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CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2007

Design meets art at 'Roppongi Crossing'

The world loves Japanese design. Because of this, Design Week, coming up next month, is arguably one of the most successful international events in Tokyo. By contrast, Tokyo Fashion Week and Tokyo International Film Festival hardly generate in those fields' fans the rabid excitement that the designers'...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2007

Putting students' works on the block

The evening was a festive red that illuminated the enthusiastic bidding by the 300-plus attendees at Japan's first ever university-run contemporary art auction. At the Kyoto University of Art and Design (KUAD) last Saturday, 18 students and three teachers, dressed in student-designed fire-red outfits,...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / 2007 NPB PLAYOFFS
Oct 17, 2007

Glynn comes up with goods

SAPPORO — With the Chiba Lotte Marines threatening to take control of the series, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters were looking for a good game out of starting pitcher Ryan Glynn. He responded with the game of his life.
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2007

¥552 million Myanmar aid project nixed

The government will cancel a ¥552 million project to build a human resource training center in Myanmar to protest the recent military crackdown on the democracy movement and the killing of a Japanese video journalist, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Tuesday.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 17, 2007

Individual variations and a sense of identity

I have recently returned to Japan from five astonishing weeks in the neotropics. Exploring and observing the riches of Brazil's Atlantic rain forest and Pantanal (the world's biggest wetland area) has left me overwhelmed by their biodiversity.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 16, 2007

The faces behind the numbers: A day feeding Tokyo's hungry

Last in a two-part series O n a typical Saturday evening, I stroll around the bustling streets of Shibuya with my friends, dressed up, heels clicking, ready to hit a couple of trendy shops. The chilly breeze puffs up the hairs on my arms and I shudder — winter is approaching. We chat about school,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Oct 16, 2007

What do you think of Japan's "sempai-kohai" (senior-junior) system?

Takashi KurosawaTeacher, 40 When I was a student the system was more prevalent than now. In Korea seniority is taken more seriously: Kohai must turn away from sempai to drink or smoke a cigarette.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 14, 2007

Nagai Kafu's geisha: expurgated, revised, then finally fully exposed

Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale, translated by Stephen Snyder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 166 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Komayo, widowed young, resumes her life as a geisha, taking up with a former patron who wants to redeem her. She, however, falls in love with a young actor specializing in female...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 14, 2007

Obscure family drama, prefecture identities, national food issues

Idol-actress Aya Ueto does a serious number on her image in the new drama series "Abarenbo Mama" (Rowdy Mama; Fuji, Tuesday, 9 p.m.). Ueto plays Ayu, a tomboy from the countryside who speaks like a man and lacks feminine wiles. However, she falls for hairdresser Tetsu (Yo Oizumi), who's 12 years her...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 14, 2007

Searching through the past to find someone you can (or can't) love

Many Japanese families were split up during World War II — men sent to the front-lines, women and children evacuated to the countryside, workers shipped to factories far from home. In the chaos that followed surrender, it was difficult for people to reunite with loved ones. For years, even decades,...
Reader Mail
Oct 14, 2007

Enough with the cockroach humor

Not following the sound advice of family and friends who warn me against becoming stressed and aggravated, I occasionally monitor Amy Chavez's column.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / 2007 NPB PLAYOFFS
Oct 13, 2007

Marines, Fighters set to square off

Here are five key questions ahead of the second stage of the Pacific League Climax Series between the last two Japan Series Champions, the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters:
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 13, 2007

Sentinels of the streets

Three years ago my family moved from within Tokyo to just across the border in Saitama. So close to that border, in fact, that I can open a window and almost spit across the line.
MORE SPORTS
Oct 12, 2007

Another perspective

Here's what I saw on Thursday night:
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2007

Kitanoumi to face dead sumo wrestler's kin

as early as possible." Sumo stable master Tokitsukaze visited Saito's family Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2007

'The Kingdom'

It seems impossible to make a movie about 9/11 or the "war on terror" without getting sucked into the political dogfight surrounding the mess America now finds itself in. Whether it's "The Road To Guantanamo," "United 97," or even the latest season of "24," it's hard to portray current events — even...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES
Oct 12, 2007

Fumiko no Umi

"Fumiko no Umi" Director: Akio Kondo
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2007

'0093 Jo Heika no Kusakari Masao'

The Japanese film industry makes many comedies, but few parodies of the "Airplane," "Naked Gun" or "Austin Powers" variety. This is puzzling, since Japanese comedy directors have been borrowing freely from Hollywood for generations, including Koki Mitani ("Uchoten Hotel"), who worships at the altar of...
JAPAN
Oct 11, 2007

Murderer-for-insurance gets 25 years, DVD confession or no

The Tokyo District Court sentenced a man to 25 years in prison for murder Wednesday in a case that drew national attention for allowing a recorded interrogation to be used as evidence for the first time.
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Oct 10, 2007

Hellcat bent for leather — a navy flyboy's tale

From 26,000 feet he punched through a hole in the overcast over Tokyo early on a freezing Feb. 12, 1945, rolled into a roaring 60-degree dive and fired his rockets at a Mitsubishi engine plant.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 10, 2007

Not all of us know how to play fair

I remember, as a child, seeing in a museum the skeletons of birds, bats and apes, and someone pointing out to me that they all had the same bones in their arms. It was the first time I grasped that we all had a common evolutionary ancestor, though at the time I hardly thought about it in those terms...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2007

Would Murakami agree?

Regarding the two book reviews on Sept. 30 about Japanese writer Haruki Murakami: Literary analysis is a game for professional academics. It may be interesting, but no writer consciously sets out to write a work embodying any of the concepts mentioned in articles about him or her.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 9, 2007

ODA shrinking but still key tool

Official development assistance is an important diplomatic tool for Japan, which relies heavily on other countries for resources, food and many other economic necessities.
COMMENTARY
Oct 9, 2007

The vanity in 'green' virtues

LONDON — When it comes to energy efficiency and a greener future, Japan has got itself very well-organized these days — some would even say over-organized.
Reader Mail
Oct 7, 2007

Junta will receive retribution

As a Myanmar citizen, I would like to apologize to the citizens of Japan for the utterly wrong action of the government of Myanmar late last month. I am sure the regime did not know what it was doing, for it has been doing wrong after wrong for two decades now. It does not know the value of human life....
JAPAN
Oct 7, 2007

Supporters saddened by twin's passing

and his brother Duc play on a specially made wheelchair sent from Japan at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in April 1986. KYODO PHOTO
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 7, 2007

The first and last foreigner to see Laotians as they were

TRAVELS IN LAOS: The Fate of the Sup Song Pana and the Muong Sing (1894-1896), by Dr. E. Lefevre, translated with an introduction by Walter Tips. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1995 (orig. edition), 224 pp., with contemporary photos and map, 725 Bahts (paper) During that late 19th-century feeding frenzy...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 7, 2007

Foreign celebrity talk show, teen sitcom, recycling tips

In the 1960s and '70s, no foreign celebrity was more popular in Japan than the French actor Alain Delon. His name was synonymous with the idea of the perfect-looking man, and because he was popular in an era that was not as media-saturated as our own, he seemed even more unreachable. He was also the...

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