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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 20, 2011

Remember Takuboku: A model to rouse today's thwarted youth

Social change is a volcanic phenomenon. The first rumblings may not be widely seen or heard; then there is an eruption that takes society unawares. All of a sudden — or so it seems — a new generation with new needs and demands is born. Until that happens, society often outwardly appears placid, calm...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Feb 20, 2011

Aspiring animator comes to Japan to chase her dreams

It's fun to walk down the street or get aboard a train with Tracey Seals and watch how Japanese people react. Once they notice the blue-eyed, bespectacled 21-year-old redhead from Mississippi in their midst, some break out in smiles. And others do double-takes, as if they've just seen an anime character...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 19, 2011

Home of pachinko opens arms to China

A Chinese signboard for a pachinko parlor in Nagoya reads: "Pachinko is a popular form of Japanese entertainment that originated in Nagoya. Only ¥100 will get you 100 balls to enjoy pachinko with."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 18, 2011

Visit Tokyo's 'Frontline' for Japan's contemporary art

Shigeo Goto, director of Tokyo Frontline, a new art fair to start in Tokyo this year, calls himself an "outsider," meaning he considers himself not quite inside Tokyo's commercial "art scene."
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2011

Breaching of social problems

I would like to respond to the Jan. 30 letters "Cultural generalizations dangerous" by Gregory Hutchinson and "'Gender equality' not universal" by Bryan Hunt.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Feb 17, 2011

Bloomers

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 17, 2011

Planned school will offer diversity in the classroom

Lin Kobayashi explains that in the high school that she attended in Canada, in the early 1990s, there were 86 different nationalities represented in her year alone. Needless to say, Japan has no schools that could compete in terms of diversity, even today. But, if the 36-year-old Tokyo native gets her...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2011

The world needs more elephant mothers

MELBOURNE — Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the back, when one of them suddenly asked: "Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?"
EDITORIALS
Feb 16, 2011

End of the Mubarak era

Eighteen days of protest ended 30 years of one-man rule by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. While the demonstrations had been mounting in intensity and reflected deep-seated grievances that had been building over decades, his decision Friday to step down was never certain. As the country enters a new...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 13, 2011

K-pop takes on the world while J-pop stays home

Last week, the Fuji TV newsmagazine "Mr. Sunday" looked at Korean pop's success in Japan from two angles. Taking a street-level perspective, the show's host, Seiji Miyane, hung out in Tokyo's Okubo district, which has become "the new Harajuku" because young Japanese women flock there to rub up against...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 12, 2011

How 'bout that sumo?

The March Grand Sumo Tournament has been canceled due to bout-rigging. The May tournament is now in doubt as well. Who knows, sumo may be the world's first canceled sport.
COMMUNITY
Feb 12, 2011

For Kanagawa artist, past goods offer key to creation

View the sun through a shitajiki, those transparent, decorative pencil-boards ubiquitous to elementary school children in Japan, and you can gaze, squint-free, into its rays. The world transforms when you look directly at the sun because perceptions shift. Shoichi Sakurai, 49, artist, discovered this...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 11, 2011

Playwright Noda asks, 'What is a Japanese?'

In the early 1980s, when he was a student at the University of Tokyo, Hideki Noda began to emerge as a standard bearer of something new in Japan: Contemporary theater by — and for — young people seeking to change their country.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 11, 2011

'Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson'

On one level, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's career can be described simply: He was a writer who wrote best when loaded. Sure, you say, but tell me which great American writer wasn't a raging alcoholic. F. Scott Fitzgerald? Jack Kerouac? Ernest Hemingway? William "There is no such thing as a bad whiskey" Faulkner?...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2011

Sumo-rigging born of necessity?

The sumo bout-fixing unearthed in seized cell phone texts points to a practice that, according to at least one expert, was born out of a need by young wrestlers to survive a short-lived career where the spoils at the top are elusive and the threat of demotion and loss of pay is ever-present.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 9, 2011

Shut sumo down for the rest of 2011, put its future in private hands

Where will it all end?
EDITORIALS
Feb 9, 2011

Ronald Reagan at 100

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan. While Ronaldus Magnus (as he is known among some admirers) was not made president for life and beyond like North Korea's Kim Il Sung, 23 years after his term in office ended he remains the lodestar for U.S. conservatives and the Republican...
EDITORIALS
Feb 7, 2011

The Sky Tree phenomenon

Sky Tree, the new tower going up in Tokyo, has become a fixture in Japan's mass media. Each week brings another spectacular photo in the photogravure section of a weekly magazine, and newspapers breathlessly report each new benchmark passed on the way to its final height of 634 meters in the spring of...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 6, 2011

Japan at a crossroads

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN. Journal of the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo. Mind the Gap: Stratification and Social Inequalities in Japan. Editor Florian Coulmas. Volume 22. Number 1/2. De Gruyter, 2010, 221 pp., (hardcover) The launch of this journal is cause for celebration by anyone interested...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 5, 2011

Less is more for Japan travel buff

Harry Cheng, a globe-trotter who travels about 320,000 km a year, believes a simple list of names is enough to stir people's interest in scenes they haven't seen before. With this belief, he will soon launch a unique travel guide dedicated to recording travel experiences in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 5, 2011

The comic life of expats in Japan

Tales of expat life in Japan all too often get blown out of proportion and quickly become picaresque adventures that little resemble real life.
EDITORIALS
Feb 5, 2011

Russia's enduring terrorism

A suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport last month has reminded Russians, and the world, of the country's continuing vulnerability to terrorist attacks. As in the past, the Russian authorities blamed Islamic extremists for the violence and promised retaliation. That reaction is certain to intensify...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 4, 2011

Strawberries: The gift that keeps on growing

In Japan, there are the kind of the strawberries that you buy for yourself, and there are the GIANT strawberries that you give as gifts.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat