20
SUNNY
Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place. The case concerns a 43-year-old ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“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, ...
Guitarist Dustin Wong hesitates for a split second. It’s a pause that would go unnoticed during most other sets, but Wong has spent the last 40 minutes seemingly in a trance while playing guitar and looping the notes via an array of pedals in ...
Tim Duncan saves the day as the Spurs hold off the Grizzlies in overtime
Daniel Kelly’s immaculate central Kyoto atelier is empty upon arrival, but soon the artist comes bounding in, extending warm greetings before leading a quick tour of the two-floor studio-living quarters. Then we’re off again, dashing around the corner to check out his kura (warehouse)-cum-art ...
Although oceans cover 73 percent of the surface of the Earth, little is known about marine plant and animal biodiversity. To learn more about their future prospects for this special coverage of COP10 in Nagoya, The Japan Times spoke with Francois Simard, an expert ...
Don’t know your MOP from your COP? You’re not alone. United Nations conferences are awash with organizational and procedural monikers containing more letters than a Welsh train station sign. The following is a primer on COP10 acronyms; learn them all and you just might ...
Key data drawn from numerous quoted sources here succinctly suggest the enormous range of problems and issues facing delegates to COP10 — and the world. Overview * Current extinction rates are between 100 and 1,000 times higher than the “background rate” shown in the ...
The cartoon character adorning ads and menus for the Kyoto restaurant Le Table de Thierry, it turns out, is a pretty good approximation of the owner himself: an upbeat, grande-size French-Togolese chef with a passion for demystifying French cuisine. Thierry Houngues, 51, was born ...
Knowing Japanese troops had caused the deaths of her father’s parents and siblings in World War II, Japan was about the last place Ha Thi Thanh Nga expected to end up. Today — some 30 years after arriving here as a refugee — Nga, ...
When Osaka-based entrepreneur Ray Kruger, 60, takes a break from a 70-hour work week to reminisce, his stories command attention. He explains about the haunted Buddhist temple he owns in the mountains near Kameoka, Kyoto Prefecture, a 440-year-old registered national treasure still used for ...
American author Paul Auster once called translators “the shadow heroes of literature,” who have enabled us to understand that we all live in one world. He could also be describing Juliet Winters Carpenter, 61, one of the best-known literary translators from Japanese to English, ...
Tania Luiz is a rare woman able to provoke hoots and screeches in a room packed with girls — and she does it all with her torso. The Osaka-based Portuguese belly dancing teacher and performer is profiting from a recent surge of interest in ...
Upon meeting Michi Ogawa, who is deftly aligning the collar of a kimono that she has tucked around her guest, a few adjectives might come to mind, like “graceful” and “soft-spoken,” but “feminist” or “outspoken” probably wouldn’t be among them. But speak with her ...
In a diminutive wooden house tucked behind the tile-topped white walls surrounding Tenryuji Temple, a World Heritage site in Kyoto’s Arashiyama district, lives Henry “Seisen” Mittwer, 91, a Japanese-American Buddhist priest, author, ikebana and ceramic artist. On a recent midwinter afternoon, as unseen tourists ...
Imagine this: An Indian diplomat in London churns out his first novel during a two-month hiatus before his next posting. The novel becomes an international best-seller and is translated into 42 languages. Before the book is even printed it has been optioned for a ...