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The consumption tax increase next April will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people's financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the impact of the hike, experts say.
Every parent is all too familiar with The Tantrum. The screaming, the flailing arms, the angry head butting — and the timing (normally in the most inconvenient public place possible).
International events undermine Japan's democracy. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for being a party to it.
Tucked away behind the main museums in Ueno, the Tokyo University Art Museum may not be on most people’s radar, but it is definitely one of the city’s top museums in terms of curatorial quality. Whenever I go there, I am always delighted by ...
Francisco Liriano showed up at PNC Park on Tuesday afternoon in a suit with his suitcase packed for a trip St. Louis. The message reverberated through the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. After 21 years away from the playoffs, it was time for the best story ...
Shaun McKenna has worked as an editor at The Japan Times since 2007. He currently helms the Music and Events sections at the newspaper. When he isn’t attending concerts in Tokyo, he is often on the hunt for “the perfect iced tea.”
For Shaun Mckenna's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
The standard opening line when speaking to someone about the TV series “Game of Thrones” basically amounts to a spoiler alert. It’s no different when talking to actress Michelle Fairley, who plays Catelyn Stark in the popular HBO cable series. “I’ve seen Season 3 ...
Born in Nottingham, England, Mark Birtles began DJing in Leeds before coming to Japan in 2008. He is one half of the Tokyo Indie events team, which has hosted DJ gigs with touring bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Metronomy, Mystery Jets and Yeah ...
Students are counting down the days till school lets out, while urban commuters are starting to sweat the impending heat. Summer is coming, and a sure sign of that is that music festivals are starting to kick up around the country. The month starts ...
Pianist Junko Onishi will come out of retirement to perform one more time, at the finale of this year’s Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. According to a statement released Friday, the 46-year-old musician was convinced to come back to the stage by ...
Laurent Fintoni was visiting Japan in March 2011 when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. The 33-year-old writer and DJ quickly contacted friends in the music scene here and abroad to produce “Nihon Kizuna,” one of the first albums to aid disaster relief. Two ...
After rock group Jake Stone Garage hit the final chord of one of their powerful guitar-heavy songs, the crowd let out a few hoots and applauded politely. For a Western band this may have seemed a bit unreceptive, but luckily Jake Stone Garage are ...
My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe manned the decks for a rare DJ set at a Tokyo Indie event in Tokyo on Friday. The acclaimed alt-rock band was in Japan to play sold-out shows in Osaka and Tokyo in support of its new album ...
The new year is starting out with a slew of potentially great gigs throughout the country. The most anticipated of these is probably Patti Smith and her Band’s seven-city tour, which starts in Sendai on Jan. 22 (Sendai Rensa; 7:30 p.m. start; ¥7,000 in ...
A crowd much smaller than solo-guitarist Miyavi is accustomed to has gathered to hear an intimate set at the 2.5D studio in Shibuya’s Parco Part 1 building. About a third of the 80 or so people have gathered around the stage so close that ...
Tokyo-based British DJ/producer Matt Lyne, aka A Taut Line, coruns the record label Diskotopia, with Brian Durr, aka BD1982. A Taut Line’s melodic broken house, garage and techno productions are just as influenced by the Chicago jazz and postrock scenes as by the 1980s ...
In times of trouble music can soothe the soul. And if anyone’s souls needed soothing, it would be the people of Sendai. The capital of Miyagi Prefecture is located 130 km east of the epicenter of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, and ...
In 1985, director Akira Kurosawa released “Ran,” a Japanese take on William Shakespear’s masterpiece “King Lear.” Kochi’s Meitoku International Players are taking a similar approach to Namiki Gohei’s 1840 kabuki piece “Kanjicho” by presenting it in an Italian setting and performed in English. Gohei’s ...