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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 14, 2015

Shibuya's redevelopment to create a futuristic railway station fit for the 21st century

Looking down from the 11th floor of Tokyo's Hikarie skyscraper, the seemingly endless ebb and flow of people using Shibuya Station is hypnotic to watch.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 20, 2015

Abe eroding Japan's soft power

Japan's considerable soft power is being undermined by political insensitivity, provocative policies and a reluctance or inability to explain and justify.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / EXPO MILANO 2015
May 3, 2015

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu brings 'kawaii' in Italian debut

Japanese pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's image of Italy is of a luxurious country, loaded with world-famous clothing brands and other items. Yet, she said when she travels to the country for the first time in July, she's most excited about the chance to eat lots of Italian food.
Japan Times
JAPAN / TELLING LIVES
Apr 16, 2015

Expat champions tastes, roots of rural Japan

American Justin Potts, 33, is more fascinated with Japan's rural countryside than most Japanese and vexed by their lack of appreciation for its natural beauty, agricultural bounty and artistic cuisine.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 23, 2015

Spare a thought for the Western men trapped in Japan

Japan can be the best place in the world for some, but for others it can be a trap — especially for Western men.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 10, 2015

Momus honors music's eccentrics on 'Turpsycore'

Twenty years ago the Shibuya-kei music scene was in full swing. The charts were filled with some of the most daring, artistic pop music this country had ever heard, courtesy of artists such as Cornelius, Pizzicato Five, Original Love and Kahimi Karie.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 8, 2014

Japan's innovation challenge

The Abe administration's capacity for deciding how to raise the birthrate, improve child-care facilities, realize an appropriae work-life balance and promote other 'innovations' that enable Japan to solve its many problems is now being tested.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 22, 2014

Japan urged to do more to promote its language overseas

Japan needs to make bigger efforts to promote its culture and gain public support for the promotion of Japanese-language education overseas, according to a linguistics scholar who has taught the language for more than 40 years in the United States.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 5, 2014

English morris dancing hits Japan, with all the bells and whistles

The English form of folk dancing known as morris dates back to the Middle Ages and involves costumed groups of dancers stepping in time to music. Barely seen in Japan before, this traditional art can now be experienced in the most unexpected of locations: Shikoku.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 25, 2013

Authors take polar-opposite tacks as they try to decipher Japanese women

It's an all-too-familiar story: On the romantic front, foreign ladies living in Japan have it bad while the guys do unbelievably well. For every woman who complains about Japanese men's aloofness and lack of communication skills, there is a man who boasts about all the local chicks he's had.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 11, 2013

Japan's Nigerians see symbol of change in masquerade

Anyone wandering the back streets near Omiya Station at 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, might have passed a particular office building, unremarkable except for two African men standing on a 2nd floor balcony, rope in hand, lowering a car-sized Ugo (eagle) costume down to the parking lot. One of them was...
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 17, 2013

Enhancing Japan's strengths, remedying its weaknesses

Japanese society is beset with some regrettable weak points. It must find ways to remedy those, bolster its strengths and enhance global 'Japanability.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 31, 2013

Glacial change slow to heat up Japan's economy

The Japanese manager was once portrayed as a fearless samurai ready to take on the world. This was when Western companies and management scholars woke up to the presence of a potent competitor outside the Western world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 1, 2013

Canadian uses sports as bridge to teaching, writing, understanding

Writer, teacher and sports fan Trevor Kew, 32, pedals and kicks his way through culture shock. He uses sports to help him adapt to unfamiliar cultures or new places when traveling, trusting his bike or a soccer ball to bridge the gap with locals.
Japan Times
JAPAN / DAVOS SPECIAL 2013
Jan 23, 2013

Looking to bring Japan's tastes to new markets through sake

As people across the globe toasted the New Year this month, Japan's sake brewers had another reason to celebrate. The industry saw modest increases in sake sales, offering a glimmer of hope to producers who have watched consumption decline since the late 1970s. According to the Japanese Sake and Shochu...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jan 20, 2013

Veteran athletes, coaches adamant that corporal punishment has no place in sports

The tragic death of a 17-year-old Osaka high school student and basketball captain in December sheds light on a disturbing aspect of Japanese culture that has existed for decades: corporal punishment.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jan 13, 2013

What Japan needs to do

With its economy spluttering, large parts of its northeastern region still devastated by the effects of the mammoth Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 — and releases of radioactive materials that followed — its population shrinking and aging at unprecedented rates and its citizens despairing of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 12, 2012

Treasures from China's rich tapestry of cultures

"China" has always been something of a simplification. This is because it is an idea that has been used to encapsulate a vast heterogeneous portion of the World's population. With current relations with Japan tense, the idea of China as a monolithic giant with a single purpose, bringing its weight to...
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 23, 2012

Street dance sweeps young Japan

The cool, wild and powerful movements of rhythm-heavy hip-hop dance are gripping the body and soul of ever more Japanese children and young people.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 21, 2012

Architect builds Heart House for 3/11 survivors

When Richard Bliah visited Ishinomaki last August after the coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the veteran French architect was quite sure many residents lost not only family and friends but also the "network of people living in the same area" —...
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
May 31, 2012

Perfume needs to walk a fine line on its path overseas

As Japanese pop culture is increasingly dominated by insular subcultural groups with little interest in what's happening outside Akihabara's otaku haven or Shibuya's gyaru mecca, the news that electro-pop trio Perfume had moved to major label Universal and made its music available online to overseas...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 22, 2012

The elephant in the foreigner's room now has a name: microaggression

Some positive and negative readers' reactions to Debito Arudou's provocative and widely read May 1 Just Be Cause column, "Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down":
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 19, 2012

Comedians find creative outlet for simmering anger

For Okinawa comedian Masamitsu Kohatsu, Aug. 13 is synonymous with the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 11, 2012

Young hopes bloom eternal

The first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake is a time to commemorate the victims of that terrible tragedy. But it is also an opportunity to look to the future.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 22, 2011

MacArthur, identity theory and Japan's lingering eigo woes

Some years ago I was teaching an advanced English class in San Francisco that featured a hodgepodge of students from all over the world. Just as the range of cultures and accents extended from Europe to the Middle East to Asia and South America, so did the array of communication styles. Yet while the...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

Unraveling the evolution of modern Japan

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF JAPANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. Edited by Victoria and Theodore Bestor with Akiko Yamagata. Routledge, 2011, 325 pp. (hardcover) This is a tremendous book and should jump the queue of all those books on contemporary Japan you have been intending to read. The editors deserve kudos...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jul 5, 2011

Disunited 'English-speaking diaspora' bites back

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Debito Arudou's June 7 Just Be Cause column, headlined " 'English-speaking diaspora' should unite, not backbite."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 26, 2011

Hearn the Westerm misfit finally found himself at home in Meiji Japan

What does it mean to be an expatriate, particularly when you feel more at home and assimilated in an adopted country than in your own?
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 3, 2011

Renewed national pride will shape Japan's future

Spring dawns on a shattered Japan. "Not since World War II" is a recurring phrase, and no wonder. Mass destruction accompanied by radiation — what other analogy is big enough?
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 18, 2011

Media art seminar opens up the debate on Japanese 'cool'

Not only in Japan but all over the world, people are enjoying Japanese media arts such as manga, anime and video games, relishing Japan's "cool" image. Those who want to learn not only about the current media arts but also about Japan's cultural history and development may enjoy the Virtual Museum &...

Longform

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