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Farmers in the city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, have begun planting rice in a district once designated a no-go zone because of radioactive fallout ejected by the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Recently I was asked to write a blurb for a new liquid plant-nutrient. As soon as I saw the name of the product, 早根早起 （Hayane Hayaoki), I smiled at this example of linguistic creativity.
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night with her ethno-inspired flute and drum tune “Only Teardrops,” despite tough competition from spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Juries and television viewers across Europe awarded the barefoot, ...
One team’s quest for a first title has ended. The other team’s fight will continue next season. The Yokohama B-Corsairs outplayed the Rizing Fukuoka in Sunday’s bj-league championship game, controlling the tempo for larger stretches and making enough timely baskets to fill an instructional ...
Former longtime Japan resident Dave Wiggins, who was a sports columnist and television analyst in Tokyo, is now a sports writer based in Vero Beach, Florida. He contributes a bi-monthly column on the North American sports scene to The Japan Times. Wiggins, who was a TV sportscaster in Hawaii for several years prior to his time in Japan, is known for his keen observations and acerbic wit. In 2006 he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Foreign Sportswriters Association of Japan.
For Dave Wiggins's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
After me, the deluge. For some reason, when NBA center Jason Collins recently became the first active player in any of the big four American sports to announce he was gay, that famous line uttered by France’s King Louis XV immediately popped into MAS’ ...
One cool thing about being an old coot like MAS is that when Hollywood cranks out a historic docudrama, you often remember experiencing the event portrayed first-hand. So it is with “42″ — the movie about Jackie Robinson breaking the big league color barrier ...
It’s time once more for NFL personnel honchos to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” In other words, the pro football draft will be taking place shortly. And much like 8-year olds at a birthday party playing that ageless blindfold game, team mucky-mucks ...
The Dodgers MLB franchise sure has a way of breaking the hearts of towns that love them. First, back in 1957, “Dem Bums” — as they were then-affectionately known — jilted Brooklyn and split for the riches of Los Angeles. To this day, Brooklynites ...
Terry Collins’ second year as skipper of the New York Mets promises to go a lot smoother than his soph season at the helm of the Orix Buffaloes back in 2008. You’ll recall early in that second campaign with the Buffs, Collins resigned abruptly ...
The American media recently made a big to-do over Michael Jordan turning 50. Among noted outlets, Sports Illustrated devoted the greater part of an issue to His Airness. And ESPN the Magazine likewise allocated huge space to the beginning of Mike’s sixth decade on ...
Mike Piazza, the former Los Angeles Dodger and New York Met great, hit more home runs (427) than any other catcher in MLB history. Piazza’s .308 career batting average is third among catchers all-time; his 1,335 RBIs are third-best for any backstop. And Mike ...
Howie Long, NFL analyst on Fox TV, said it best: The second weekend of this season’s playoffs will go down as a landmark in pro football history. It will be remembered as the point in time when the pros were forced to recognize their ...
Back when all the MLB teams could be found east of the Mississippi River and north of Virginia, baseball junkies used to get their offseason fixes by sitting around yakking about downtime big league happenings — recent trades, news items, gossip and the like. ...
To all those who say Manny Pacquiao is finished because of his recent knockout loss, MAS says “Hogwash!” Manny hasn’t lost “it”. What he definitely needs to lose, though, is his humongous, concentration-sapping entourage. Those myriad hangers-on, just as much as the perfect storm ...
MAS felt quite guilty seated on press row at a recent Charlotte-Portland NBA contest, courtesy of the home team Bobcats. You could even say he was on a literal guilt trip that had taken him across three U.S. state lines to North Carolina’s Queen ...
Notre Dame’s “luck of the Irish” this football season has in turn brought good fortune to all non-partisan college grid fans. Getting every break in the book helped propel the Fighting Irish to an unbeaten record and a berth in the BCS national title ...