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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 27, 2002

Suffering for one's art

BUSHIDO: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo, by Takahiro Kitamura and Katie M. Kitamura, with photos by Jai Tanju. Atglen, Pa., Schiffer Publishing, 2000. 160 pp., color and b/w plates, $29.95 (paper) In this interesting and beautifully illustrated account of the Japanese tattoo, the authors' intent is...
BUSINESS
Jan 26, 2002

Foreigners turn net sellers for first time in a month

Foreign investors turned net sellers of Japanese stocks for the first time in four weeks last week.
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

Kabukicho: where worlds collide

About 1 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 1, 2001, a fire of undetermined origin swept through the No. 56 Myojo Building in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, resulting in the deaths of 44 people on the upper two floors. While investigators say they have ruled out arson, stories in the tabloid press continue...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / LEARNING BY HEART
Jan 18, 2002

Fostering family togetherness on the rink

As my daughter stepped out onto the ice, I held my breath. Her steps were small. She moved slowly, with focus and balance and seeming assuredness. One -- two -- one -- two.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 16, 2002

A humorous view of history from the other side of the lens

At last, I got to see a play by Koki Mitani, whose comedy dramas are just about the most difficult to get tickets for nowadays. This is not only because of the critical ovations that greet his productions, but also because of the star status of Mitani himself.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 13, 2002

No recovery in sight for Japanese book publishing industry

One often sees references in the Japanese media to the "lost decade" that followed the burst of the speculative bubble in the early 1990s, but the publishing world has only suffered a half decade of negative growth. After five consecutive years of falling sales, however, it can no longer ignore systemic...
COMMUNITY
Jan 13, 2002

Fukuoka fish are jumping

FUKUOKA -- First-time visitors to this sunny city are often told with a certain friendly belligerence that Fukuoka's seafood is the best in Japan. Usually, just a glimpse of its sparkling harbor and rugged natural coastline is enough to whet their appetite to test this claim.
BUSINESS
Jan 9, 2002

Foreigners stay net sellers

Foreign investors were net sellers of Japanese stocks for the second consecutive week during the third week of December.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2002

Behind the scenes with Phnom Penh's 'orange girls'

PHNOM PENH -- In central Phnom Penh, at one end of a semiderelict building, is a tiny lean-to shack. Its walls are made of scavenged wood planks and its roof of corrugated iron. The ground around it is a swamp of sewage and mud due to the daily monsoon rains. To get to the shack, you have to hop along...
JAPAN
Jan 8, 2002

Foreign brides fill the gap in rural Japan

TOZAWA, Yamagata Pref. -- Cheerful laughter echoed through this snow-covered village in the Tohoku region one morning as a group of women sat down to chat over tea.
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2002

Meteorological agency plans to offer improved forecasts

The Japan Meteorological Agency will introduce the so-called four-dimensional variation method in March to increase the accuracy of its six-hour rain forecasts, agency officials said Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2001

Waddle tells Japanese magazine navy made him a scapegoat

The former skipper of the Greeneville, the U.S. Navy submarine that struck and sank the Ehime Maru off Hawaii in February, believes he was made a scapegoat over the incident, according to a translated first-person account published in a Japanese weekly magazine.
BUSINESS
Dec 27, 2001

Rush imports up but leeks, shiitake down

Imports of rush, or tatami straw, continued to surge in the week to Dec. 21 over a year before, but those of stone leeks and shiitake fell, according to government data released Wednesday. The drop was attributed to voluntary efforts by Chinese exporters.
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2001

Who & What

Expoland plans to ring in New Year in style Expoland, an amusement park in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, will host a countdown to the New Year on Dec. 31, starting at 5 p.m. at the park. The event will continue until 2 a.m.
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 23, 2001

Remembering the year that was

It's the penultimate week of the year, which means regular variety shows get to save a bit of money by looking back at the year's highlights. "Sanma's Karakuri TV" (tonight at 7, TBS), a mix-and-match assembly of out-of-studio comedy skits hosted in-studio by Osaka funnyman Sanma Akashiya, presents an...
COMMUNITY
Dec 22, 2001

Book by 'Japagaijin' gives abused women shelter

Right now, Diane Brown is shoveling snow. She lives 10 km from the center of Sapporo, where she finds it both amusing and annoying that so much of the drudgery of local life has been officially labeled women's work. "The shovel I use is called a 'Mamadump' because it's mums who mostly clear the white...
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2001

Wary foreign investors shunning Indonesia

JAKARTA -- Foreign investment in Indonesia has been locked in a downward spiral. Despite optimism at the appointment of the current government, the country has barely been able to attract capital from outside. The terror attack against the United Stated on Sept. 11 only partly explains the negative sentiment....
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2001

'Spirited Away' shares culture award

Blockbuster animated film "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" ("Spirited Away"), directed by Hayao Miyazaki, will share one of four grand prizes at the Agency for Cultural Affairs' 5th Media Arts Festival in February, according to the executive committee for the annual event.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Dec 13, 2001

When sex roles reverse

Why don't men do more to help raise their children?
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 9, 2001

And they call it puppy love

H igh on the cuteness scale this week is TBS's "Dobutsu Kiso Tengai (Unbelievable Animals)" (tonight, 8 p.m.), a variety-cum-quiz show that covers animals both wild and domesticated.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2001

Sachiyo Nomura arrested in tax probe

Sachiyo Nomura, the high-profile wife of Hanshin Tigers manager Katsuya Nomura, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly hiding roughly 570 million yen in income and evading 210 million yen in taxes.
COMMUNITY
Dec 2, 2001

Your click-and-go guide to the snow

Although 75 percent of Japan is mountainous, and there are 600 ski resorts nationwide, the process of arranging a ski holiday can often be full of trials and tribulations.
BUSINESS / ON THE FRONT LINE
Nov 28, 2001

U.S. set to rebound, not Japan

Investors have taken heart from recent U.S. economic reports that show a 7.1 percent rise in retail sales in October, the strongest surge on record, and a continued fall in the number of weekly jobless claims.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 28, 2001

Reaching out in dramatic style

"Am-dram" may attract devotion and derision in equal measure, but in Japan a strong tradition of amateur English-language theater has been serving the wider community for nearly 150 years.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 25, 2001

Failed chemistry experiments in the media lab

Two weeks ago, a friend faxed me an article from the weekly news magazine Aera about a new advertising trend called "collaboration CF," which is the selling of two different companies' products in one TV commercial. I had already read about collaborations two days earlier in advertising critic Yukichi...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 25, 2001

Book Bites

TOKYO CONFIDENTIAL: Titillating Tales From Japan's Wild Weeklies, edited by Mark Schreiber. The East Publications, 2001, 257 pp., 1,400 yen (paper) Grown men in diapers? Couples going all the way in the back seats of Tokyo taxi cabs? Mothers stalking their daughters? Companies that rent out wedding guests?...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 22, 2001

Dark clouds looming in the Sky

I wish Southampton would buy a Japanese player. Sky-Perfect TV would get all excited, send over an army of media and TV crews and, "presto," I would be watching Southampton games every weekend. Christmas would have come early for a frustrated Saints fan who hardly ever gets to see his team play, apart...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 18, 2001

Next stop . . . the Twilight Zone

I've heard that the greatest challenge facing linguists today lies not in understanding how the brain encodes language, nor in mapping the lexicons of the world's vanishing dialects, nor in any other such grinding academic chore.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan