of a new Africa

Shakespeare, in one of Nelson Mandela's favorite lines, now strangely apposite, says that "the valiant never taste of death but once." As the world waits for Mandela to make his final rendezvous with history, one woman — his third wife — who has been at his bedside throughout his illness, and now...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013

Beware the Internet and the danger of cyberattacks

Economics columnist Robert J. Samuelson has had it with the Internet. He says its astonishing capability to access information is not worth the dangers from cyberwar.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 23, 2013

Happiness: Abenomics falls short

What makes people happy? The global trend toward quantifying happiness certainly got a big boost from Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan kingdom that has championed and made a cottage industry out of the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH).
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 17, 2013

After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet

They had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel. The families of Sandy Hook Elementary were collaborating on a Mother's Day card, which would be produced by a marketing firm and mailed to hundreds of politicians across the country....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 1, 2013

Ecological disaster looms for rain forests of Sumatra

Our small plane had been flying low over Sumatra for three hours but all we had seen was an industrial landscape of palm and acacia trees stretching 50 km in every direction. A haze of blue smoke from newly cleared land drifted eastward over giant plantations. Long drainage canals dug through equatorial...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 1, 2013

Everyone's own path to enlightenment

What is Buddhism?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 17, 2013

Flamenco queen shares 'Utopia'

Sitting in an interview room at the Bunkamura cultural complex in Tokyo's Shibuya district, Maru00eda Pagu00e9s leans forward, smiles and tells me: 'Flamenco is my language.'
Japan Times
LIFE
May 12, 2013

'Beauty' as beheld in Japan through the ages

In July 2006, Shinzo Abe published a book titled 'Utsukushii Kuni e' ('Toward a Beautiful Country'), but what does he mean by 'beautiful country'?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 24, 2013

Edoya Nekohachi entertains with animal voices

Animal mimicry artist Edoya Nekohachi, 63, is a third-generation Japanese performer whose precise renditions of hundreds of bird species' songs, as well as frog croaks, dog barks and dolphin whistles have been amusing audiences of all ages for more than 40 years.

Longform

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