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COMMUNITY
May 21, 2000

Monkey mugs teacher juggling long way home

After eight months traveling in Asia, Leslie Davis is back in Japan for 2 1/2 weeks. She is using this time "to get grounded": sorting out taxes and boxes, seeing friends and reorganizing her backpack for the next stage of her journey. This will take her through Indonesia to Australia, New Zealand...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 21, 2000

Dreams come true

Today I am happy to tell you about one of this column's most successful accomplishments. It began last October when I received a heartfelt letter from Chip Bozek, a teacher in Hokkaido. He wanted to find someone who could give him a "chonmage" haircut like the old-time samurai wore. He had asked his...
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 20, 2000

New made old, old new at Manabiya

I waited for the performance to begin, sitting amid the audience of 30 people or so, packed into the ground-floor room of a new building in the sprawling, nondescript suburbs of Yokohama.
CULTURE / Stage
May 20, 2000

Still shining after all these years

May is the month of the Dankikusai (Danjuro-Kikugoro Festival) at the Kabukiza in Tokyo's Ginza, commemorating the outstanding achievements of Danjuro Ichikawa IX and Kikugoro Onoe V, the two giants of kabuki theater in the Meiji Era.
JAPAN
May 18, 2000

Emperor meets Russian patriarch

The Emperor met with visiting Russian Patriarch Alexiy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the Imperial Household Agency said.
COMMUNITY
May 17, 2000

A city of two tales

BEIJING Close to sunset, the Chinese national flag above Peach Garden School cast a long shadow on the muddy ground. Thirteen-year-old Li Jianrou, the daughter of migrant workers from Hebei, still lingered with friends in their ramshackle classroom. A peek into her home, just a minute away, soon reveals...
LIFE / Digital
May 17, 2000

Webby winners for 2000

SFMOMA Webby Prizefor Excellence in Online Art Entropy8Zuper (www.entropy8zuper.org)
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
May 17, 2000

Flurry of fast food

www.mcspotlight.orgThe first revolution the world eagerly followed the Americans into after World War II went largely unnoticed as a revolution. But perhaps even more than the Internet, fast food has allowed hundreds of millions of people to drastically alter their lifestyles. Now when we discuss the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 17, 2000

Multi-gap family falls into valley of stress

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
JAPAN
May 16, 2000

Japan to push Balkan peace as chair of Okinawa summit

Japan intends to step up its efforts to promote peace and stability in Southeast Europe in an effort to become a leader in the field of conflict prevention as the chair of July's Group of Eight summit in Okinawa, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Monday.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
May 16, 2000

Blood and gore all over the floor

"Everyone thought I'd fallen on some broken glass by accident. But . . . I just couldn't stand myself anymore, so I went behind the amps with this piece of broken glass, having decided to cut my jugular vein. I just didn't have the guts, though . . . I was aiming for the vein, but I just couldn't make...
CULTURE / Art
May 14, 2000

Triumph or disaster in Trafalgar Square

LONDON -- The jury for Trafalgar Square was still out when Prue Leith got stuck in her traffic jam. The debate had shifted elsewhere, to other public art projects that had similarly raised hackles or won praise, like Anthony Gormley's "Angel of the North." This 20-meter-high statue erected in 1997 above...
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2000

Era of abundance sparks religious revival

WASHINGTON -- American history abounds with apparent contradictions, but few loom as large as this: We are a people wedded simultaneously to materialism and spirituality, mostly (though not exclusively) religious. In a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans said religion is "very important" in their...
CULTURE / Art
May 13, 2000

Tate residency builds a cultural bridge

Johnnie Walker, a self-declared champion of the avant-garde, has made big strides through the Tokyo art scene. For many years Walker, through his foundation Za Moca, has made it his purpose to support artists in various ways, from monthly parties to celebrate artists exhibiting in Tokyo, through accommodation...
COMMENTARY / World
May 12, 2000

Malaysia's Islamists counting on Chinese to tip balance of power

KOTA BAHRU, Malaysia -- Malaysia's opposition theocratic Islamic Party (PAS) sees Chinese support as crucial to its bid to head an alternative broad-based multiracial coalition party capable of taking over the federal government of Malaysia in future, and is working very hard to dispel their fears of...
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2000

The ADB finds itself in the maelstrom

"Globalization is killing poor people!"
LIFE / Travel
May 11, 2000

Firing up Fukuoka's hippest corner

FUKUOKA -- A long feature on Fukuoka in a recent issue of Toyo Keizai magazine examined three different areas that represent development in the city. Two of these, the reclaimed land of Momochi, and the city's historic Kawabata area, have seen much growth in the last 10 years, boosted by giant government-funded...
COMMENTARY / World
May 7, 2000

European sports play by their own rules

It is said that the military is always prepared to fight the last war and never the next. In the economic domain the same is true of politicians, who are generally at least a generation or two out of date. In Britain in 1913, there were 1.3 million miners, meaning that almost one in 10 men were working...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 7, 2000

All good things

Here is good news for all Kenny Endo fans, and if you aren't a fan you will be once you attend one of his performances. Kenny is a master of the taiko. Most of you know that taiko is drum, and then there is "odaiko," a huge drum. In general, taiko is to drum like the tea ceremony is to a tea bag. It...
CULTURE / Art
May 5, 2000

Swimming 'Sea Monkeys' and rolling digital mice

Sometimes you just get lucky. That, better than anything else, works for me as the reason why the unfocused, gadget-dependent and low-tech exhibition "New Media New Face/New York" manages, against the odds, to end up being a fairly good show.
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2000

U.S. foreign policy overlooks democratic progress in Asia

ROBERT A. MANNING Special to The Japan Times KUALA LUMPUR A series of fascinating recent displays of democracy entrenching itself in East Asia imply an important critique of, and profound lessons for, U.S. foreign policy, making that question a central one. Yet with the notable exception of Taiwan's...
JAPAN
May 4, 2000

Divisions run deeper on Constitution Day

Activists from the left and right of the political spectrum staged rallies Wednesday as Japan observed its 53rd Constitution Day, coinciding with an increase in interest in the document because of the establishment of Diet panels to study its revision.
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
May 4, 2000

Threads of culture weave picture of a wider world

One of the great paradoxes of world travel (especially that which is slow and makes intimate contact with the peoples of other lands) is that the traveler returns with a greater appreciation of what is valuable and troubled in her own native land. Talking with fabric artist and mother Keiko Haraguchi,...
JAPAN
May 3, 2000

Ministry aims to double number of foreign tourists

The Transport Ministry will implement a tourism promotion plan beginning April 2001 that aims to increase visitors from 4.44 million to 8 million by around 2007, ministry officials said Tuesday.
LIFE / Travel
May 3, 2000

Historic city is picture perfect

A tattered red lantern swings back and forth on a rusty hook outside Densuke, a small, family-run pub-restaurant on Shiokaze Street. The name of the street means salt breeze, and inside Densuke a gregarious, decidedly "salty" bunch of customers sit on sagging tatami mats whose surfaces, like rough hessian,...
COMMENTARY
May 1, 2000

Racism and human rights

LONDON -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's recent remarks suggesting that many foreigners in Japan are criminals and could cause trouble in a time of crisis have inevitably aroused fears abroad that Japanese rightwing politicians are continuing to pander to popular prejudice and have their eyes on re-election...
COMMUNITY
Apr 30, 2000

'English Patience' thickens plots

I found Yukichi Arai eating fruit sherbet in the lobby of the Tokyo Station Hotel. It was hot, I agreed, whereupon he ordered another. After four days sitting in a booth at the Tokyo Book Fair at Tokyo Big Site, promoting his book (titled in "katakana" as "English Patience"), he felt the world deserving...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2000

A century of Japanese-style painting

"Glue painting?" Rather unattractive.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 29, 2000

Mission to preserve and protect

Official art criticism has a long history in Japan. The Heian Imperial Court and the Muromachi and Tokugawa shogunates all had staffs of experts to classify, authenticate and evaluate works of art. Many famous artists doubled in this capacity, and not a few emperors and shoguns were known for their critical...

Longform

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