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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...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jul 11, 2007

Digital graffiti lets you make your mark

Irony is a word that is no doubt found in every language. A case in point is the widely accepted view that English is the lingua franca of the Internet. Unfortunately, while this expression nicely captures the linguistic dominance of English, the term itself originates in Italian. Despite this quirk...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jun 20, 2007

Gadgets to the rescue — vibrating pillow curbs snoring; toothbrush tracks your hygiene habits

Snoring is like the common cold — they both prove that the world's scientists are clueless about what is important in life. Rather than building a better spaceship, how about just removing these banes from our lives? Francebed, the name of which is only half truthful as it is the moniker of a Japanese...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2005

Shopping for the little bookworms

It's bedtime and you're keen for the little ones to get off to sleep so you can return to that DVD you left on pause. For their story, you try winging it again with a Japanese picture book, but the version you concoct this time is different to what you told them before. Pointing out that you've got the...
LIFE / Digital
Apr 25, 2002

Broadband security: put a lock on the back door

It's late one evening last July, and a green activity light is blinking on the front of the DSL modem next to my desk.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Apr 18, 2002

From hotels to self-pumping soccer balls

www.jtbusa.com/enhome/ If you're looking for hotel deals in Japan, it seems you're better off getting out of the country first. A weekend of frantically trying to locate Tokyo hotels with vacancies turned up a lot of discount sites, few of which were really cheap and most of which were difficult to traverse....
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
May 10, 2001

A few sites for baseball fans

http://mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sea/homepage/sea_homepage.jsp The Seattle Mariners' official site is part of Major League Baseball's sprawling footprint on the Web. MLB did a very smart thing this year in taking over every team's site and hiring beat writers to go head-to-head with the ink-stained...
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 7, 2001

Go ahead, try some

www.tokujo.ac.jp/Tanaka/WWW97/ Hello4/yumie.html This is part of Yumie Harada's home page, the part where she describes her love for natto. And maybe this kind of personal approach is what's needed to get natto virgins past that stench and actually place the stuff in their mouths. Yumie gives the...
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Aug 30, 2000

Architects reach for the sky

www.geocities.com/PicketFence/5192/ The address above is actually a really nice metaphor. The "picket fence" it refers to is the chain formed by the world's tallest buildings. Add "center_of_india.html" to the end of the address and take a look at an artist's rendering of what some day might be the...
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Aug 23, 2000

Eye scream

lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/uc004810.jpg Not only did the U.S. government give us the Internet, but it has posted a recipe for vanilla ice cream as well. It's actually a photo of a recipe handwritten by Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of that government, sometime in the 1780s. Click on "Holograph...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Nov 29, 2009

Deer problem growing fast

This winter, naturalist and woodland conservationist C.W. Nicol will be busy cooking up delicious meals using wild deer meat — slow-cooked keema curry, hearty shepherd's pie and soy-simmered nikudango meatballs, to name a few.
ENVIRONMENT
Nov 29, 2009

Deer problem growing fast

This winter, naturalist and woodland conservationist C.W. Nicol will be busy cooking up delicious meals using wild deer meat — slow-cooked keema curry, hearty shepherd's pie and soy-simmered nikudango meatballs, to name a few.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Oct 28, 2009

JVC says looks aren't everything; Nikon readies for closeups

Not just a pretty face: Looks before substance may be an unfair slogan to pin on JVC's newest home-theater combination, but there is no denying the emphasis on looks. Pairing two speakers, the combination of the SP-FT and the AX-FT 4-channel amplifier is designed to match the latest breed of flat-screen...
Japan Times
SATOYAMA CONSORTIUM
Dec 27, 2020

Small but creative Toyooka has outsized presence

The small coastal city of Toyooka has developed renowned presence by imaginatively developing the vitality of its economy and community.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2018

Foreign disaster victims in Hiroshima struggle to overcome language, paperwork barriers in quest for assistance

A month after the historic rain disaster in western Japan, residents in Hiroshima are still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath. And the people most affected, particularly those unfamiliar with Japanese procedures, will face further hurdles on the path to recovery.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 14, 2014

Ghostly footprints of the 'modern girl' along Kamakura's coastline

There's a scene in Junichiro Tanizaki's serialized novel "Naomi" (originally titled "A Fool's Love") from 1924 where the besotted protagonist, Joji, watches his wife, Naomi — part Lolita, part Madame Bovary, all trouble — through the pine trees. Having just emerged from a seaside villa, she is sashaying...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 5, 2013

Mom who blogged about tsunami wants people to remember

Stranded for three days after March 11, 2011, with her mother-in-law and young children on the second floor of their home near the industrial port of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Naoko Nakayama fought panic by communicating the only way she could: scribbling on torn scraps of paper.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 21, 2012

Sake tastings mark the arrival of fall

Sake lovers eagerly await the coming of autumn, when spring's brash young brews begin to mellow and develop complexity. Unsurprisingly, this season is prime time for tastings, and October means sake events all over Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
May 20, 2009

Aerial mice, speaker/stands and hi-def Macs

Wave your hands in the air: Wireless is just the headliner in the campaign to free computers from electric cords. While touch screens threaten to make the mouse extinct, some are trying to give traditional pointers a new lease on life. Filco has crafted the recently released BTLS900 Air Mouse (¥9,200),...
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2008

Quakes inevitable — so prepare

Last of two parts Are you ready for the Big One?
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Jun 24, 2008

Mag racks, Issey Miyake watches and a tidy little cellphone buddy

Label of love With pretty much anything now just a quick printout away, is there really still a place in the office or at home for the humble label writer? Looking at the Tepra Pro label writer from King Jim — a company mostly known for its colorful binders and filing systems — it becomes apparent...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
May 16, 2007

Gadgets fall prey to multitasking, and a mouse keeps an eye on your computer

P eople these days are more like ly to remember to take their keitai in the morning than their keys. After all, the later only protects your life's property and valuables, whereas your mobile phone makes life worth living. Or at least it seems to be for those who spend more time with their portable communicators...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 25, 2006

Soaking in the urban onsen scene

Taking a nice, long, hot bath has for eras been an ideal way to unwind, whether it is a soak crammed in the tub at home after a hard day's work, a trip to the local sento (public bath) for a leisurely scrub-down or a weekend getaway to the countryside in pursuit of hot springs and the healing powers...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 18, 2006

Preventing suicide and axing overtime pay is a risky mix

More than 30,000 people kill themselves each year in Japan, bestowing the country with the shameful honor of the highest suicide rate in the developed world. To deal with this reality, a group of lawmakers from across the political spectrum pushed an antisuicide bill through the Diet last month to force...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 16, 2005

Worlds of nature are just a click away

Although I've only just packed away my skiing gear (the remnant snowfields have crept too close to the peaks to make the physical cost of carrying heavy boots and skis so far uphill worth the downhill benefits), and though mountain cherry blossoms have only recently begun to shed their petals here in...
Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin,” once the victim of high waves that dragged it into the sea, sits at the end of a pier on the south side of Naoshima.
CULTURE / Art / Longform
Apr 6, 2024

Why is the most exciting art in Japan so hard to get to?

Japan has a unique movement of public art projects and festivals that are a slog to get to — by design. A writer examines the country's “inconvenient art."
An estimated 835,200 people were due to travel through Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture during the 11-day Golden Week period — about 77% of the number during the same period in 2019, before the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
JAPAN / Society
Apr 27, 2024

Travelers flock to train stations and airports as Golden Week begins

Japan kicked off its Golden Week holidays, which run through May 6, on Saturday, with many people heading to resorts or their home towns.
The new Switch is a tablet-style device with detachable controllers that can be played in handheld mode or hooked up to a TV, like its predecessor.
LIFE / Digital
Jan 17, 2025

Nintendo announces Switch 2, its first new console in eight years

Japan residents can apply via lottery for a hands-on demo of the Switch 2 on April 26 and 27 at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe convention center.
Rows of sequins affixed to Faig Ahmed’s “Door to Yourself” gives the work its sparkle.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 6, 2023

Oku-Noto Triennale brings art into stark relief against rocks and sea

Taking place in the remote city of Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, the contemporary art event's pretty program aims to instill pride in the local community.
A woman grills a piece of beef at a barbeque restaurant in Yokohama. Greenhouse gas emissions from food amount to a third of all human-caused emissions.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET
Jan 28, 2024

The complicated balance between health and climate in the Japanese diet

In Japan, people with higher-emitting diets also tend to eat healthier, raising questions for the health- and environment-conscious consumer.

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