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RAIN
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. Now, though, “Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan,” an exhibition on view (through June 30) ...
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 ...
Slowly the nation wakes from its nightmare. Tokyo Disneyland reopens. A semblance of normality returns, at least to areas outside the stricken zone. It’s April. Catastrophe does not stop the cherry trees from blooming; nor can it dampen a certain charged atmosphere that permeates ...
INTO THE LIGHT: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan. Edited by Melissa L. Wender. University of Hawai’i Press, 2011, 226 pp. $22 (paper) The eight stories in this anthology span nearly 60 years, from 1939, when Korea was a resentful and mutinous ...
In spring 1997, the American news magazine Time published a special issue titled “The New Japan.” The subtitle was “A rising generation of risk-takers and rule-breakers is stirring the country from its slumber.” Prominent among the mavericks was a promising young politician named Naoto ...
Something so immense has befallen Japan that it almost defies contemplation, let alone expression. It is a watershed event, shattering lives and the ground they are lived on; challenging also one of the unspoken (and unproven) assumptions underlying civilized life — that konton (混沌, ...
Spring dawns on a shattered Japan. “Not since World War II” is a recurring phrase, and no wonder. Mass destruction accompanied by radiation — what other analogy is big enough? It isn’t perfect, but it does shed some light. Japan then — militarist, statist, ...
There’s a new notion floating around. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: Danshari. Its three kanji characters signify, respectively, refusal, disposal and separation. Prosaically it means cleaning or tidying up, but there are psychological and religious dimensions, deriving in part from yoga, which suggest the ...
Here we go again. “Young people,” frets Sapio magazine, “are rapidly becoming stupid.” They can’t read, can’t calculate, can’t communicate. They have no manners, no ambition, no interest in anything; no consideration for other people, no knowledge of world affairs. New technology enabling instant ...
Pop culture. Japan’s today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players. It’s a new role for this once introverted, quietly workaholic nation. As recently as the 1980s, “culture” in Japan meant, if not corporate culture, then ...
“Kimi to kekkon shitai (君と結婚したい, I want to marry you). Hontō ni (本当に, really).” The girl grins. “Look at me. I’ve got braces on my teeth.” Peter is disconcerted — not at the braces but at her refusal to ma ni ukeru (真に受ける, take ...
Only our descendants will know for sure, but we may be witnessing something not seen in the world since the slow demise of ancient Egypt — a nation expiring of natural causes. Nations, unlike people, are potentially immortal. When they die, it’s usually violently. ...
“When these sugi (杉, cedars) were umareta (生まれた, born), if that’s the word,” says Mayumi, “Japan was in its Jōmon Jidai (縄文時代, Jomon Period, c. 10,000 B.C.-c. 300 B.C.). Before bunmei (文明, civilization), before nōgyō (農業, agriculture), before sensō (戦争, war) — before almost ...
In April, much of the world ground to a halt. No one not an expert in such matters could have foreseen it, maybe not even Paul the psychic octopus. Nothing more remote from our overflowing cup of concerns and anxieties could have been imagined ...