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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.
Kan Yasuda's art somehow draws in the landscape, and entices in people, so that it is natural to explore the view through his structures and keyholes, to sit awhile atop a sculpture or to pose within their frames.
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.”
Getting slapped by a a coach has always been, as far as I could see, simply another aspect of sports training in Japan.
New Year’s resolution? “Doing more exercise,” you may say. Keeping in good shape or going on a diet are invariably popular new-year ambitions for thousands faced with rather too many inches to pinch after all those Christmas binges and huge o-shogatsu feasts in the ...
Called hatake no gyuniku (beef from the fields), soybeans are known for the healthy, high-protein punch they pack and their contribution to lowering cholesterol. In Japan, consumers are lucky enough to receive their benefits in many forms, including tofu, miso and natto. But the ...
One interesting phenomenon this year has been the growing popularity of tours to such unlikely places as factories and old bridges, where grimy stone walls, rusting mazes of pipes and crumbling concrete constructions have become a lure for worshippers at the altar of brutalism. ...
Back in 1980 when the weekly job-seekers’ magazine Travail was launched, it was a social phenomenon that gave women the information they needed to independently switch jobs and build their careers. People even adopted the magazine’s title (which means “work” in French, and is ...
Do you play kendama? Probably not, on an everyday basis at least, though you may well have tried it a few times if you live in Japan. Ito says his family was understanding. When he told his parents he would like to be a ...
Ask your friends what handy fun items they carry around and most of them will mention their Nintendo DS or their mobile phone, on which they can watch TV, play games and read a novel. But more and more these days, they may also ...
I’d heard about the “bath in the sea” in Aomori Prefecture, Honshu’s northernmost prefecture and a mere 600 km north of Tokyo. But this kaichuburo, as they call it in Japanese, isn’t about splashing in the waves; it’s a hot spring, and it’s named ...
Like many other young Japanese, Rin, 21, punches her mobile phone keys very quickly. Holding her phone with two hands, and moving her thumbs deftly and smoothly, she quickly generates sentences on the small screen. But unlike others, her main reason for typing on ...
Take a moment to try to think seriously about cheerleaders. Nowadays, they don’t just wear skimpy outfits, wave pompoms and do high kicks. Oh no, the cheerleaders jump, tumble and perform acrobatic stunts. And, of course, they dance, chant and smile as well. But ...
When is a paddy not a paddy? When it’s a canvas, of course. But as staff writer YOKO HANI discovered in northern Aomori Prefecture, what’s nice to look at is rice to eat as well. Mysterious “corn circles” of incredible complexity that appear overnight, ...
With the annual Sept. 1 Disaster Prevention Day approaching, residents in Japan will be reminded of a simple fact: They are living in a country where earthquakes are a fact of life. The reminder is timely. A recent Japan Times online poll showed that ...
Although you may be a typically busy worker, in Japan there’s no shortage of easy exercise options to help keep you in shape — whether “10-minute fitness” clubs where you can have a quick workout without even changing your clothes, varieties of home exercise ...