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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 29, 2008

'Doko ni Iku no'

Japanese indie directors who made their reputations in the 1970s and '80s often have big gaps in their feature-film resumes. Sogo Ishii didn't make a feature for 10 years following 1984's "Gyakufunsha Kazoku (Crazy Family),"a groundbreaking black comedy. Mitsuo Yanagimachi, who burst onto the scene in...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Q&A
Feb 29, 2008

I.D. cards for cigarette machines set to debut

People buying cigarettes out of vending machines will soon have to use a taspo integrated circuit card to verify their age.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 29, 2008

Yoshihiko Matsui: The return of the underground king

Born in 1956, Yoshihiko Matsui worked with indie icon Sogo Ishii on his early films, including the seminal 1980 biker pic "Kuruizaki Thunder Road (Crazy Thunder Road)."
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA / STYLE WISE
Feb 26, 2008

Harajuku's "Style Deficit Disorder," model Irina Lazareanu gets wicked and more

Cure for disorder The popular fashion hub Harajuku is the subject of a fascinating new book by Tokyo-based editor and creative consultant Tiffany Godoy. Rich in detail and accompanied by some remarkable images, her book, "Style Deficit Disorder" (Chronicle Books), documents the history of the area from...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 25, 2008

Is ethnic passing finally becoming passe?

NEW YORK — Just about the time Bliss Broyard's book "One Drop" came out last year, I received the latest book from my prolific friend Inuhiko Yomota, "Japan's Marrano Literature."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / HOME COMFORTS
Feb 22, 2008

Pursuing the flavor of the American South

For many North Americans in Japan, a case of gastronomic homesickness can easily be remedied at the nearest burger or pizza joint. But for someone craving the cuisine of the American South, the local Kentucky Fried Chicken will never, ever do.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Feb 17, 2008

Japan's 'pouch curry' turns a tasty 40

Fancy a feast? Un petit peu du foie gras, perchance? A slice or three of the finest Aberdeen Angus roast beef, if you will — with lashings of horseradish, sans doute. Or, drop a plastic pouch of curry into boiling water, wait for 3 minutes, pour it over rice and — voila! — you have a meal fit for...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 15, 2008

What to do with all that unwanted green tea?

To the uninitiated, the idea of a green-tea recycling market is likely to inspire visions of used tea-leaves rescued from strainers. Not so for Nobuyuki Kakizaki, the manager of tea-shop Uogashi Meicha Tsukiji Shinten, located in Tokyo's Tsukiji district. For him it's an event held early each February...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2008

Sweets makers using more than chocolate to woo

Valentine's Day, whose star product is chocolate, is no longer a business opportunity for Western-style producers only.
Reader Mail
Feb 10, 2008

Cut the hype about Indian students

As an Indian national, I am asked almost routinely by Japanese friends and others how it is that Indian children can do two-digit calculations in their head, and whether that makes them superior to Japanese. Let me shed some light on this:
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Feb 6, 2008

Tokyo's 'video people' come together

On Jan. 27, a new keyword climbed to the top of the rankings in Japan to steal first place on the blog search engine Technorati. Dougajin — literally "Video People" — was the name coined by organizers of Japan's first video-blogging event, held one day earlier, to describe the country's latest category...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 5, 2008

Tsukiji too popular to function

Visiting the famed Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo's Chuo Ward is an awesome experience for foreign tourists and it can never be too early in the morning to go.
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 / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Feb 1, 2008

Harboring dreams

Second of two parts
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Feb 1, 2008

Bruno Oger at the Royal Park, a cocoa curriculum at the Nikko Tokyo and a gourmet chocolate dinner in Osaka

Royal Park anniversary courses
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2008

High mercury level warnings fail to put Japanese off tuna

Kazuhiro Ukiuchi loves his tuna sushi, and he tries to have it once a week — despite the common knowledge in Japan the popular fish can contain toxic mercury.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 29, 2008

G8: Meaningful or anachronistic forum?

Over the next six months, Japan will host a series of meetings of the Group of Eight countries, culminating in the Leaders' Summit at Lake Toya, Hokkaido, in July. Along with leaders of the G8 — Japan, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — the European Commission...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 29, 2008

Patricia Field

Patricia Field, whose boutique in New York City has been an inspiration for designers since opening in 1966, achieved worldwide fame dressing the characters for the HBO TV series "Sex and the City" and for the 2006 film "The Devil Wears Prada." The 65-year-old Field is an Academy Award-nominated, two-time...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 28, 2008

Watching the world's biggest roadshow

NEW YORK — I was recently amused to read the following observation quoted in an intellectual history of modern Japan: "The system in which people vie to get elected head of state through indulgence in garrulity and by flaunting gestures like those of low-class actors is a singularly bizarre custom...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Jan 26, 2008

Pair mutually strive to broaden their horizon, perspective

Alexander Bright and Akiko Yamada first met at Cambridge University in 1999, when Bright was a graduate student majoring in materials science and Yamada, then a high school teacher, was taking a year off to study education in England.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 25, 2008

Chocolate bugs a fright and delight

It will never be said that they look too good to eat. But that isn't stopping the stream of orders for edible chocolate creepy-crawlies made to look like real beetle larvae and caterpillars.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 24, 2008

Ex-janitor cleans up with comic gem

Winner of the Grand Prize in the short film section at the 1987 Torino Film Festival in Italy, Yosuke Fujita may have been making films for more than two decades, but it's only now that audiences have the chance to see the director's first full-length feature. "Zenzen Daijobu (Fine, Totally Fine)" is...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 20, 2008

Fancy an on-screen romance with a cherry on top?

"I'm looking to sate my filthy fantasies. My sexual desire is off the scale! My husband goes on what he says are business trips, but I'm sure he's taking his mistress, so I want to have an affair too!" — Yoshimi
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2008

'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'

On many other actors Victorian period costumes would look like, well, costumes, but on Johnny Depp, they cover his physique like a second skin — merging with his persona as if he had a spent his life wearing lace cuffs and with his feet, encased in heavy boots, treading on nothing but mud and cobblestones....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2008

Standing room for sale

A heady atmosphere of spending hung over the opening of this year's Art@Agnes, the "art fair in a hotel" that has in the last four years become a regular fixture of Tokyo's art world. Take 20 to 50 years off visitors' ages, strip them of their designer clothes and their well-polished courtesies, and...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jan 16, 2008

Time running out for embattled Thomas

NEW YORK — You know that dead guy that was wheeled into a Manhattan check-cashing shop by two friends looking to covert his monthly $355 social security payment into currency?

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?