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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009

Have fun and play with your food

I slip a red dress over my head. The silhouette is fashionably curved, the fabric luxuriously soft and the hemline festooned with small red bobbles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009

The beauty of subtle deceit

More than in any other country where the lacquer tree grows, the art of working with its hard-drying sap has excelled here in Japan. Two leading exponents were Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747) and Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), who both stand out not only for their inventive sense of design in decorating three-dimensional...
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Dec 16, 2009

New kanji are mighty compound-word builders

Joyo (general-use) kanji, which currently number 1,945, are the characters officially approved by the Japanese government for use in newspapers and government publications. Japanese schoolchildren study these during their nine years of compulsory education, and non-Japanese speakers must do battle with...
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2009

Proposal followed fight over feline

. I had been involved in triathlon for two or three years. Kentaro: It was my first or second time to join the triathlon training group when we met. She and I both lived in Oizumi Gakuen (in Nerima Ward, Tokyo). She taught me how to swim.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Dec 13, 2009

Tuffy hopes to extend career in Japan another year

It remains to be seen if Tuffy Rhodes will return to play a 14th season in Japanese baseball in 2010. The all-time leader among foreign players in home runs and RBIs says he's ready for another year — or two — but, if he is unable to attract an offer from a Pacific or Central League club, he will...
EDITORIALS
Dec 13, 2009

An education in violence

Violent behavior in Japanese schools increased to an all-time high in 2008, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Students, teachers and other people were victims of 60,000 violent incidents involving primary, middle and high school...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 12, 2009

The most annoying Japanese word

Several weeks ago a poll from the Marist Institute of Public Opinion — one that was slingshot quickly across the Internet — listed "whatever" as the most annoying of all English words.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 11, 2009

'The Man from London'

Appropriate to the director's family name of Tarr, "The Man From London" is akin to walking on an endless runway strip of newly laid-on tarmac.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 10, 2009

Turkey aims to reconnect with its neighbors

ANKARA — Nowadays, the international media are obsessed with the question of who "lost" Turkey and what that supposed loss means for Europe and the West. More alarmingly, some commentators liken Turkey's neighborhood policy to a revival of Ottoman imperialism. Recently, a senior Turkish columnist went...
Reader Mail
Dec 10, 2009

DPJ needs an investment strategy

I have two concerns about the Nov. 30 editorial "Shore up basic science": First, it may be too harsh to say the decisions of the waste-cutting panel of the Government Revitalization Unit (GRU) are "shortsighted." Despite many criticisms of their crude arguments, the GRU and its panel have the epoch-making...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 6, 2009

Painting Tokyo red and gold

In times past, some Native Americans believed the autumn colors were made when the Great Hunter finally shot the Bear, whose blood spilled across the landscape in the form of red leaves.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 6, 2009

Rika Kayama: Finding satisfaction in being ourselves

Psychiatrist Rika Kayama is an outspoken doctor specializing in mental illness, a best-selling writer and a popular social commentator.
LIFE / Travel
Dec 6, 2009

Painting Tokyo red and gold

In times past, some Native Americans believed the autumn colors were made when the Great Hunter finally shot the Bear, whose blood spilled across the landscape in the form of red leaves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 4, 2009

Beyond the cliches you will find Lautrec

The most noticeable thing about the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is not their often lurid colors or the ukiyo-e-influenced compositions. Nor is it their renowned subject matter: the lively, sordid, effervescent world of fin-de-siecle Paris.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2009

The Kremlin's renegade puppet in Chechnya

MOSCOW — Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, recently proposed to Ahmed Zakaev, a leader of the nationalistic and comparatively moderate Chechen opposition, that he return to Chechnya. Kadyrov promised Zakaev amnesty and various positions ranging from director of the local theater to minister...
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2009

East Asian Community primer

Since taking office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has attached importance to East Asia policy and has proposed, in Japan and abroad, his vision for creating an East Asian Community (EAC).
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Dec 1, 2009

Entrepreneur taps his foreign nature

Harry Hill, president of TV shopping channel operator Oak Lawn Marketing Inc., received a lot of discouraging comments from Japanese when he thought about selling the "Billy's Boot Camp" exercise DVDs.
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2009

'Politically binding' budget screening over

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's waste-cutting panel finished its nine-day review of allocations Friday for 447 public works projects in the government's record-high ¥95 trillion budget for fiscal 2010.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 27, 2009

'Black Gaisha ni Tsutometerundaga mo Ore wa Genkai Kamo Shirenai'

Films about Japanese organization men, from bureaucrats to salarymen, have long broadly divided into two categories — the serious ones, that portray work life as a sort of holy war, fought by loyal, self-sacrificing blue-suited soldiers, and the comic, whose characters range from pompous idiots to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2009

The Italian art of making wine and painting

Imagine the colors of a vast Tuscan vineyard drenched in a September sun — emerald green leaves, gnarled brown vines, deep purple grapes, shale earth, azure sky — an artist's inspiration for both palette and palate. For renowned Italian artist Sandro Chia, 63, these Tuscan colors, soaked into the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 27, 2009

A revolution off the record

As the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, hundreds of thousands worldwide were reveling in clubs and arenas to the sounds of records played by their favorite DJs. Little were they to know that in the space of 10 years the record was to become an endangered species.

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