Search - u_times

 
 
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Jun 14, 2009

Pierce looking to build on successful first season with Lakestars

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with individuals in the bj-league — Japan's first professional basketball circuit — which wrapped up its fourth season in May. Head coach Bob Pierce of the Shiga Lakestars is the subject of this week's profile. Pierce guided the team to a 19-33...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2009

Occupation orphan traces roots

For New Yorker Demian Akhan, 60, his recent visit to Japan marked the end of a decades-long journey to discover his roots.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
May 20, 2009

Tokyo Photojournalist

Journalists everywhere are facing the twin challenges of recession and rapidly changing technology. With his blog, Tokyo Photojournalist, Tony McNicol showcases his work as a Japan-based freelance journalist and discusses photojournalism in the age of Flickr and Twitter. In this interview with The Japan...
LIFE
May 10, 2009

Playing the party odds for love

In Japan, women are traditionally subservient to men and — like children in the West — have long been schooled to be "seen and not heard." But in matters of the heart and homemaking, and in these times of increasing sexual equality, Japan's females — who were formerly hunted romantically — are...
EDITORIALS
May 5, 2009

Tuberculosis remains a threat

Tuberculosis (TB) was once dreaded in Japan, with fatalities reaching a peak of 171,474 in 1943. Recent news about new TB cases, including a midwife in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, and Ms. Haruka Minowa of the popular female comic duo Harisenbon, has reminded people and medical professionals that TB...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 1, 2009

So what then was 1968 all about?

For over a decade, artist-in- residence programs have been held by myriad organizations throughout Japan, all with roughly the same objective: to provide a unique and mutually enlightening experience for the both visiting artist and host. One of the latest residencies held at Tokyo Wonder Site might...
BUSINESS
Apr 28, 2009

Lion Nathan to cost Kirin $2.5 billion

Kirin Holdings Co., Japan's largest beverage maker, agreed Monday to pay 3.5 billion Australian dollars, or $2.5 billion, for the rest of Lion Nathan Ltd., taking over Australia's second-largest brewer as beer sales slow at home.
JAPAN / Media
Apr 19, 2009

Cops crack whip in fight vs. vice

A leather-clad female physically punishing a compliant male into erotic bliss is the usual image one conjures for BDSM, or bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism. Yet, to spend a Sunday afternoon with the ladies on the roster of La Siora, a high-end club based in Shinjuku, is to realize that the proper...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 28, 2009

From a shady past to helping others

Kabukicho is Tokyo's infamous entertainment district and suburb of sleaze. A heavily populated square of sleepless activity northeast of Shinjuku Station, it is home to a haphazard mix of movie theaters, hostess bars, strip clubs, and seedy nightclubs. An illicit atmosphere permeates the air.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC
Mar 25, 2009

Familiarity breeds respect

LOS ANGELES — On a cool night in Chavez Ravine, the World Baseball Classic lived up to its name.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Mar 25, 2009

Black Tokyo

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Eric L. Robinson found himself docking in Okinawa in 1981. For the past two decades, Robinson, a Marine Corps veteran, has traveled back and forth between between Japan and the United States, gaining experiences and insights from each culture that he now shares with...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 22, 2009

Our mantra of continuous growth has left us on ecological brink

If print media are any indication, change is in the air. Readers are sourcing news in new ways, and newspaper sales are declining as a result.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 17, 2009

French-led amity project for noneuro Europe

KIEV — Since World War II ended, France has consistently risen to the challenge of restructuring Europe in times of crisis. In doing so, France became the catalyst not only for building European unity, but also for creating the prosperity that marked Europe's postwar decades — a prosperity now under...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 16, 2009

Survival instincts need rethink before killer disease spreads

We used to think that SARS was the killer disease. No doubt it still is. But at least it seems dormant for the moment. In its place we now have a potentially more potent epidemic going around that looks set to engulf the whole world. I hereby christen that disease SLICS. This is short for "So long as...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 15, 2009

Now that the Celtic tiger's turned tail, whither the Emerald Isle?

Irish patriot, poet and eminent surgeon Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1957) once played a wily prank on a drunken acquaintance. He stuffed the poor chap, who was catatonic, into a sack and sold him to The Royal College of Surgeons strictly, one would assume, in the interests of medical science. His friend...
Japan Times
Rugby
Mar 1, 2009

Sanyo captures national rugby championship with win over Suntory

The Sanyo Wild Knights made it three in a row against a big rival, winning Saturday's All-Japan Rugby Championship.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 27, 2009

Humans, not cogs

Twenty-six years after it premiered at the Cottlesloe Theatre in London, David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," which caused a sensation in 1983 with its horrific yet realistic depiction of the dog-eat-dog real-estate business in a recession-hit America, could almost be considered a classic. The play went...
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 22, 2009

Refuge . . . of a sort

The main character of the one-act play that follows is loosely based on the few known facts concerning a Russian nobleman-refugee named Semyon Nikolaevitch Smirnitsky. Born in St. Petersburg in 1879, Smirnitsky fled the Russian Revolution in 1919 and spent the rest of his life in Japan, mostly in Otaru,...
Japan Times
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Feb 20, 2009

Sumo, a sport of humble respect and grand entrances

Sumo is a physical sport to many, but it is very much a spiritual rite to others. The bouts commence and end with a bow, in much the same way as judo or kendo bouts start with a similar acknowledgment of the opponent. Mutual respect is forever the name of the de facto national game.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 13, 2009

Towa Tei wallows in optimism for art's sake

"In Tokyo, there is too much information," says famed Japanese producer and DJ Towa Tei. "Even if you don't want to listen to music, you are raped into listening to something you don't like at the convenience store. So I try to go somewhere quiet and listen whenever I want to!"
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 11, 2009

Love not an option as the big chill settles in

A phrase heard often this winter is samusa ga mini shimiru (寒さが身に沁みる, the chill settles right into the bones), as everything — from the weather to office temperature to the predicted wintry fukeiki (不景気, bad economy, bad times) of Valentine’s Day chocolate sales — seems...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 8, 2009

In an 'Era of Decline,' let's look to youth to quell 'panic of the mind'

"We are living in extremely hard times. . . . I have been reading news- papers for 60 years, and I can't recall any era when the local news pages have appalled me more."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 8, 2009

In an 'Era of Decline,' let's look to youth to quell 'panic of the mind'

"We are living in extremely hard times. . . . I have been reading news- papers for 60 years, and I can't recall any era when the local news pages have appalled me more."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 30, 2009

Art Basel codirector sees positive changes

Since its inception in 1970, Art Basel has become one of the world's most prestigious art events. Held every June in Basel, Switzerland, the commercial fair hosts almost 300 galleries dealing in blue-chip Modern and postwar art as well as those with cutting-edge contemporary art.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jan 17, 2009

Fukumoto blazed quite a trail on bases before Rickey came along

Before the self-proclaimed (and arguably rightly so) "greatest of all time" and new MLB Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson was redefining the way leadoff hitters would be viewed, the Hankyu Braves' Yutaka Fukumoto was helping to set the standard.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Jan 17, 2009

Embroidery center gives women fabric for a future

For bank manager Miki Yoshida, her desire to do volunteer work in rural India started from an unlikely inspiration on an American expressway.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jan 16, 2009

School's out

Matilda isn't waltzing. She's sprinting toward me outside Shinsaibashi Station in Osaka with the speed of a Jamaican Olympian chewing cheetah gonads. A meter from me she screams "Simon!" and takes a flying leap, so I instinctively reach out and I'm holding this tiny 18-year-old in my arms like she's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jan 16, 2009

School's out

Matilda isn't waltzing. She's sprinting toward me outside Shinsaibashi Station in Osaka with the speed of a Jamaican Olympian chewing cheetah gonads. A meter from me she screams "Simon!" and takes a flying leap, so I instinctively reach out and I'm holding this tiny 18-year-old in my arms like she's...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 14, 2009

'Change' is for the better in year's kanji highlights

The most popular kanji in headlines, blurbs and slogans last year had to do with disasters. Hen (変, to change, or metamorphose) was the most used character, according to the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, beating out close second and third choices kin (金 gold) and raku (落, to drop, or...
LIFE
Jan 11, 2009

A meeting of minds

OXFORD ENGLAND — The last leaves were falling and the world was plunging into an economic crisis as journalists from around the world gathered for a meeting in England. The venue, though, was not a conference room in the financial hub of the City of London, but the ancient university city of Oxford,...

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