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A monstrous tornado at least 800 meters wide roared through the suburbs of Oklahoma City on Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds of up to 320 kph. At least 91 ...
If you work in an office, you probably spend a fair part of your time sitting at a desk, which, of course, isn’t very healthy. To combat that the Pomodoro technique recommends that you work in intervals with regular breaks — for example, 25 ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
"Outsider art" is relatively new in Japan and, as a genre, works made by self-taught Japanese artists are still not very well known on the category-delineating, label-loving international art scene.
After all these years, Rafael Nadal still knows how to dominate Roger Federer. In the 30th meeting between the two tennis greats, Nadal controlled the final from start to finish to win 6-1, 6-3 Sunday for his seventh Italian Open title. “Rafa was just ...
For Alexander Mackay-smith Iv's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
JAPANESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, by Hugh de Ferranti. Oxford University Press, 2000, 104 pp., $13.95 (cloth) It would be perfectly possible for a foreigner to live in Heisei Japan for quite some time without ever becoming aware that Japan has an original music of its ...
We had been warned in advance. It usually comes at around the age of 11/2, we heard, so at 20 months Alena was, if anything, a little late, but when it came it was with the force of religious conversion. “Alena likes Anpanman,” my ...
Karma works in mysterious ways. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva (Jizo Bosatsu) What karma dictated that Pema Rinzin and Yumyo Miyasaka should meet? They were born thousands of kilometers apart, one a Tibetan exile in India, one in peaceful Okaya, Nagano Prefecture. Yet for the last five ...
‘There is no room for originality in thangka painting,” says Yumyo Miyasaka. “The iconography, the colors, even the way you hold the brush — everything must be done just so.” Self-expression is not the goal here; the pictures are an aid, a tool for ...
During the 10th century, according to legend, there was a blind man called Semimaru who was famed as a biwa (lute) player. Tiring of the stresses of Kyoto life, he moved outside the city and lived by himself in a small house. The aristocratic ...
The atmosphere is gloomy at the Ikebukuro Folkcraft and Antiques Hall. “There’s nothing happening,” says Tokiko Furuta of Tokiwa Antiques, one of the cluster of antique shops in a large hall a few blocks from Tokyo’s Ikebukuro Station. “A lot of people are looking, ...
They’re furry. They’re fun. They’re portable. They’re Japan’s fastest-growing pet craze. Ten years ago they were nowhere on the pet scene; today they edge out rabbits for third place after dogs and cats. They’re ferrets. “Ferrets may be an ideal pet for Japanese apartment ...
“Why would anybody want to keep a snake?” The question is a familiar one to any reptile fancier. Similar questions are put to anyone who ventures outside the familiar confines of conventional companion animals. Why a lizard? Why a fox? Why a monkey? Why ...
It’s Saturday night, and the basement rock ‘n’ roll club Penguin House in Koenji is packed to bursting. As late-coming guests crowd down the stairs, the performer, Dai Yamamoto, takes the stage and tunes up his instrument. “I’m not much for talking,” Yamamoto says. ...
Many observers attribute the steep decline of Japanese traditional music in the 20th century in large part to the fact that Japan’s school system teaches Western music intensively and hogaku almost not at all. That situation is due to change as the Education Ministry ...
For many centuries thrifty housewives have saved odd scraps of cloth and sewn them together to be re-used as patchwork. Their humble recycling ultimately produced the spectacular geometrically patterned quilts that now are valuable collectibles, and today many people around the world pursue patchwork ...
Japan is a country with four seasons. This has long been an accepted fact, and most visitors to the country have been assured of it on numerous occasions. The progress of the seasons is a usual topic of conversation and is always mentioned at ...