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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Oct 17, 2002

Japan image that resonates

Ichitaro Nakanoshima likes nothing better than to spend the late morning watching videos of old musicals like "Singin' in the Rain."
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2002

Yukio Ninagawa: visionary player on the world's stage

Internationally acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa has staged countless plays in Japan, elsewhere in Asia, and in the United States and Europe.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2002

Pecs, posing and living sculpture

"The main thing I want people to understand is that bodybuilding is the real thing. Bodybuilders are doing what all athletes are doing -- dieting, working out. There are no secrets to it. But, if all people see is a bunch of oiled, near-naked guys striking poses up on stage, they're going to think it's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / THE OKINAWA FACTOR
Sep 14, 2002

Okinawans look to tackle problems on own terms

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. -- Every third Monday, members of an underground community bank gather in a bar in downtown Naha.
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 11, 2002

Odd couples double up for twice the laughs (and tears)

In the 1960s, when I was a child, I imagined life in the far-away West through American movies and from watching TV series like "The Lucy Show" ("I Love Lucy") and "Father Knows Best." Back then, Japan's economy had begun to pick up steam, and through comedy series such as these, people visualized a...
LIFE / Language
Sep 6, 2002

The cultural compromise tango

Our family is cosmopolitan. My marriage is a union of Britain and Japan; my brother's wife is from Colombia; and my sister-in-law's husband is Italian. When cultures come together, life is never boring. But international marriages also need skillful dancers to master the steps of the "cultural compromise"...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 1, 2002

How can we be No. 3?

In a revelation no less stunning than if Mount Everest was suddenly surpassed as the world's tallest mountain or the Nile outstretched as the world's longest river, a July news report announced that Tokyo is no longer the world's most expensive city.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 29, 2002

Fruit bats boiled in milk may be tasty, but . . .

After World War II, the Pacific island of Guam was taken over by the United States military. In the years that followed, a mysterious, debilitating and incurable brain disease struck increasing numbers of the indigenous Chamorro people, hitting the men especially hard.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2002

Slovaks falling victim to EU hypocrisy

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Slovakia is the eastern part of the old Czechoslovakia that left the federation in 1993. It came off worse economically in the break-up, unfairly so, but it won in the geographical carve-up, getting two-thirds of the wine country and above all, the Tatra mountains.
COMMUNITY
Aug 18, 2002

Something in the air: the charged debate over negative ions

Yes, there's definitely something in the air this year -- and it's not just the regular brew of pollutants and particulates.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 17, 2002

Tuning in to Bruno Groening's 'healing stream'

It is a small gathering in central Yokohama one Sunday morning in early August. Around 20 people are sitting in an unusually relaxed position, listening to quiet meditative music.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2002

Janet Klein: past perfect

Janet Klein's ukulele is no gimmick. Nor are her "obscure, lovely and naughty songs from the '10s, '20s and '30s." Klein and her L.A.-based band, The Parlor Boys, are about as real a deal as it gets. More than just fans of phonographs and sepia tone, Klein and company are musical archaeologists, taking...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 8, 2002

UNEP envoy strikes the right eco-chord

Tokiko Kato has been popular in Japan for decades as a singer and songwriter who is passionate about people and the planet. Two years ago, when the Environment Ministry asked her to act as a Special Envoy to the United Nations Environment Program it was a natural fit. Since then she has established herself...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 7, 2002

The Streets: Original Pirate Material

Following hard on the heels of drum 'n' bass, U.K. garage (or two-beat) was already the hippest thing in urban Britain by the time the rest of the world had even heard of it. Critics called it the purest form of dance music since '70s disco, while practitioners made much of its up-from-the-streets credibility,...
COMMUNITY
Jul 30, 2002

JET membership up in numbers, diversity

For the past 15 years, the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program has greatly helped promote Japan's internationalization.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 28, 2002

Putting her house in order

In Japan, the vast majority of legal adoptions -- more than 90 percent -- are of adults and are usually carried out for inheritance or family succession purposes. A house with only daughters, say, will adopt a grown man who can maintain the family business and family name.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 21, 2002

Sailing in the world

Japan's area is less than that of California, though its economic exclusion zone takes in an enormous 4 million sq. km of ocean. The length of the coastline per sq. km of land is second only to Denmark, yet Japan's annual celebration of its partnership with the sea, Umi no Hi (Marine Day), rated hardly...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 21, 2002

On the crest of something big

When you drop from the crest of a vertical wall of water teetering on a narrow piece of fiberglass, the human instinct for survival takes over and there's only primal fear and wild excitement in your heart. The ocean's roar engulfs you, though all seems strangely silent; time freezes, and the gods look...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Jul 17, 2002

Really looking forward to old age

Rock stars can do things us regular folks can't. They can get good tables at crowded restaurants without a reservation. They can have promiscuous sex and take all sorts of exotic drugs and then be knighted by the Queen. And if they're Eikichi Yazawa, they can travel forward in time to visit their future...
EDITORIALS
Jul 12, 2002

Narrow the wage gap

The important fact about Japanese wages today is that pay scales for regular workers have not fallen despite declining prices. This "downward rigidity" in seniority-based wages may be partly responsible for the growing presence of part-time workers and for the nation's persistently high level of unemployment....
COMMENTARY
Jul 12, 2002

Iraq debate moves to the fore

LONDON -- "Where you stand depends on where you sit" goes the old political adage. And this was never more true than in the case of Iraq and what, if anything, should be done about this troublesome tyranny.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2002

Reserved but hardly remote

The June 8 article "A right royal celebration," by former British Ambassador to Japan Sir Hugh Cortazzi, described the Golden Jubilee celebration for Queen Elizabeth II. I was happy to read that the celebration was a great success, that the respect and affection of the British people for the queen were...
COMMUNITY
Jul 4, 2002

The land of the early rising, and setting, sun

The issue of daylight-saving time is back in the news.
COMMENTARY
Jun 23, 2002

Time for redesigning tacky U.S. images

WASHINGTON -- This will, for obvious reasons, be the biggest Fourth of July ever. People who tally such things predict record numbers of flag displays, cookouts and youthful fingers blown off by cherry bombs. Expressions of gung-ho patriotic sentimentality are selling briskly, from Royal Doulton firefighter...
JAPAN
Jun 19, 2002

Youth sex on rise, as are serious infections

Sex education expert Atsuko Yoshida is alarmed by the increasingly decadent lifestyle of youth that has made them more susceptible than ever to sexually transmitted infections.
COMMUNITY
Jun 16, 2002

Building for a rainy day

The most welcome visitor to the Suzuki house is, quite possibly . . . rain. The three-story building on a hillside in Asaka, southern Saitama Prefecture, is like a theater designed for the enjoyment of performances by that most versatile player from the sky, as it dances and sings and soothes on its...
EDITORIALS
Jun 13, 2002

Water, water everywhere?

Water covers about two-thirds of the Earth's surface, but precious little can be used by human beings. Only 2.5 percent -- a veritable drop -- of the world's water is not salty, and two-thirds of that is frozen in the ice caps and glaciers. Of the remaining third, 20 percent is located in remote places,...
JAPAN
Jun 2, 2002

Low-emission vehicle exhibition opens in Tokyo

A two-day exhibition of environment-friendly vehicles opened Saturday in Tokyo, featuring about 100 low-emission vehicles including fuel-cell cars.

Longform

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