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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Nov 21, 2008

'Tis a gift to be simple

The best holiday presents wrap themselves — in your arms, that is. The rest of your gift-list responsibilities, whether for Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Japanese oseibo (yearend gifts), can be taken care of near Asakusabashi Station. I'm usually way behind schedule getting presents together,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2008

Tokyo's Rokku laughs it up again at film festival

The objectives of the First Old Town Taito International Comedy Film Festival, which runs Nov. 21 to 24 in the Tokyo districts of Asakusa and Ueno, sound ambitious. Noting on the festival's English-language Web site that "there are innumerable film festivals held throughout the world," the executive...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Oct 22, 2008

Skate America kicks off GP season

Former world champion Miki Ando will once again be looking for redemption and Yukari Nakano, the fourth-place finisher at the world championships last March, will be out to raise her profile even higher as the 2008 Grand Prix season gets under way this weekend with Skate America in Everett, Wash.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 17, 2008

Grand Tea Ceremony to attract thousands

If there was a Guinness World Record for the largest Japanese tea ceremony, then this would surely be in the running. On the weekend of Oct. 25 and 26, the Tokyo Grand Tea Ceremony will be held at several tea houses within the picturesque Hamarikyu Gardens, in Tokyo's Chuo Ward. The event is expected...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 23, 2008

'Manga' fans have been won over but what about the rest of Japan?

A curious thing happened to the stock market when Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced Sept. 1 his intention to step down: Shares in "manga"-related companies surged.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 22, 2008

Lasenkan to stage 'Dejima'

Lasenkan Theater is a Japanese drama group based in Berlin. Since 2002, it has spent two-thirds of every year in the German capital, presenting works by author Yoko Tawada, a resident of Germany.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 12, 2008

Artist puts a happy face on Olympics

Pictured on umbrellas paraded at the event, the happy faces of more than 1,000 children from around the world adorned Friday's opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics at the Beijing National Stadium, otherwise known as the Bird's Nest.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 20, 2008

Fly fanboys in the living room

Parents the world over would surely prefer their children not to throw things about. It's just plain bad manners, among other things. But Atsushi Kikuchi, a serious-looking father of two boys, positively encourages it. And, he evenmaintains, his sons' ballistic behavior has produced considerable benefits...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 6, 2008

Fearless bluestockings in Japan

THE BLUESTOCKINGS OF JAPAN: New Woman Essays and Fiction From Seito, 1911-16, edited by Jan Bardsley. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2007; xii + 308 pp., $70 (cloth), $26 (paper) In 1911 a new publication appeared in Japan. It was singular in that it was written,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

Foreigners flourish in the realm of Japanese arts

Japan has come a long way since the era of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), arguably the world's most famous and certainly the first Western Japanophile. Before Hearn, a Greek-Irishman who married the daughter of a local samurai in remote and rural Shimane Prefecture, and also took on Japanese citizenship,...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 29, 2008

Thomas Charles Marshall: Irishman excels at age-old biwa

With his back straight and his head up, Thomas Charles Marshall sits down in an arbor overlooking a lotus-filled pond on the compact but verdant campus of the University of Creation; Art, Music & Social Work in Yoshii, Gunma Prefecture. He slowly reaches for his pear-shaped biwa, a century-old mulberry-wood...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jun 6, 2008

Monster mash

Explosion, the livehouse in Kagurazaka, central Tokyo, must have been named with nights like this in mind. Billy Trash, who's covered in blood, has discarded his double bass and stripped to his tiny, gonad-garroting Batman underpants. He charges into the crowd, pouring water over his head, then smothers...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 13, 2008

Hopes of silence in Tokyo undergo brutal assault

The concept of chinmoku wa kin (silence is golden) isn't a Tokyo thing. Like a lot of other nifty modernities, such as buttered pancakes and the subway system, it was imported into Japan and adopted into city living when the country opened up to the West in the late 19th century.
CULTURE / Art
May 1, 2008

Chicks on Speed: Art Rules Kyoto 2008

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2008

'Curse of the Golden Flower'

Having established himself in the 1990s as one of China's leading directors, Zhang Yimou spent the past decade making two types of film: small, contemporary and supremely sentimental ones such as "The Road Home" and "Happy Times," or big, lavish, action-packed period-epics like "Hero" and "House of Flying...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 25, 2008

Snack mama Hiroko Mito

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI Hiroko Mito just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kyoya, her small Kyoto-style snack and karaoke bar in Shibuya's Sakuragaoka district. Always dressed in a kimono and a freshly pressed kappogi, the white apron that used to be commonly worn by housewives, Hiroko-mama means business....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 14, 2008

A guide to how to wine 'n' dine

Taking your own bottle to a dinner party is a tricky business. Dashing to a convenience store for some plonk that's below ¥1,000 might save cash, but it won't save your blushes if the stuff acts like paint-stripper on the palate, ruining the meal and your chances of being invited back. Even if you...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 3, 2008

Journal of an uncommon traveler

WINDOWS ON JAPAN: A Walk Through Place and Perception, by Bruce Roscoe. Algora Publishing, 2007, 308 pp., $31.95 (paper) On the premise that speed blunts the mind, New Zealander Bruce Roscoe decided to make his journey on foot, following a route across the waist of Japan, from the port city of Niigata...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 1, 2008

Yoshiume: Simmering over a nabe hot pot

The sleet was lashing down, the wind whipping off Tokyo Bay as we trudged the streets of Ningyocho, eastern Nihonbashi, in search of dinner. Appalling conditions, certainly, but worth braving for the down-home charms of an evening at Yoshiume.
Reader Mail
Jan 15, 2008

Reviews of films set in Japan

In the Jan. 4 article "Once again, here comes the West to the Orient," writer Kaori Shoji labels the film "Silk" Orientalist, but fails to provide any convincing evidence for this pejorative. Her one relevant criticism is that a village lord speaking English in pre-Meiji Japan would have been "an impossible...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 8, 2008

Fashion pioneer Hanae Mori

Hanae Mori is one of the world's most celebrated fashion designers. A queen of style in France and in Japan, both of whose countries' governments have awarded her their highest cultural honors.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007

A passion for the classics

Mention "Die Soldaten," B.A. Zimmermann's dark, uncompromising and harrowing work of 1960s modernism, and Hiroshi Wakasugi visibly brightens. It's the first season for this highly respected conductor as artistic director of Tokyo's New National Theater, and he's clearly very, very pleased that he has...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Nov 13, 2007

Dialect-rife Japan can be tongue-twisting

The islands of Japan have many dialects, and students of the language often realize these variations are not taught in classrooms.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 27, 2007

U.K. affinity for Japan pop fuels language interest anew

The popularity of contemporary Japanese culture in Britain is helping to fuel a growing number of applications to study Japanese at universities, academics said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Oct 9, 2007

Keiko Sumi

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI Keiko Sumi, 57, is the 10th-generation owner of Komaruya, a Kyoto-based company that produces traditional and modern handheld fans. Komaruya's fans were selected by Dentsu, Japan's largest advertising company, to represent the best in Japanese craftsmanship at the 2005 Aichi World Expo....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 27, 2007

Ikuta: slow-burning class that's a cut above

Alongside geisha and poisonous blowfish, gourmet Kobe beef fits nicely into the stereotype of refined Japan. And like astronomically priced department-store melons, this pricey breed of cattle does much to reinforce the image of a land of big-spenders.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Jul 6, 2007

A very red-light district

You won't find many red lights larger than the enormous paper lantern at Taito Ward's Sensoji, or Asakusa Kannon Temple.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2007

Somewhere between history and the imagination

David Mitchell is one of Britain's most influential novelists. "Ghostwritten" (1999), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction, his second novel, "number9dream" (2001),...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 14, 2007

In focus: 150 years of Japanese photography

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the oldest-known photograph taken by a Japanese person. Yet it is only in recent years that Japanese have started to take a serious interest in the history of early photography in this country, according to Terry Bennett, a London-based photo-historian.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 12, 2007

Media scream 'yellow peril'

Days after the broken body of British teacher Lindsay Hawker was discovered in a fourth-floor flat in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, when the media feeding frenzy was at its most intense, a newspaper editor called me from London.

Longform

Tour guide and history buff Rory Dent left his job at a U.K.-based tour operator to move to Japan and start his own business.
Guiding Japan through the challenges of overtourism