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LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 19, 2010

'Nitten' is no mere Braille library

Regular bookstores or libraries might not be much use to blind people, but there's one place in Tokyo where they can not only read and borrow books and meet others in similar situations, but also get advice on improving their quality of life — and even buy a range of everyday goods.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 28, 2010

The Rita Taketsuru Fan Club

In January 2001, I was riding a single-car train through Hokkaido ski-country when a blizzard swept in without warning and stopped us dead on our tracks. It was 11 a.m. but the snow clotted the windows dark and the wind rocked us so hard it felt as if we would tip over.
COMMUNITY
Nov 20, 2010

A modern-day alchemist melds senses of sight, smell

On the back of Maurice Joosten's business card, a silvered phrase floats across the otherwise blank expanse: "Solve et Coagula" ("Dissolve and Unite"). For Joosten, 48, this ancient dictum of alchemy provides a motto linking his work as an artist, aroma designer and yoga instructor.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 11, 2010

Aiai founder Chieko Awata

Chieko Awata, 68, is the founder of Aiai, a nonprofit organization that provides art education to autistic children and adults. For the past 46 years she has been teaching drawing, painting and social skills to children as young as 2 years old. Some of her students have remained with her for as long...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 10, 2010

Hotels find profit in catering to families

One autumn afternoon in Kobuchizawa, Yamanashi Prefecture, a group of children and their parents were driving to a field to pick fresh vegetables for pizzas they planned to make there.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 6, 2010

Japan's pension program

Today I'd like to explain to you Japan's pension program, where you put in ¥14,660 per month in the hopes that later when you retire, you will receive monthly payments of around ¥60,000 until the day you die. Or so the theory goes. Remember the chain letters that say if everyone sends a dollar to Joe,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Oct 27, 2010

Surviving in Japan (without much Japanese)

Living in Japan without speaking the native language comes with its challenges. Ashley Thompson is tackling them one at a time, and blogging about her experiences at Surviving in Japan (without much Japanese) . Originally from Seattle, Wash., Thompson moved to Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 26, 2010

Foreigners victims, perpetrators of sekuhara

When "Tracy," an American then in her late 20s, started her career in Japan as a JET instructor at a high school in Kagoshima nearly 20 years ago, nothing in her training could have prepared her for what she witnessed.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 24, 2010

Saving biological diversity: a challenge for survival

Eight years ago in Johannesburg, government delegates from around the world gathered for the World Summit on Sustainable Development — and made a promise "to substantially reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity."
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 23, 2010

Prudential Financial eyeing AIG Japan firms

Prudential Financial Inc. is close to a deal to buy two Japanese life insurance companies for $4 billion to $5 billion from American International Group Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2010

Justice panel hears out experts on death penalty

Four experts brought in Thursday to the Justice Ministry expressed their opinions on the death penalty to a study group of high-ranking officials discussing the future of capital punishment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2010

'Eat Pray Love'

My grandmother had a standard line when any of us bothered her with an unforgivable statement or question ("Can I have ¥10,000 to get to Nagoya to see a heavy metal grunge punk band no one's ever heard of?"), which was: "By talking like that, you just hacked off several years from my life span!"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 28, 2010

Putting true community back in theater

Throughout the Western world, community theater spices the dramatic arts.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 12, 2010

Chef Pierre Gagnaire

Pierre Gagnaire is one of the world's most famous chefs, whose Michelin three-star cuisine has been dazzling diners around the globe for decades. Gagnaire's masterpieces earned him his first Michelin star in 1976, and since then food-lovers and more stars have been gravitating his way. Today a total...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 6, 2010

Boltanski's hearts don't skip a beat

There are few places more remote. I wander along an overgrown path humming with birds and lined with rice fields before finding myself in front of a house on a small beach.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 18, 2010

Laws can lead, but society must grasp the value of childcare leave

In 1992 my wife, Susan, and I took ourfour children — then aged between 3 and 9 — from Kyoto to Sydney. The children, who until then had been going to Japanese kindergarten and primary schools, spoke Japanese among themselves. We felt they needed some time in an English-speaking environment if they...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 12, 2010

Wanted: Train driver wannabe with money

Isumi Tetsudo is making train lovers' dreams come true but for how long?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 10, 2010

Architect wants to end nail-hammer cycle

Miwa Mori, president of Key Architects, thinks a lot about nails, both as part of her profession and as her philosophy about life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2010

'Harold & Maude'/'Brewster Mccloud'

Does anyone remember Bud Cort? My guess is that Johnny Depp does; more than a few of his early, quirkier performances — like the wide-eyed naifs of "Arizona Dream" or "Benny & Joon" — owe a great debt to Cort's work in the 1970s. Wes Anderson does: he cast him in "The Life Aquatic" as a nod to Cort's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 2, 2010

Vernacular photography — a means to avoid an end

A woman in a corseted, white-lace dress stares straight ahead as she unveils a framed funerary portrait of another young woman. This sepia-toned 19th-century photograph is historian and curator Geoffrey Batchen's choice for the very first image of "Suspending Time: Life - Photography - Death" at the...
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2010

Scrap death penalty, bereaved families say

SETSUKO KAMIYA Staff writer Bud Welch lost his only daughter, Julie, in the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed the lives of 168 people on April 19, 1995. His 23-year-old daughter was working as a Spanish translator at the Social Security Administration in the federal building targeted.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 11, 2010

Japan zines: Never mind the bloggers

Koenji is a nice, quiet place in the suburbs, but venturing along its Kitanaka Street one weekend last March, you could not have missed the commotion coming out of Shirouto no Ran No. 12. Crammed inside this small rental space, dozens of people were poring over, discussing and exchanging piles upon piles...
COMMENTARY
May 10, 2010

Let 'elderly' get new start as firms force retirement

Japan's population is forecast to dwindle to less than 90 million by 2055 and the percentage of elderly (people at least 65 years old) will rise to 40.5 percent, according to median forecasts by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 14, 2010

Untamed past taken by the tail

Jid Lee, now a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, begins this memoir with the tale of the killing of her great-great-great-great- great-great grandmother by a tiger. A Buddhist monk predicted the death, saying it would bring rewards to her descendants. Her "sacrifice" is the touchstone...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 5, 2010

'Kazura'/'Boys on the Run'

The odds of two brilliant Japanese comedies opening the same day are high but not impossible, somewhat like the odds of the same director (James Cameron) making two all-time worldwide box-office hits ("Titanic" and that other film about blue aliens).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 15, 2010

Days of being wild

HOLLYWOOD — 'I think 'Where the Wild Things Are' is a fantastic book," says writer-director Spike Jonze.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 27, 2009

Decade's end abuzz and a-flutter with wist for a warm poetic past

At the end of the year — and, particularly, the end of a decade — an old man's fancy turns, involuntarily, to nostalgia.

Longform

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