A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this year. ...
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
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, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
I’ve just finished packing my bag for a visit to the Ogasawara Islands, a boat trip down, a boat trip back, and I seriously doubt if there will be any snow. It will be my first time to those rather remote islands 1,000 km ...
When I’m sitting at my desk working in my study, I can look up through a large window and enjoy the view of some woods with a meadow beyond. Except that I’m not too happy with the woods, that is, because they belong to ...
Copying a Canadian friend, during spring for the last two years I have built tepee frames, not conventional trellises, for my cucumbers to trail around as they grow. This year, I built a frame high and wide enough for me to stand up inside, ...
Larch trees were introduced to Britain from eastern Europe in the 17th century for their ornamental value in gardens — and the larch is indeed a pretty tree. A conifer with short, needle-like leaves that turn color in autumn and fall like golden rain, ...
Construction of the Afan Nature Centre here in our woods outside Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture hills is complete and the keys have been handed over to us. The beautiful building is the result of a decade of wishing, three years of planning, and ...
Go wherever you will in the world but you’ll never be far from a chicken. Certainly, the only inhabited places on the planet where I haven’t seen chickens running around somewhere have been in the Arctic. There were lots of ptarmigans there mind you, ...
Recently, a few days before my 70th birthday, I was visited by the beautiful and vivacious actress Mayu Tsuruta. If you watch Japanese television, I’m sure you will know her from the many films, dramas and documentaries in which she has appeared. Rare in ...
In 1958, just before my 18th birthday, I went along on an Inuit hunt for seals in the Canadian Arctic. That was the first time I tasted that rich, dark red — almost black — meat, and it was like nothing else I had ...
I have just returned to my study after two days and a night spent in the woods with a group of young people who are visually disadvantaged. Some of them had no eyesight at all, some could just barely make out shades and vague ...
Two days ago I was in the woods, generally looking around and gathering a few butterburs — the first of the spring sansai (wild mountain vegetables), which I love to serve as tempura. I was enjoying the sunshine and the bird song; the snow ...
On March 15 just gone, this newspaper carried an excellent but disturbing article by John Vidal, environment editor of the London-based Guardian newspaper. He wrote about food shortages and land-grabbing in Africa, and I was particularly troubled to read about deals going on to ...
There is a book in my library written by a Russian sailor named A. Novikoff Priboy who was captured by the Japanese during the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. His book was translated and published in English in 1933. It’s a fine story, with ...
