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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“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, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
Uber-cool magazine Tokion has been investigating the cutting edge of creative subcultures for almost 10 years. Having started as a Japanese/English bilingual culture magazine in 1996, it now has separate editions in each language and a cult following on both sides of the Pacific. ...
Message in a boutique Eijiro Nakatani and Masayoshi Tobita are perhaps Japanese fashion’s fastest rising stars. But this artistic design duo doesn’t make dresses or denim, their e.m. brand specializes in jewelry. With their creations being stocked by the prestigious Paris boutique Colette, the ...
“Lean forward a little!” Snap-snap-snap! “Give me a bit more cleavage — and smile — lovely!” Snap-snap-snap! It’s my first ever piece of undercover reporting, and I am in a brightly lit studio photographing a 19-year-old girl in a skimpy bikini. It might feel ...
It used to be that Japanese consumers tended not to spend a great deal on their homes. Over the last decade or so, however, that has changed, and firms like Bals Corporation have proved extremely successful at selling the notion of home improvement to ...
F is for flamboyant Ostentatious interior offerings at the refitted salon of Fendi Omotesando The twin F’s of the Fendi logo used to stand for “fabulous furs,” but since the Milanese furrier launched its interior line, it could also be interpreted as “flamboyant furnishings.” ...
“Why don’t you write about the kimono boom?” they said, citing anecdotal evidence suggesting that the traditional gown of Japan was making a comeback. So, with several people at The Japan Times claiming they’d seen “a lot” of people wearing them recently, off I ...
It’s a dog-eat-dog world down in Harajuku, where fickle fashion consumers abandon the old for the new as a matter of course and finding a successful formula for retail business success is often a case of trial and error. The landscape of this peculiar ...
Where did all the gyaru (trashy girls) go? With their carroty tans, shoveled-on makeup and bleached hair, the kogaru (high gals), ganguro (black faces) and yamamba (ogresses) were a style phenomenon the likes of which may never be seen again. Though a few stragglers ...
It’s not often that I get to write about a shop that really gets me excited, but Colour By Numbers pushes more than a few of my buttons. It debuted in Daikanyama two weeks ago, one year to the day after the opening of ...
The Japanese fashion business is abuzz with the news that the six-week-long Tokyo Collections event that has forever been largely ignored by the international media is to be compressed into a government-backed, 10-day industry showcase staged in the grounds of Meiji Shrine in Tokyo’s ...
In 1958, at the tender age of 21, Yves Saint Laurent took over the reins at the venerable couture house of Dior. From the outset hailed as a genius, then touted as no less than the savior of the French fashion industry, YSL is ...
Tokyo is famed for its haphazard layout, with tatty old two-story structures nestling up against ultra-modern constructions, and areas seemingly designated for one type of business that are punctuated by anomalous residential or industrial premises. Interior-design product retailer hhstyle.com’s glass-and-steel flagship store is a ...