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DRIZZLE/RAIN
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 ...
“The Thief Lord,” Cornelia Funke, The Chicken House; 2002; 345 pp. “Who does this child belong to?” Perhaps this sounds familiar — it’s usually the first question that grownups ask when they find a kid who seems too little to be on his own. ...
“Time Stops For No Mouse,” Michael Hoeye, Puffin Books; 2002; 262 pp. It’s a mouse’s world. Maybe not ours, but the world of Hermux Tantamoq definitely is. It’s populated by villainous rats, busy beavers, pretentious otters and dapper moles. But mice — watchmaker Hermux, ...
“Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident,” Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2002; 288 pp. The risk with sequels is that they don’t always live up to the expectations generated by the first book. But this story is clearly an exception. It’s the same winning formula as ...
“Artemis Fowl,” Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2002; 282 pp. “Stay back, human. You don’t know what you are dealing with.” But the human who hears this warning does know what he’s dealing with — fairies. He wants their gold, and he’s planned out exactly ...
Dividing his massive empire between his sons, Genghis Khan’s grand legacy to the eldest was all the land from the Aral Sea westward “as far as the hooves of Mongol horses have reached.” Under Genghis Khan’s leadership, the tribes of the Central Asian steppes ...
These fuzzy fellas aren’t cute at all. In fact, they often grow to stink. If you’re not careful, they’ll attack your food faster than the class glutton. What are they? Mold spores. If you’ve never seen them close up, you could try leaving your ...
You don’t have to wait until you’re grown up to be counted. In fact, if you’re between 10 and 12 years old, you’re the perfect age to take part in the International Children’s Conference on the Environment. And to start thinking of how to ...
You’d think Greek myths might have lost their relevance by now, almost 3,000 years after they were first written down. But they are so full of vibrant stories and characters that people still often allude to them in their daily lives, and many references ...
Orange flames shoot out from two black-and-white skyscrapers. Airplanes outlined in black head for the buildings from opposing directions. The street below is filled with red cars, sirens on top. Stick figures fall from windows high up; others on the ground wave their arms ...
Toshio Yamanouchi’s job took him to India in 1951 — but it wasn’t simply work that kept him there for the next 25 years. What kept him based in New Delhi and took him traveling all across the subcontinent and Southeast Asia was a ...
Modern monsters seem to have a big image problem. If you’ve seen the new movie “Monsters, Inc.,” you know they’re in trouble because, well — they just aren’t frightening! But it wasn’t always so. The good ol’ classic monsters knew how to scare people ...
Herge was not the first to create comic art. There were many artists who came before him. They all played a part in the evolution of the comic strip as we know it today. But, where did it all really begin? Ancient history You ...