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 ...
According to most business media, now is the time to act if you are thinking about buying a home. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has yet to confirm that it will go ahead with the consumption tax increases the Democratic Party of Japan passed ...
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.
There’s no such thing as a popular tax increase. Woe betide the leader who sees no other way out of a fiscal impasse. Such is Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s unenviable plight. A kōreika shakai (高齢化社会, aging society) like Japan’s must fund its swelling shakai ...
According to a dispatch by the French news agency AFP, France on Feb. 21 officially banished use of the term Mademoiselle when referring to unmarried women. Henceforth, Madame will be used irrespective of marital status. The Germans phased out Fraulein four decades ago. And ...
He’s young, photogenic, energetic, brash, bold, intelligent — and, almost oxymoronically, a politician, one of very few in Japan within living memory who come close to fitting such a description. He has many ideas, all of which boil down to this: “Nihon no kuni ...
As a general rule, kanji (Sino-Japanese ideographs) are classified in dictionaries according to two readings: kun-yomi (native Japanese) and on-yomi (approximation of the original Chinese pronunciation). For example, 東, the tō in 東京 (Tokyo), meaning “east,” is an on-yomi that came from the Chinese ...
Okane wa doko ni itteshimattanoka (お金はどこに行ってしまったのか, Where has all the money gone?). Until a few years back, the tone among Japanese business pundits used to go like this — a little humorous and slightly hopeful, almost as if we were all playing kakurenbo (かくれんぼ, ...
‘Hirata Makoto desu. Shuttō shite kimashita.” (「平田信です。出頭してきました」”I am Makoto Hirata. I’ve come to give myself up”). Sure you are! said the first officer he spoke to, in effect. He thought it was an akushitsu na itazura (悪質ないたずら, a malicious prank). Never mind that Hirata ...
Famous movie lines have a way of insinuating themselves into popular culture and language, until even those who know a film only by hearsay quote from it, if only because everyone else does. Japanese films have generated their share of 名せりふ (meiserifu or famous ...
If you miss the punch line to a Japanese joke, don’t feel bad. It’s simply unrealistic to use something as elusive as humor to measure your ability to understand a foreign language. On the other hand, knowing what makes people laugh is a great ...
An often misunderstood perception about the Japanese language is that it’s long-winded and excessively polite. True, there’s an entire lexicon devoted to politeness, called keigo (敬語, the language of reverence) and in Kyoto, there’s such a thing as kyūtei kotoba (宮廷言葉, palatial language) — ...
On Dec. 1, publisher Jiyukokumin-sha announced that the winner of its annual 流行語大賞 (ryūkōgo taishō, buzzword grand prix) for 2011 was 撫子ジャパン (Nadeshiko Japan). This of course is the name of the winners of the Women’s Soccer World Cup held last June-July, and you ...
It’s that time of year when opportunities to reach for a glass, tumbler or ochoko (おちょこ, sake cup) increase by the evening, while days continue to be crammed with duties, professional and otherwise. That’s what shiwasu (師走, the old calendar name for December) is ...
Japan couldn’t make up its mind, so it was up to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. On Nov. 13 he made it official: Japan would join multilateral negotiations aimed at forging a free-trading Kan-Taiheiyo Keizai Renkei Kyotei (環太平洋経済連携協定, Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP). It was an agonizing ...
