21
CLOUDY
Tokyo Skytree will celebrate its first anniversary Wednesday but has not yet completed its prime mission of reliably broadcasting to households in the capital and its suburbs. Since December, the world’s tallest free-standing tower, at 634 meters high, has been making test broadcasts to ...
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 ...
Could this be the most chilled music festival on Earth? At Rising Sun Rock Festival in Otaru, Hokkaido, no one seems to mind about the mud, the result of typhoon rains that drenched the festival site just hours before kickoff. The staff look like ...
Adam Anderson, Theo Hutchcraft, Hurts Hailing from Manchester, Hurts came prepared on Saturday with some college-level Japanese phrases to pepper their set of dense, luscious electronic pop. Was today’s show your first in Japan? Theo: First ever time. We arrived on Thursday, and it’s ...
Formed in Kobe in 2002, Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs are a postrock band with a difference: melody. Oh sure, the trio’s brutal live shows leave packed audiences around Japan with jaws agape — but they’re also one of those precious few hard-edged live ...
“The positive reaction to what we’re doing right now musically and the emotion coming off the stage has just lit a fire back up,” says Billy Corgan — guitarist, vocalist and sole remaining original member of alternative titans The Smashing Pumpkins. “I haven’t seen ...
“The wonderful thing about being solo is that you can do whatever you like, without asking anyone’s opinion — that’s fun. But as a band there’s camaraderie and you share a common goal. I never get fed up because I can do both.” So ...
With their rudimentary synths, wiry guitar hooks, dazzling fashion and the insane barked vocals of Chica Sato and Hajime Tachibana, Plastics were Japan’s quintessential late 1970s new-wave band, finding fans in contemporaries Devo and The B-52′s. Their re-formation comes as neo wave and nu ...
Parents beware: Hardcore jazz-punk three-piece Midori are back, and this time they’re after your children. “There’s loads of them in the band — more than in Midori — and they’re just screaming and screaming!” says keyboardist Hajime Kato. Nineteen months after our last interview, ...
“L’Arc-en-Ciel is all about the musicianship. But Vamps are obsessed with rock music, and that’s basically our watchword: ‘rock.’ “ Japanese megastar Hyde is weighing up the differences between his two bands. L’Arc-en-Ciel, the multimillion-selling extrovert outfit with whom he rose to fame as ...
In a world of information overload,in which we know what the members of our favorite bands had for breakfast thanks to an endless and unwelcome barrage of mundane information on Twitter, Facebook and a million fetid blogs, thank golly for Soutaiseiriron. The Tokyo four-piece’s ...
Whether it’s a romantic engagement or dinner with friends or colleagues, making an appointment (約束, yakusoku) is a vital part of everyday language in Japan as much as anywhere else. The grammar involved isn’t too taxing, though the vocabulary extends as far as your ...
Mixing emo and hardcore punk styles with a distinctly Japanese rock sound, 9mm Parabellum Bullet have carved themselves quite a niche. The Yokohama four-piece are pretty much fixtures on the major festival circuit, thanks to both their mainstream appeal (their last album charted at ...
Shaw-Han Liem may be proud, but he is not in fact a robot. Or if he is, he’s a robot in disguise; more Bishop from Aliens than R2-D2. A native of Toronto, Ontario, Liem is a one-man outfit who since 2001 has crafted chilled ...