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.
Chris Chavez maintains an upbeat outlook about life in Japan but leaves the rosy-tinted view for idealists or those newly arrived. This Mexican-American’s snapping brown eyes differentiate clearly the good, bad and indifferent of living as a foreign woman in Tokyo. From her early ...
Derrel Grisham is an American, but it was a sense of nostalgia that drew him to the island of Yakushima off the southern coast of Kagoshima Prefecture. “I actually grew up near Tokyo,” the 57-year-old Grisham says. “My father was in the U.S. Air ...
Erica Angyal, the 40-year-old official nutritionist of Miss Universe Japan, is on a mission to bring balanced meals back to the Japanese table. “It’s so ‘mottainai’ (a waste)” that a lot of Japanese women choose Western food over a traditional Japanese diet, said Angyal, ...
Long-term residents of Japan might remember the name Rainer Kaminski. In 1985 he made headlines as the first Westerner to become a taxi driver in Tokyo. What happened to him after that? Well, after six months as a cabby based in Setagaya Ward, Kaminski ...
Nicolas Soergel graciously brings two tiny plates to the table. They each contain three pinkish “umeboshi” (salted, dry plums), but those on one of the plates have been preserved for just one year; the ones on the other plate — whose skins are a ...
Citizens of the United States living overseas of working age are required to file a U.S. Internal Revenue Service tax form every year, and if they have incomes, may have to pay U.S. income taxes, on top of any levies they also face in ...
Alastair Lamond, a 47-year-old Briton, is like many English-speaking foreigners. He began working in Japan as a teacher of his native tongue. He later landed a job selling English-language educational materials. “I liked teaching very much and was satisfied when I helped students, encouraging ...
For a musician and entrepreneur with many professional faces, Australian Donna Burke is surprisingly wary of constantly taking work-related calls. “I’m always disconnecting myself. I’ll go for days without looking at my mobile phone,” said the singer, narrator, songwriter, lyricist and talent agency head. ...
Danny Choo, a Tokyo-based computer programmer and entrepreneur, calls himself a full-time “otaku.” Visitors to Choo’s office in central Tokyo are apt to be surprised by the curvy female “anime” (cartoon) figures that line his desk. “The tall ones I got from the manufacturer ...
Martin Fluck has lived a cosmopolitan life childhood and his professional career has taken him to several different countries. But for the 51-year-old Swiss born in Kobe, Japan is a magnet: Wherever he has been, he has always found an excuse to return to ...
Award-winning Iranian artist Mansour Kordbacheh has lived in Japan for 21 years and feels the weight of it on his shoulders. “I carry the expectations of 70 million Iranians and I need to give something back to 130 million Japanese,” the 46-year-old father of ...
Robert Gumley, general manager of Elanex Japan KK, a translation service, has learned that Japan is an easy country for foreigners to live in — if they choose to be bicultural. “I would say, ‘Don’t try to become Japanese.’ One good thing about Japan ...
