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 ...
This year, 2009, is a double anniversary of particular relevance for this column. It is both the 200th anniversary of the birth of the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-82), and also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, “On the Origin ...
In Chinese astrology, rats are said to hunger for power and to be unpredictable, and in 2008 — a Year of the Rat — both those characteristics were clearly in evidence. What with the financial crisis that is changing the established order of things, ...
* Japanese name: Namazu * Scientific name: Silurus asotus * Description: The most common catfish in Japan, not to be mistaken for the mythical giant catfish god of the same name (Namazu) who is reputed to live in mud deep under Tokyo. The namazu ...
One of my favorite locations in Japan is an uninhabited island just off the coast of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture to the south of Tokyo. Uninhabited by humans, it is, however, inhabited by another primate: a troop of Japanese macaques. Some friends ...
* Japanese name: Toki * Scientific name: Rhacophorus schlegelii * Description: It doesn’t get much more Japanese than this. The large, white-feathered crested ibis — a wader with a downward-curving bill, a face bare of feathers and bright-red skin and legs — is a ...
* Japanese name: Kurosagi * Scientific name: Egretta sacra * Description: As egrets in Japan go, reef egrets are medium-size, growing to around 65 cm in length, with a wingspan of up to 110 cm. They weigh about 400 grams. As for their color, ...
* Japanese name: Kawahagi * Scientific name: Stephanolepis cirrhifer * Description: From the side, filefish appear almost circular, with a large eye located high on the head, pouting lips and an elongated tail. From the front, however, they almost disappear, so thin is the ...
I’m a sucker for stories that imagine alternate histories. Philip K. Dick wrote a classic, 1962′s “The Man in the High Castle,” that supposed Japan and Germany won World War II, and annexed the United States between them. Another came to mind last week; ...
I am in a windowless basement in central London with two men I’ve only just met. It sounds like this story could veer toward the salacious, but bear with me. The men boot up computers and switch on an electrical capacitor, which makes a ...
Japanese name: Sukumiringogai Scientific name: Pomacea canaliculata Description: A fairly large snail with a shell 40 to 60 mm wide and 45 to 75 mm high, and coloration varying from yellow and green to dark brown; some have spiral bands. The tentacle-like antennae are ...
