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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 26, 2009

A re-imagining of Osaka's riverfront

"Tadao Ando Exhibition 2009: The City of Water/Osaka vs. Venice" seems like a fixed fight. Many would even balk at the idea of the match-up.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 26, 2009

Misia changes with charity

I think that you can convey a fact by words, but you can not convey the truth only with those words," says Misia, taking a break from recording sessions in Tokyo's Shibuya district. "And I believe music is what can fill it out."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 26, 2009

How to conjure worlds from the fewest words

One evening in late May, a cozy rehearsal room in Yokohama was more like a drill hall as Mikuni Yanaihara called for another run through a dance scene in her latest play, "Gonin Shimai" ("Five Sisters").
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 24, 2009

Stomach peko peko? Dig into these Japanese food words

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Japanese cuisine is how it stimulates the senses: exquisite presentation, delicious taste, enticing aroma, distinctive texture and unique sound.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 23, 2009

Fans make troupe phenomenon it is

Takarazuka Revue Co., Japan's all-female musical troupe, is a love-it or hate-it theatrical landmark.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 21, 2009

Enoshima: Stepping back into 'old Japan'

Crossing Enoshima Benten Bridge to Enoshima Island in Sagami Bay, 80 km south of Tokyo, I was stopped in my tracks by a pair of mustard-eyed dragons slithering down gray granite lanterns. A man dismounted his bicycle and asked if I needed help. No, only his story, I replied.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 19, 2009

Both Japan, U.S. must improve their 'soft power': experts

The world's two largest economies should reinvigorate their collaborative use of "soft power" to influence other countries as they approach a milestone year in their security alliance, participants said at a recent symposium that included key U.S. commentators on diplomacy.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 19, 2009

Time to speak Jamaican

If you've ever wanted to learn Jamaican patois, it just got a whole lot easier with the launch of an educational CD on which, set to music, is the alphabet and grammar as used in patois, designed to be used as a learning tool, in order to make it easy for anyone, non-Jamaicans and Jamaicans alike, to...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 18, 2009

Ghost of appeasement still haunting EU ties

PRAGUE — One of the fundamental pillars of Europe's political architecture is a strong and enduring belief in the universal validity of equal, universal, and inalienable human rights.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 16, 2009

The all-powerful voice of corporate Japan

Since its founding, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has been the nation's most powerful business lobby and its head is often called "the prime minister of the business world."
JAPAN
Jun 16, 2009

New agency to change policy, culture of consumer affairs

The creation of the Consumer Affairs Agency this fall will transform the way the government operates, focusing on protecting consumers rather than companies, state minister in charge of consumer affairs Seiko Noda said Monday.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Jun 14, 2009

Pierce looking to build on successful first season with Lakestars

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with individuals in the bj-league — Japan's first professional basketball circuit — which wrapped up its fourth season in May. Head coach Bob Pierce of the Shiga Lakestars is the subject of this week's profile. Pierce guided the team to a 19-33...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 13, 2009

A passion for food, cars and aikido

You probably don't know where Ushigome is. Like many areas within Tokyo's Yamanote Line, it is somewhat anonymous — the kind of place where you expect to find nothing of interest and where the local people, as if oblivious to the size of the metropolis around them, shop in tiny old stores. It's the...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009

'Seishin'

Mental illness, as Kazuhiro Soda notes in his documentary "Seishin" ("Mental"), is one of the big taboos of Japanese society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 12, 2009

The first 'Japanese' opera?

Kabuki actor and designated Living National Treasure Sakata Tojuro (b. 1931) stages an opera, for the first time in his career, this month at the New National Theatre.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 10, 2009

The scent of poverty must be just so in Japan

When times are tough, the Japanese get going, or something to that effect. My grandfather always held that as a nation, we were much better at being poor than being rich — "Nihonjinga kane wo motsuto rokunakotoni naranai日本人が金をもつとろくなことにならない, Nothing good comes...
EDITORIALS
Jun 7, 2009

One every 15 minutes

For the last 11 years, one Japanese person has committed suicide every 15 minutes. This suicide rate, compiled by the National Police Agency, means that more than 30,000 suicides occur every year, a third of a million people in a decade. This astonishingly high rate, by far the highest for all developed...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 7, 2009

Kang Sang Jung: Born but not Bred

Kang Sang Jung is one of the most influential ethnically Korean residents of Japan (zainichi). A political science professor at the University of Tokyo, he also gives lectures around the country, is a regular television commentator and has a column in the prestigious weekly current affairs magazine Aera....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2009

Occupation orphan traces roots

For New Yorker Demian Akhan, 60, his recent visit to Japan marked the end of a decades-long journey to discover his roots.
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2009

Refugees having big impact on North society

North Korea may be a hardline communist state, but it hasn't succeeded in eliminating the public's desperate urge for Hollywood entertainment.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 6, 2009

Ancelotti unlikely to last long with Chelsea

LONDON — How wonderful to have been a fly on the wall when Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich discussed with his advisers (whoever they might be) who should succeed Guus Hiddink as manager.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2009

Geithner's 'G-2' invitation

HONG KONG — Some Chinese see U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was in Beijing this week, as a repentant debtor humbly visiting his bank manager. Influential Americans, however, see the visit as the start of a beautiful friendship, perhaps even a tipping point in global finance — the overture...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2009

Striving for a more simple life

The paintings in "The Naxi Lifeworld: Native Painters in Northwestern Yunnan" by Zhang Yunling (b. 1955) and Zhang Chunting (b. 1958) proffer a simple and honest way of life, steeped in the seasons, nostalgia, and the pictographic Dongba script of the Naxi people of China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces....

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