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Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
It is a tricky deal being an authorized biographer. Charles Moore’s big advantage over those who have previously tackled Margaret Thatcher is that he has been provided with material denied to them. Of the arrangement that he was offered by his subject, he writes: ...
Unbelievable energy. Splendid self confidence. Never-wavering faith in his abilities or his teammates. Those are ingredients to success for Draelon Burns, the Yokohama B-Corsairs’ super substitute. Burns buried a remarkable three buzzer-beating shots to close out the three final quarters, and his team needed ...
With Shinzo Abe having called Japan’s current Constitution “pathetic” (mittomonai) just a few days before taking charge of a government established under it, constitutional amendment seems likely to be on the agenda of his second go as prime minister. This should not surprise anyone, ...
Back by popular demand, here is JBC’s roundup of the top 10 human rights events that most affected non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan in 2012, in ascending order. Bubbling under • China’s anti-Japan riots (September) and Senkaku-area maneuvers (October to now). • North Korea’s ...
The four-year legal battle between management and teachers at Berlitz Japan was declared over Thursday as both sides signed an agreement to end the company’s lawsuit against union officials. Claiming an 11-month strike by unionized teachers to be illegal, Berlitz Japan had sued five ...
It was a year dominated by Japan’s spats with its most powerful neighbors, China and South Korea, over tiny specks in the sea, and by national soul-searching over nuclear power and the calamity that struck Japan in March 2011. It ended with the stunning ...
This year marked the fifth anniversary of the collapse of English language school giant Nova, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 26, 2007. Under the guidance of Nagoya-based G.Communication, the cram school and restaurant operator that initially bailed out the company, Nova was ...
I spent a beautiful Sunday in May of this year taking a national law exam. I did not pass and wasn’t expecting to: I could barely work up the energy for the 90-minute commute to the test venue in Osaka, let alone study for ...
It was 1988, in an ad for Regain energy drink. Actor Saburo Tokito, wearing a suit and carrying an attache case, asked a question that would go down in TV history: “Can I work 24 hours straight?” Japan was reveling in the go-go years ...
Remember grade school, when the most demanding question put to you was something as simple as “What color do you like?” Choose any color, for there is no wrong answer. This is the power of “like,” where nobody can dispute your preference. You don’t ...
Emotions during pregnancy and childbirth run the gamut, from excitement and trepidation to joy and even fear. Foreign women who find themselves pregnant in Japan may experience additional stress as they cope with cultural differences, language issues and being away from their own families. ...
Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as “biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests,” the highly classified ...
“Discipline” (chōkai) — a miserable word if there ever was one. Being scolded as a child is part of growing up, but for us adults, being disciplined can be a particularly humiliating experience. But how much more humiliated would we feel if the grounds ...
For foreigners who arrive in Japan with little knowledge or preparation, the first encounter with the local lingo can be brutal. In the past, for instance, newcomers would have taken the train from Narita airport to Tokyo or Shinjuku station and promptly run up ...