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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 2, 2007

'Once'

The characters in "Once" don't even have names; it's just the Guy (Glen Hansard) and the Girl (Marketa Irglova), and the story spans about 10 days in their lives one autumn in Dublin. "Once" was a sleeper hit at the Sundance Film Festival — and it's like a small, shining halo of brightness that recalls...
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 28, 2007

Masters of all they survey

"How do you get to the Seibu department store?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 25, 2007

'Afro Samurai': anime international

On paper, the making of "Afro Samurai" reads like a recipe for an identity crisis. An animation about an African-American swordsman in a futuristic feudal Japan, it sprang from the mind of a Tokyo illustrator and was brought to fruition in English by a Japanese-U.S. production team, A-list Hollywood...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 28, 2007

Shori and Kazumi Tanaka

Shori and Kazumi Tanaka might be the most well-known couple on the nightclub scene in Tokyo's famed Ginza district. Each night for the last 51 years, 73-year-old Shori rushed from club to club to entertain as a bilingual singer while Kazumi, 54, was sitting pretty as one of Ginza's top hostesses. Since...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Aug 24, 2007

Drinking down Azabu-Juban's heart

Azabu-Juban may be changing superficially at street level, located as it is in a valley behind the plush residential/ commercial complex Roppongi Hills, but the best of what's on offer there is still to be found behind closed doors — doors that can at first appear a bit daunting to open.
EDITORIALS
Jul 25, 2007

Democracy wins in Turkey

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed a second five-year term last weekend. His government's record since 2002 should have made victory a given, but fears that it would drift toward more Islamic fundamentalist rule had tempered enthusiasm for his Justice and Development Party, or AKP. The...
SPORTS / MULLY'S MISSIVES
Jul 15, 2007

Quenching thirst hard work in Hanoi

HANOI — Covering the Asian Cup finals is proving to be thirsty work for the many soccer journalists in hot and humid Hanoi.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 29, 2007

Third point of Roppongi

With the opening of Tokyo Midtown on Friday, the Art Triangle Roppongi concept is now complete. Comprised of the Mori Art Museum, the new National Art Center (NAC) and the elegant new Suntory Museum of Art -- part of the Midtown project -- the idea of a new precinct for art in Tokyo is ready to be tested....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 21, 2007

A wildlife odyssey to rank with any

Being both a columnist and an author is to be constantly in the midst of a kind of battle -- between short-term bursts of effort and rapid gratification, and long-term strategic planning, exertion, and inevitably delayed gratification.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Oct 13, 2006

Fall in for some wine adventures

A s a welcome series of typhoons scrubs away the last of the summer heat, we find ourselves at long last putting away the beer-bottle openers and breaking out the corkscrews. Fortunately for wine lovers, this fall offers no shortage of temptations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Oct 13, 2006

Psychedelic radar 10.13

Raja Ram's Stash Bag Tour 2006
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 6, 2006

Old school rappers look to new schools

Since hip-hop emerged in the late 1970s, it's been closely linked with basketball. But just as the United States is no longer the dominant force in international hoops, its dominance in the world of beats and rhymes is also waning.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 8, 2006

Worldwide sounds

In Britain, dance culture went into overdrive in the late 1980s, largely because of one thing: Ecstasy. As well as helping shy people dance, Ecstasy also meant that people could stay up for the entire weekend, partying at raves to acid house music. These same clubbers also needed a place to head to after...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 21, 2006

Waving goodbye to the city

The sound of waves lapping on the shore. The cool sea breeze. Beautiful people wearing very few clothes. Overdressed cocktails. What better way could there be to while away a hot summer's day than a beach-bar crawl along Shonan Bay?
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 7, 2006

Drum 'n' bass in the place

Many cities have had their musical moments. Manchester became "Madchester" in the late 1980s on the back of the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses' baggy vibes; Seattle had its grunge explosion soon after that; and by the mid-1990s, Bristol was the place to be for urban music. Massive Attack and Portishead...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 6, 2006

The art of the party at Fuji Rock

No one denies the power of danger and vice to push boundaries, and whether we admit it or not, the two have a way of rattling some pretty inspired performances out of people. No surprise, then, that Fuji Rock Festival has been a breeding ground for such mischief, and that the Palace of Wonder, Fuji's...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 2, 2006

Showdown at Budokan

The rightwing reactionaries were arriving in their menacing black-and-white trucks, blasting military music. The politicians were shaking their fists and telling people to go to a garbage dump. The police had locked down all entrances to the Imperial Palace grounds. Riot police lined the road leading...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 22, 2006

The D.I.Y. route to rock stardom

From the suburbs of Tokyo to downtown Toronto is hardly the most direct route to pop stardom -- or one assured of success. But it was the path that blues-rock outfit Stone Deaf chose earlier this month in what was a bold move for a group whose sole claim to fame is having been Marky Ramone's backing...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Apr 14, 2006

Knight expands fashion empire

Eccentric British fashion designer Paul Smith is currently presiding over a rollout of stores across the globe. Following on from the December 2005 opening of a bubblegum-pink store on Melrose Avenue, L.A., last week he was in Tokyo to unveil a four-story flagship in the Aoyama district. Later this year...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 13, 2006

Goths, terra and tears

The Complex Building in Roppongi opened with five major contemporary art galleries a couple of years back, around the same time as the nearby Mori Art Museum. It has, however, been somewhat overlooked as new and larger spaces have debuted out east in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 18, 2006

Confessions of a priest . . . sort of

Meet "Father Smith" -- silver hair, gentle smile and a voice so mellow that it flows with a grace from beyond. Maybe there is a God and maybe there isn't, but when you're with Father Smith, you tend to believe that maybe there is.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 3, 2006

DJ gatecrashes VIP party

One of the biggest names in Japanese dance music, Mondo Grosso, returns to Club Yellow in Roppongi, Tokyo, on March 3 as a guest DJ for "Cyberjapan presents VIP Club."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 25, 2005

Izu's Shimoda basks calmly in past glories

Jutting south from Mount Fuji into the Pacific, the Izu Peninsula has something of a holiday air about it. The warm Kuroshio current flowing northward lends the peninsula a mild climate, and its position close to the suture lines of shifting tectonic plates means that rugged Izu has no lack of geothermal...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 9, 2005

Umibiraki -- drunk fish, a certain charm

On the first Sunday of July for hundreds of years now, a priest has performed a Shinto ceremony called umibiraki on Shiraishi Island. At this "opening-of-the-sea" ceremony, the priest blesses the sea making it safe for swimming.
Features
Apr 24, 2005

Grande dame of haute kuchuuru

In the fickle world of fashion, where players come and go with the regularity of the seasons that their working lives are firmly pinned to, there are fortunately just a few who hang in there to lend some sense of continuity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Apr 8, 2005

Honest, Doc, I can still dance

I missed everything in the doctor's explanation of my condition after she used the "A" word.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 23, 2005

Duty calls

Special to The Japan Times In the United States, it's said that the Vietnam War was lost on TV. As the first armed conflict to receive graphic coverage on nightly news shows, the war seemed closer than it was. Consequently, questions surrounding its legitimacy eventually came to the fore and, for many...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Mar 4, 2005

Poor loser Mourinho in danger of losing the plot altogether

LONDON -- If, and it is a huge if, I decide to make a less than flattering gesture to someone in a bar I would make sure I knew where the guy was standing. Otherwise, I might find myself explaining my actions to a few people who were less than happy with what they saw.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?