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.
Tokyo is infested with camera bugs. I can identify three species, at least. First, there are the genuine camera “nutsos,” the kind who heft about 30-cm-long zooms and then bunch up in rows 10 deep to take photos of every single leaf that turns ...
This is a chilly winter’s tale, one now warmed both by passing time and the gentle breezes of spring. But several weeks ago it was a hot topic for a cold day. A cold workday. I was heading for a train and would be ...
My very first kiss was not from a girl but from a Rawlings baseball. The Little League diamond was strewn with the pop flies I had muffed. “OK, Dillon,” snarled my coach. “This one, you catch!” Boy, did I. Right in the mouth. I ...
Japan is not as shocking as it used to be. I mean culture-wise. Culture shock Japanese-style doesn’t have the same voltage as it had before. By “culture shock” I refer to that delicate period of adjustment when newcomers find their fingers stuck deep in ...
The way the pieces fit together in my local jigsaw puzzle of suburbia is that my property borders on that of seven other homes. Four of these families I have a nod-and-smile acquaintance with. The other three I might recognize by voice, for their ...
“You know what we should do?” I tell my wife over lunch. “Find a way to insert some Chapstick onto the end of a chopstick. We could call it the “Chapchop-stick” and make millions.” She eyes me as her final noodle snakes into her ...
In a corner of my office, next to a shelf containing such diverse items as a biography of Willie Mays, Quirk and Greenbaum’s “A Grammar of Contemporary English,” and Carole Bloom’s “All About Chocolate,” sits a polyethylene snake, 45 cm tall. To be precise, ...
Life is full of stupid moves. Like when Stewie Griffin is about to mesmerize the planet with a hypno-ray but suddenly realizes his handheld raygun doesn’t have any batteries. What the deuce! Or like when you chose a V.P. candidate who can see Russia ...
Today is Jan. 10, with Japan having now wound down its holiday celebrations and settled in for another hard year of work, work, work. Not me. For a peek at the calendar shows there is another new holiday right around the corner — and ...
I prefer this season not as one of tinsel, lights and storefront carols, but rather as one of quiet — a season of soft-falling snow, a season of anticipation, a season of memories. In this season I am haunted by the memory of a ...
