In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.
When it comes to gender equality, Japan has never failed to disappoint.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
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, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
For Peter Backhaus's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Road traffic in Japan is a complicated affair. Apart from those narrow, crooked streets that sometimes end without warning, you have to get used to unclear right-of-way rules and the national fetish for backward parking.
If there’s one thing to be sure of in Japan these days, it’s that by the end of the year you will have a prime minister different from the one you started out with. This year was the sixth year in succession to follow ...
“Which new words would you like to see added to the dictionary?” A couple of months ago the publishing house Taishukan put this generous question to Japanese high school and junior high school students. The students, among other oddities, suggested the terms nodaru (野田る), ...
It started with an email from a 20-year-old college student called Emi, who told me she was looking for a Showa umare no dansei (昭和生まれの男性, a man born in Showa, i.e., born before 1989). Next was Norika, a bored housewife in her early thirties ...
As it is every September, people in Japan are looking forward to keirō no hi, the coming national holiday dedicated to the older members of the population. Respect for the Aged Day provides an annual opportunity to visit one’s elderly relatives, get involved in ...
Waiting at the railroad crossing, I couldn’t help but overhear the animated conversation that the two students standing behind me were having. Despite having studied Japanese for more than 10 years, I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. What on earth ...
Heed this safety warning: “Caution! Don’t lean on the gate. The gate would fall down when lean on it. It occurs you trouble.” Having eluded the gate, then follow this health instruction: “The Italian word pomodoro means golden fruit. Tomatoes have vitamin, carotene, potash, ...
