19
M/CLOUDY
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto aims to retract his remark that U.S. servicemen in Okinawa should use its adult entertainment industry to avoid committing sex offenses.
Sapporo is Hokkaido’s gateway, its administrative capital and by far its largest city, with a population fast approaching 2 million. It sprawls across a huge plain just inland from the mouth of the Ishikari River, and from it a highway network extends outward looking ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
It may seem perverse to express nostalgia for a category of mental illness, but many sufferers, as well as some psychiatrists, regret the passing of “manic depression.” STRICTLY BIPOLAR, by Darian Leader. Penguin, 2013, 112 pp., £5 (paperback) My brother, Archie, was diagnosed with ...
Getting slapped by a a coach has always been, as far as I could see, simply another aspect of sports training in Japan.
For Roland Kelts's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Clubbing in Japan is a kick. The country’s zeal for global pop trends and its prominent club scene draws big-name DJs and performers from the international circuit. Japan’s hodgepodge approach to urban planning means that clubs seem to blossom nearly anywhere — in the ...
Pre-flight shopping at Narita airport a couple of weeks ago, I passed a mannequin sporting a light-blue necktie and a turquoise wig with pig tails dangling down to its mini skirt. The vision spoke volumes: It was Hatsune Miku, of course, Japan’s holographic, animated ...
The first question after a panel I once chaired at an anime convention in the United States sounded innocent enough. “So, what do you guys think about Crunchyroll?” The response was ferocious. A veteran staff member of a top U.S. anime distributor seized the ...
On her own, Japanese pop superstar Hatsune Miku can’t sing. Nor can she rap, dance or DJ. She is drug- and alcohol-free because she can’t indulge in either, and she can’t have affairs or engage in offstage shenanigans fit for YouTube scandals or tabloid ...
Who guitarist and composer Pete Townshend originally wanted to call his memoir, “Pete Townshend: Who He?” His publisher, HarperCollins, settled on the less cheeky, more digestible, “Who I Am” — though a better title might be: “Who I Was.” Townshend has long been rock ...
I first met The Who’s Pete Townshend 10 years ago at a hotel near his home in London for an interview. He entered the first-floor suite energetically. When he sat down, his crossed legs bounced with barely contained passion in response to each question. ...
After Dark by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin. Knopf, 2007, 208 pp., $22.95 (cloth) If New York is the city that never sleeps, Tokyo is the city of sleepless souls — or so it appears in the cinematic narrative of “After Dark,” among ...
Japan’s vast hoard of war booty known as Yamashita’s Gold was long thought to be buried in caves in the Philippines. But in their book ‘Gold Warriors,’ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave sensationally claim that the treasure trove was secretly recovered — and continues to ...
From behind a wooden lectern in Princeton University’s Department of East Asian Studies last month, 85-year-old Tokio Tobita, a Japanese World War II veteran and convicted war criminal who served 10 years in Sugamo Prison, surveyed the intently focused faces of scholars, artists, students, ...
1997-99 He woke to the sound of a prerecorded voice booming from the nationalists’ minitruck rolling through their neighborhood, making the windows rattle. Shirtless on the tatami, his bare back pressed to the ribbed weave, he heard the voice as part of his dream ...
Haruki Murakami is Japan’s most important and internationally acclaimed living writer. “Norwegian Wood,” his fourth novel, has sold more than 2 million copies since it was published in 1987. His latest, “Kafka on the Shore,” has sold more than 200,000 copies since its publication ...
“Sure, we want to be famous,” Coldfeet’s chanteuse, Lori Fine, says a little defensively in the faux tavern environs of Shibuya’s TGIFridays, stabbing at a half-eaten pizza quesadilla. Fine is a former model and has the effortless poise and posture of one — minus ...