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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 24, 2015

Top French chef says fundamentals are key to selling washoku to the world

In December 2013, when UNESCO formally recognized washoku (traditional Japanese cuisine) as part of the World's Intangible Cultural Heritage, the reaction here was mixed.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Feb 23, 2015

Sharla in Japan

Sharla of Sharla in Japan is a 29-year-old, Canadian-born, Tokyo-based “YouTuber” (“That's what they call it here,” she says). With over 200,000 subscribers to her channel, she documents her life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Feb 23, 2015

'Timbuktu' director wants more cinema from West Africa

The Oscar nomination of "Timbuktu," a film about the occupation of the Malian desert town by al-Qaida-linked Islamists in 2012, should not mask the lack of established cinema from West Africa, its director said.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 19, 2015

Student wrestlers learn the ropes ahead of university 'battle royale'

Want to be a lawyer? Go to law school. A doctor? Med school. But where do you enroll if you want to learn how to fly off the top rope to deliver a brutal body slam?
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 19, 2015

Secretive robot maker Fanuc targeted by activist investor Loeb

Fanuc Corp., one of Japan's most reclusive companies, has spent decades building a wall of secrecy around its ultra-profitable industrial-robotics business.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2015

The world is less dangerous than we imagine

The world is a dangerous place and can be even more so by making errors bred by unwarranted pessimism.
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2015

Miserly use of vacation days

Japan may be the most miserly country in the world when it comes to getting workers to feel free to use their legally entitled number of paid holidays each year.
EDITORIALS
Feb 10, 2015

Moral education raises risks

It would be unfortunate if the moral education that the government plans to introduce in grades 1-9 is aimed at instilling in children a blind love of their nation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2015

When nostalgia entangles with an unsettling past

When Koichi Watari, the director of the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art contacted Yoshitomo Nara to organize a solo exhibition of his work, the artist was traveling around Hokkaido and Sakhalin with photographer and hard-core explorer Naoki Ishikawa. Nara suggested to Watari that they do a two-person...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 5, 2015

Netflix to bring its video-streaming service to Japan this fall

Netflix Inc. will enter the Japanese market this fall as it seeks out a bigger share of the global video-streaming business.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 3, 2015

Bullet train black gold awaits Ethiopian roasters

On a typically sunny January day in southwestern Ethiopia, smallholder coffee farmers gather beneath red, blue and orange canvases, propped up by wooden stakes, to watch and participate in a coffee-tasting competition with demanding Japanese standards.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 1, 2015

Bringing a 'cesspool to sushiland' life to the stage

"Coming to Japan was the best decision I've ever made," says Stefhen Bryan, loud and enthusiastically, contrasting with the frown he was making a moment earlier at the miso-flavored ramen he'd ordered and just tasted. "Should've gotten the salt-flavored."
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 31, 2015

Call to arms: Hunters dwindle as animal numbers explode

Asians who crossed land bridges into today's Ryukyu Islands more than 30,000 years ago encountered plenty of game. In addition to deer and boar, they hunted elephant and steppe bison until the larger mammals were hunted to extinction in Japan about 17,000 years ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 24, 2015

Zen Koans

The famous question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is a Zen koan; a deliberately obtuse poem used by Buddhists to probe reality and test one's ignorance.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2015

Okinawa to host WEF cybersecurity summit

The government will host a cybersecurity conference jointly with the World Economic Forum in Okinawa in November, Japanese officials announced at this year's annual economic conference in Switzerland.
Japan Times
JAPAN / DAVOS SPECIAL 2015
Jan 21, 2015

Carrying on 'washi' paper tradition

"Washi," or traditional Japanese handmade paper, was officially added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list last November. It is a remarkable accomplishment that the nation's traditional culture has achieved such recognition for the second year in a row, following the inclusion of "washoku" traditional...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2015

Lingering outside the way station for the dead

It's a hardy soul who braves Osorezan (Mount Osore), a volcano in Aomori Prefecture known as the Japanese way station for the dead. For most, the name conjures up images of the supernatural and the unknown, but for Marie Mutsuki Mockett, it is a place of healing and beauty.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Jan 14, 2015

African-American community gets a voice in Tokyo

The African American Youth Travel Program NPO, which organized a recent demonstration in Tokyo in response to the Ferguson case, brings black U.S. youths to Japan to broaden their horizons.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 14, 2015

Ichiyanagi opera aims to be 'total work of art'

As part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations, Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama will stage a world-premier version of "Legend of the Water Flame," an opera by the renowned composer Toshi Ichiyanagi that's scored around a libretto by a fellow octogenarian, the poet Makoto Ooka.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 11, 2015

Dispelling the glamor factor of Islamic State

The Pentagon is trying to figure out why Islamic State has been so successful at attracting followers. Islamic State's recruitment imagery offers a different, more contemporary and overtly violent form of glamour.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 10, 2015

Between a rock and an art place in Kurashiki's merchant quarters

Timing, as they say, is everything. With a bad habit of turning up to places and appointments too early, I often find myself wandering through train stations and pocket parks, and past the shuttered doorways of shops.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2015

Cataloging the creatures of the unknown

"Yokai dwell in the contact zone between fact and fiction, between belief and doubt ... Yokai begin where language ends," says Michael Dylan Foster in the introduction to "The Book of Yokai," summing up what words often fail to conjure. His book takes readers on a journey into the inexplicable, mysterious,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jan 7, 2015

Japan may shun 'Unbroken' just because it's old hat

If the Japanese opt to skip Angelina Jolie's 'Unbroken,' let's not blame wholesale refusal to face the past.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 6, 2015

Ringing in the new year with some old favorites

What better way to start the New Year than by looking back? After all, how can we move ahead if we don't know the past? Here are five classic Tokyo ryoriya (restaurants) where tradition rules and the roots of today's food culture live on.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2014

Wanted: brides for millions of Chinese men

A fast-growing underclass is sure to pose an array of challenges for China. The victims are the millions of poor, mostly rural men, who cannot meet familial and social expectations that a man marry and start a family because of the country's skewed demographics.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Dec 29, 2014

Discussing sex crimes and Japan's 'safety myth'

A selection of responses to Rachel Halle's recent column, 'Foreign student's account of treatment in rape case points to gaps in Japan's safety myth.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 25, 2014

From tradition to trash: Tokyo's art in 2014

This year has been a memorable one for art exhibitions at museums in Tokyo, with a surprisingly diverse array of shows and events, ancient and modern, foreign and domestic, metropolitan and provincial.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 24, 2014

2014: New horizons opened up in Japan's theater world

Looking back over the past 12 months in Japan's theater world, it's clear that one encouraging trend is a lessening of the capital's dominance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 18, 2014

Navigating Japan with a family at New Year's

Let's be honest. We're adults. New Year's in Japan can be a bit hectic. And then static. It's one of the longest, if not the longest, holiday periods in the year.

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