The death toll from a blizzard that hit Hokkaido and the Tohoku region over the weekend has risen to nine, local police said Monday. The latest fatality as of Monday was Kuniko Jingi, 76, who was found collapsed under the snow on a road ...
Sleeping in. Breakfast in bed. Sunny brunches. Strolls in the park. Laid-back afternoon tea. Cocktails at sunset. Decadent late nights. Saturday — the word brings to mind a flurry of images associated with the first day of the weekend and the chances are, they ...
For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes ...
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Cuba overpowers China, winning 12-0 and advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
“There are just tons of bands in Melbourne, and I think there is a bit of a chip on the shoulder that too many of them are going unrecognized.” So says Wally De Backer, aka Gotye. The Belgian/Australian sampling guru’s second album, “Like Drawing ...
Founded in 1987 by all-girl rock band Show-ya, Naon no Yaon is a festival dedicated to female artists — although anyone expecting a kind of Japanese version of American chick-rock festival Lilith Fair will either be very disappointed or very pleased to learn that ...
Words from the lexicon of visual arts have often been applied to the world of music, from the way 1960s British Mod band The Creation described their music as “red, with purple flashes” to the way modern electronic and ambient music is often described ...
If there is one man you wouldn’t normally associate with the slick, materialistic 1980s, it would be Gruff Rhys, frontman of shaggy-haired psychedelic popsters Super Furry Animals. So you’d be forgiven a quick double-take on your first listen to Neon Neon’s “Stainless Style,” a ...
All-girl instrumental three-piece Nisennenmondai shook the Tokyo underground scene with the release of the mini album “Sore de Souzo Suru Neji” in 2004. They quickly gained a reputation as one of the hottest new bands in Japan for the way they combined elements of ...
Formed in Hiroshima in 2001, moving to Tokyo in 2003 and hitting the big time in 2006, Perfume are an idol-pop phenomenon, notable for how their music combines elements of house and electro with a futuristic, Akihabara-friendly image. “Fan Service ~ Prima Box” showcases ...
“Cod sperm sacs, I had that,” muses James Murphy, multitalented record producer, DJ, founder of New York’s DFA Records and mastermind behind dance-punk phenomenon LCD Soundsystem. Apparently, despite averaging two or three trips a year to Japan, the country — in particular its restaurants ...
Comprising Japanese bassist Mariko Doi and British guitarist Tony Wade, Levelload have a mixed cultural background. But their sound is largely drawn from Anglo-American punk-rock tradition, with the spiky Britpop melodies of Elastica and the sultry garage blues of The Kills, combined with Mariko’s ...
Not so much a band as the solo work of multi-instrumentalist Tatsuya Namai, Apartment is a bedroom-pop act with a DIY ethos. With its cheap-sounding production and instruments constantly on the brink of going out of tune, “Sparkle Bicycle” harks back to 1980s U.K. ...
“Originally we wanted to record it as a psychedelic jam session, but in the end we just couldn’t help writing tunes,” says British Sea Power vocalist Yan (born Scott Wilkinson) of the making of their third (and arguably best) album, “Do You Like Rock ...
