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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / Chef’s Table
Jul 16, 2023

Grace Choy: Japan is so close, yet so far, from authentic Chinese cuisine

It might be an impossible task to teach everyone in Japan that Chinese cuisine isn’t just greasy fried rice and oily wontons.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 17, 2022

On Chiba's coast, a secret herb garden thrives

Hiromi Sasaki left her life in Osaka and Tokyo behind. Her new one? Grown straight from the soil of the Boso Peninsula.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 3, 2022

They fell deeply in love in Bucha. One Russian bullet ended it all.

Iryna Abramova has lost almost everything: her husband, her home, three of her four pets; her life savings, in cash, turned to ash.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health / FOCUS
Apr 29, 2021

Her prophecy of an Australian inferno was proven right

Climate change is a politically charged issue in much of the world. But the debate is especially heated in Australia.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Dec 26, 2020

20 Questions: The best answers of 2020

The 20 Questions format aims to get people in Japan to tell us about their thoughts and beliefs in their words. Here are some of the most interesting answers from 2020.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 14, 2020

'Shape of Red' shows what Japanese women really want

Yukiko Mishima addresses the dangers of traditional gender roles with her latest film, 'Shape of Red,' adapted from a Rio Shimamoto novel.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 13, 2019

On migrants and belonging

There are some strategies by which Japanese and foreign advocates for migrants can argue for their rights to work and belong in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 4, 2019

'The Forest of Wool and Steel': Music and nature intertwine to paint a portrait of growth — review

Natsu Miyashita's 'The Forest of Wool and Steel' is a mesmerizing reading experience, a slow journey in how one young person renders an occupation into a vocation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 26, 2018

The Protestant ethic and Carlos Ghosn

For many in Tokyo, the news about Carlos Ghosn was a shock but not a surprise.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 1, 2018

A creative force in a concrete jungle: Architect's Tokyo project draws on love and improvisation

Sandwiched between old residential apartments in the capital's central Minato Ward is the Arimaston Building, an eccentric collage of individually patterned concrete slabs piled upon each other as if by happenstance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jan 7, 2018

Much for Japan Times Community readers to crow and squawk about in year of the rooster

A selection of unpublished letters about Community stories from the first half of 2017.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / The Big Questions
Nov 20, 2017

Gender equality critical for Japanese economic success

'I've never been one of those people who's had a passion for Japan since childhood, like some people in Europe,' smiled Helene von Reis, president and CEO of Ikea Japan K.K. Queried by The Japan Times about when the country 'first appeared on her radar,' she let out a hearty laugh. 'Actually, when I was first asked the question, 'Would you like to go work in Japan?''
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / How the visual arts shaped Japan's modern literature
Nov 4, 2017

Natsume Soseki's Pre-Raphaelite dreams

In 1900, the future novelist Natsume Soseki — then a scholar of English literature — arrived in London to commence two years of study abroad. Back in Japan, his best friend, the renowned haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, had — as explained in the first installment of this series — adopted the painterly...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Sep 9, 2017

Kano Ozawa breathes fresh air into opera direction in Turin

In the Roman amphitheater of Verona, Italy, the elephants and horses in ancient Egyptian regalia marched onto stage to the thunderous chords of Guiseppe Verdi's opera "Aida." The singers filled the balmy night with their voices, soaring over the trumpets and crashing cymbals of the orchestra — and...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 13, 2017

Reconstructing the Japanese house

After very successful runs in Rome and London, "The Japanese House: Architecture and Life after 1945," an exhibition of maquettes, photographs, plans and drawings, is now in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 17, 2017

The extraordinary untold Japan story of 'You Only Live Twice'

On the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the fifth 'James Bond' film in Japan, we explore spy rings in Tokyo, a secretive Sherlock Holmes society and an Australian double agent behind 007's Japanese adventure.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 24, 2016

Shizuoka: Where writers go to hide from the world

Ask a Japanese person which part of Japan they most associate with writer Lafcadio Hearn and they are likely to instantly respond: Matsue, a seaside town in Shimane Prefecture.
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 6, 2016

Immigration: the missing piece in the Tohoku recovery puzzle?

Entrepreneurship, reconstruction and tourism still may not be enough to save rapidly depopulating Onagawa.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Dec 30, 2015

Fortuitous move to bullpen led Barnette to majors

The last game pitcher Tony Barnette ever started for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows came against the Chunichi Dragons on March 8, 2011, during spring training. Barnette had already had one life-altering moment that spring — he'd proposed to now-wife Hillary before leaving Arizona for Japan — and, though...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS / OLYMPIC NOTEBOOK
Jun 20, 2015

Clarke’s legendary records still resonate 50 years later

Nearly three weeks after American sprinter Henry Carr's passing, another iconic runner from the 1964 Tokyo Games has passed away.
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jul 19, 2014

House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

Yasunari Kawabata's novella "House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories" is one of his finest works. It is primarily concerned with the connections between the youth and old age, sex, death, life and memory.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Nov 1, 2013

Writer, translator, yoga instructor finds inspiration in 'the voices that history silences'

Leza Lowitz has shared the worlds of kamikaze pilots and their last letters to their families, published lesbian writings by contemporary Japanese poets, specifically sought out Ainu writers, and journeyed into the mind of Japan's foremost modernist poet, Nobuo Ayukawa.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 9, 2013

A friend to kanji learners worldwide

Mary Sisk Noguchi helped readers unravel the complexities of Chinese characters, adding an element of fun to a process often fraught with frustration for many learners of Japanese.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 8, 2013

Yoga teacher finds creative voice — and success — in 'surreal' Tokyo

While hammering nails and cutting planks in the prop department at New York's Lincoln Center for the Metropolitan Opera in the early 2000s, Barry Silver never dreamed of a life in Japan.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 5, 2013

Dai Tamesue: Japan's 'samurai hurdler' keeps rising to new challenges

Though word-class track athlete Dai Tamesue may have hung up his spikes, he has plenty of insights to share on how sports can play a bigger role in society.
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 11, 2011

The Scot who shaped Japan

This coming Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, marks the centenary of the death in his opulent home in the Shiba Park area of Tokyo's central Azabu district of the Scottish-born trader Thomas Blake Glover, who became the first foreigner ever decorated by the Japanese government when he was awarded the Order of the...
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Film mines rich seams of history

Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 10, 2010

Of Charisma Men and Western Women

Last month, The Japan Times invited readers to send in their thoughts on "Charisma Man," originally a comic strip that ran from 1998 in The Alien, a Nagoya-based magazine, but lately something of a byword for the stereotypical nerdy Western guy with the beautiful Japanese girlfriend.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 27, 2010

Battered Briton survives aikido ordeal

At the end of February, a group of international students graduated from the Tokyo-based Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo, one of the most intensive martial arts training centers in the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Feb 9, 2010

'Otaku' turns passion for collecting into gold mine

Danny Choo, a Tokyo-based computer programmer and entrepreneur, calls himself a full-time "otaku."

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake