AP A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this ...
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
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, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
It’s 4 a.m. and I wake up on a beach on the Sinai Peninsula of eastern Egypt. The moon has set and the mountains of Saudi Arabia just 18 km away across the Gulf of Aqaba are silhouetted against the stars. The camel I ...
“My first child was born on December 27th, 1839, and I at once commenced to make notes on the first dawn of the various expressions which he exhibited.” It will come as no surprise to many readers that this is a quote from the ...
I’ve been thinking about sex in space. Not from any interest in a potential new porn genre, or because I’ve got a chance of joining the 62-mile-high club any time soon. No, my concerns are loftier even than that: I’m worried about the future ...
Next time I visit Kyoto, it’s not the temples I’ll want to see — it’s the monkeys. On the slopes of Mount Arashiyama in Kyoto Prefecture is Iwatayama Monkey Park, home to some 150 wild Japanese macaques. The park also plays host to scientists ...
We are constantly under attack. Chemicals in the environment, ultraviolet light, even cosmic radiation — our DNA is bombarded 24/7 by agents that can cause damage and mutations. But don’t take my word for it. “It is estimated that a single cell in mammals ...
In this month’s column, we solve the mystery of the emergence of modern human culture. As a bonus, there’s a bit of good news for Tokyoites — and for those of us who may worry that success is solely down to brainpower. After I ...
As office workers all over Japan tuck into their lunchtime katsudon (pork cutlet with rice), I’m sure many of them joke about the H1N1 swine flu that threatened to become a pandemic (an epidemic affecting a large region). At the time of writing, the ...
When robot history comes to be written, April 2009 will occupy a prominent place. Future robots will look back, perhaps with pride, at the events of this month. A robot has been created that has, for the first time, independently advanced scientific knowledge. We’ve ...
If you believe everything you read about the health-giving properties of the traditional Japanese diet — and if you were to eat traditionally every day — you might expect to live to at least 150, in rude health. Maybe one day, and maybe soon ...
Last week, a 33-year-old woman in California made headlines around the world when she gave birth to eight babies. She had been on fertility treatment and, it emerged, already had six children. The story sparked an outcry over the ethics of giving fertility treatment ...
