16
P/CLOUDY
NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
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 ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Odds are, Japan Times reader, that you do not like Kis-My-Ft2. Maybe you’ve been unable to escape the bleating “Wanna Beeee!!!” while out strolling in Shibuya, or maybe they lost you at, “From the people who brought you SMAP and Arashi!” So this review ...
The first song I ever made — and I’m willing to wager many who graduated high school in the mid 2000s share this experience — was using Apple’s GarageBand, a software application that lets people make music on their computers. “I made a killer ...
Fledgling online-only label Ano(t)raks takes a somewhat needless risk with their second compilation album, “Upwards and Onwards.” Founded late last year, Ano(t)raks highlighted bedroom-made indie-pop, a style defined by simple guitar playing and equally basic lyrics about love. Indie-pop has been going strong since ...
To describe “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” as a foodie film is akin to picking an English rose and calling it a flower. This documentary by New York-based David Gelb is at once a celebration of one of the world’s most popular and coveted meals, ...
My Japan Times colleague Ian Martin nailed the state of Japanese pop music when he wrote that it was “clinging on to the hoary old remains of the past.” The Oricon Chart’s top albums of 2012 list was dominated by “Best Of” compilations, with ...
Creating music meant to purposely evoke the past can be tricky. Recreate the sounds of a specific decade too closely and the music becomes too nostalgic, pining for a time the artist never even knew existed. On the other hand, approach bygone times too ...
Nagisa Oshima is the best film director in Japan still making good movies. There are other good directors (Kon Ichikawa), but they are reduced to doing company hack-work. Oshima can still do the films he likes, partly because he gets financial backing in France ...
Internationally acclaimed for their formal style and power, Nagisa Oshima’s films have always dealt with controversial issues which Japan’s Establishment would rather see swept under the carpet. Based upon a famous Laurens van der Post novel (The Seed and the Sower), Oshima’s “Senjo no ...