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Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Dec 2, 2009

King Jim puts pen to screen; Phiaton turns red

Jot it down: While the typewriter has pretty much become extinct, the notebook and pen combination has shown greater resilience. This is mainly due to to their simplicity, something computers are not known for. But they can do color touchscreens, multimedia and other surplus features. In the form of...
Reader Mail
Nov 29, 2009

Why pay just to learn to read?

I found Shoko Tana's Nov. 26 letter, "Learning English to read a text," disturbing to say the least. According to Tana, "for better or worse, we learn English (in Japan) to acquire knowledge on how to read a text, not to communicate, as important as that skill may be outside of Japan."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 23, 2009

Tokyo theater scene gets kiss of life

The Edinburgh theater and street-performance festival in Scotland annually sends a buzz round the arts world; France's Avignon invariably features a cordon bleu international menu; and Adelaide and Singapore vie for the Asia-Pacific spotlight.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2009

Making the time to find mono no aware

Detached and contemplative,"Oh!" draws the reader into a mesmerizing journey of discovery while also exploring contemporary Japanese pathologies along the way. This philosophical mystery gives us leads on understanding sadness, loss, family ties, identity and suicide. It is also a search for clues about...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 3, 2009

Jazz meets literature in concert

Three Japanese artists living in Berlin, together with a French musician, will stage two performances in Yokohama featuring music, dance and readings to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the city's port.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 24, 2009

From Meiji gentleman to 'Japanese Yankee'

This curiosity (a first-person account of the writer's gradual transformation from Meiji gentleman to self-proclaimed "Japanese Yankee") was first published in 1898 (by the Congregational Church) and never again seen until now.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 22, 2009

An era of translation by everybody, for everybody

The Internet has brought us closer together than ever before, or so the cliche goes. But has it really?
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2008

The fatal flaw in trying to impose a new interpretation on Article 9

The report of the "Panel on the Reconstruction of the National Security Legal Foundation," commonly known as the Yanai Report, argues that a reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution is necessary to permit Japan to participate in collective self-defense and collective security operations. Both...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2008

Can YouTube cure political apathy?

Thanks to video-sharing Web sites like YouTube, it has become easier to broadcast and share video clips with the world, whether it's a short film shot with a cell phone or an elaborately choreographed movie.
LIFE / Language
Jun 24, 2008

Building bridges across continents and cultures

Twelve Japanese elementary-school students gathered at Yoyogi Elementary School in central Tokyo on Saturday, May 10, to play games, cooperate with and learn a little about a similar group of students at an elementary school in Seoul, South Korea via Webcam on the Internet.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Apr 23, 2008

Tech to get people talking

Say what you want: Why use a tiny keypad to communicate when the human voice can do the job? NTT DoCoMo last week launched a new mobile phone from Fujitsu, the F884i, that will put the joy back into talking to your e-mail contacts. Employing the new FOMA Raku Raku Phone Premium system, users enter their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 6, 2008

Sulky modern youths return

"It was officially the runaway disaster of 2006. I was really glad that so many people didn't like it at all," laughs 34-year-old Toshiki Okada about his debut at the New National Theater, "Enjoy," which Japan's theater critics voted the year's worst play. The old guards' thumbs down was all the more...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Feb 20, 2008

The Blog from Another Dimension

The Blog from Another Dimension might conjure up images of science fiction, but click through to Luis Poza's blog and you'll quickly see that it's about the here and now, cataloging his thoughts about current events, technology and social issues in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 7, 2008

The gobbiest girl in London, innit?

Adele cringes: "I can't believe I did a peace sign on TV — like Ringo Starr!"
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 2007

Certain 'connotations' of Asian Americans

SHORTCOMINGS, by Adrian Tomine. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2007, 108 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Comic books are respectable enough now that it is no longer necessary to attempt to burnish their image by renaming them "graphic novels." Neither is it necessary to remind readers that comics can be art and, as...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Dec 26, 2007

The biggest Internet-related stories of 2007

As we wind down on 2007, it's a good time to look back and see how much the Internet landscape has changed in the last year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 18, 2007

A film director in the theater

Daisuke Tengan is an acclaimed filmmaker, but search for him on the Internet and the first thing you'll discover is that he's the son of director Shohei Imamura, who won the Palme d' Or at the Cannes Film Festival for "Narayamabushiko" in 1983 and "Unagi" in 1997.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 13, 2007

Sentinels of the streets

Three years ago my family moved from within Tokyo to just across the border in Saitama. So close to that border, in fact, that I can open a window and almost spit across the line.
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Sep 26, 2007

Back-chatting TVs and translating photocopiers

Bridging the gaps between the multiple towers of Babel that are modern languages has traditionally relied on software. Whether this be organic software, as in humans and their linguistic skills, or computers with their still relatively primitive ability to translate from one language to another. Fuji...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 5, 2007

Keeping the horror of Hiroshima alive

Masako's Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, by Kikuko Otake, edited by Dr. Jesse Glass. Tokyo/Toronto: Ahadada Books, 2007, 94 pp. with photos and maps, $15 (paper) The cenotaph for the Hiroshima victims reads "Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil," but...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2007

Simpler treaty for EU's silent majority

LUXEMBOURG — At the European Union's summit this week, debate will center on whether to go forward with a "mini" EU Constitutional Treaty. That debate is the result of the rejection of the draft treaty by French and Dutch voters in 2005. But those "no" votes have obscured the fact that 18 of the EU's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 1, 2007

Buddha's fighting soldiers

THE TEETH AND CLAWS OF BUDDHISM: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History, by Mikael S. Adolphson. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 214 pp., with 32 illustrations and maps, $36 (cloth) Buddha with fangs and claws is an unexpected image, if only because religions so often express themselves...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 17, 2007

Brian S. McElney

The UNESCO designation of World Heritage sites is given to only a few selected cities. Bath in southwest England has the designation. Although it is called one of the best preserved 18th-century cities in the world, its origins go much further back in time.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 7, 2007

Through the Terayama looking glass

THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE WORLD OF SHUJI TERAYAMA, DVD four-volume box set. Tokyo: Daguerreo Press, Inc./Image Forum Video, 2006, color/monochrome, English subtitles, bilingual menu, audio commentaries (Japanese only) by Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Tatsuo Suzuki, Sakumi Hagiwara and Henriku Morisaki, 346 min., 18,900...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 24, 2006

Sutra-writing by hand to boost the brain

Amid the current national craze over anything that might boost brainpower -- or at least help its legions of elderly to retain their mental functions -- a relatively low-key, centuries-old Buddhist practice has lately been attracting a lot of attention.
LIFE / Language
Nov 21, 2006

Net resources make light work of Japanese study

'When the tunnel where the border is long is passed through there was snow country."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 6, 2006

Japan's baroque theater

KABUKI: Baroque Fusion of the Arts, by Toshio Kawatake, translated by Frank and Jean Connell Hoff. I-House Press, 2006, 358 pp. with 78 illustrations, 1,905 yen (paper). This is the new enlarged and revised edition of an important book on the Kabuki, originally published by the University of Tokyo Press...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 27, 2006

The revenge of the Red Demon

Playwright, actor and director Hideki Noda has been the undisputed leader of the Japanese contemporary theater world for 30 years. In that time he has written, directed and often acted in more than 60 plays in Japan -- all of them hits or superhits among his mushrooming fanbase. In fact, Noda has been...

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