The death toll from a blizzard that hit Hokkaido and the Tohoku region over the weekend has risen to nine, local police said Monday. The latest fatality as of Monday was Kuniko Jingi, 76, who was found collapsed under the snow on a road ...
Sleeping in. Breakfast in bed. Sunny brunches. Strolls in the park. Laid-back afternoon tea. Cocktails at sunset. Decadent late nights. Saturday — the word brings to mind a flurry of images associated with the first day of the weekend and the chances are, they ...
For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes ...
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, ...
Cuba overpowers China, winning 12-0 and advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
IHURU, Maldives — A sudden change in the weather sends staff at the resort on Ihuru Island grappling for the groins. Jetty-like piles of sand-bags that jut out from various parts of the island, these “groins” help lessen the effect of destructive tides. For ...
When Sergiu Comissiona was invited to take over as conductor of the Asian Youth Orchestra in 1993, one of his first concerns was whether he could take the heat. “This is a season when I was normally conducting in the major festivals of Europe ...
PHONSAVAN, Laos — Archaeologist Eiji Nitta dug and scraped. The answer to the puzzle of the giant stone vessels scattered throughout the Plain of Jars in northern Laos lay, he believed, not in their material or their contents, but in what lay under them. ...
PHONSAVAN, Laos — It should be hard to go missing on the Plain of Jars. But hundreds have. Flying into this rural region in northern Laos, one sees lushly blanketed mountains and valleys give way abruptly to an arid expanse of pockmarked browns and ...
VIENTIANE, Laos — While tourists settle at the outdoor eateries along the levee beside the Mekong River to catch another stirring Vientiane sunset, a handful of Laotians nearby gawk equally intently at a middle-aged Caucasian man punching a local youth. Romero Ruiz Ponciano paces ...
TOKAMACHI, Niigata Pref. — Uninformed visitors to Tokamachi might be forgiven for thinking the small, central Niigata Prefecture city has a problem with UFOs. An entertaining explanation for the aerial invasions — reportedly less common in winter when deep snow makes for perilous landing ...
Staff writer Reiko Ishikawa feels worthless, but it has nothing to do with having no boyfriend, disliking her job, or misplacing her Prada handbag. The 27-year-old office worker has just discovered she’s worth a miserly 310,000 yen. “I’m in shock,” she said with a ...
KOFU, Yamanashi Pref. — The home of Yutaka Endo (not his real name) resembles one in a lesser-developed nation. His living room walls are stained where the rain has leaked through cracks; the wind whistles through warped window and door frames. A crack in ...
LEVUKA, Fiji — Thirteen-year-old Una Turaganicolo’s strong, clear voice filled her family’s timber-frame home, rising to the corrugated roof visible through the rafters. Her sister, Rose, hummed along as she battled with her math homework by the light of a flickering candle. Next to ...
Two rather large Fijian tribesmen, wielding clubs once used in tribal wars to smash enemies’ skulls, stand on either side of Yoichi Matsumoto and Kaori Tanaka (not their real names). The young Japanese couple look slightly terrified, but not because of the warriors’ threatening ...
