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.
In a YouTube clip from February 2011, Hiromi Ito begins a reading of an excerpt from her narrative poem “I Am Anjuhimeko (Watashi wa Anjuhimeko de aru)” at the Museum of Modern Aomori Literature by banging the palm of her hand loudly and repeatedly ...
Peter Watts, co-chair of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, was recently in Japan as one of some 100 speakers at the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World held in Yokohama on Jan. 14 and 15. During an interview with The Japan Times, ...
Looking for an enjoyable way to get back into shape after gaining a few pounds over the festive season? Well, look no further than kabuki — or learning a few moves basic to this traditional Japanese theatrical form, to be precise. Though it’s now ...
Almost all the temporary public housing units in the disaster-hit Tohoku region of northeast Japan look the same — like little, soulless boxes, in fact. But soon after graffiti artist Hamilton Yokota went to stay and work at an evacuees’ community in Ishinomaki, Miyagi ...
The earliest known cave paintings date from about 30,000 years ago, and the earliest bone tools found so far predate those paintings by another 40,000 years. Go back 100,000 years, and Homo sapiens — us lot — are only just emerging, though the fossil ...
The known world has already been through three pivotal epochs: the agricultural, industrial and information-technology revolutions. Now, a fourth is taking place: the renewable-energy revolution. At least that is how the German director Carl Fechner presents it in his documentary film, “The 4th Revolution ...
As a child growing up in mountainous Yamanashi Prefecture in the 1970s, artist Shojono Tomo had an irrational fear of using the brakes on her bicycle — though none whatsoever about riding just as fast as she could. “I would either purposely crash into ...
As bitter winds blow around cesium and other radioactive particles spewed from the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s reactors, Naoto Matsumura lights a cigarette, which he considers relatively good for his health. “I would get sick if I stopped smoking; I have ...
When a tsunami is coming, don’t try to look for your relatives. Don’t try to help the elderly, your grandparents or your parents. Don’t try to call your wife or your husband. Don’t think about your children or your grandchildren. Run. Save yourself. Such ...
At Nakamura Daiichi Elementary School in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, a theater company named La Tatan Sha recently staged a musical for the students that featured live painting. Located on the coast in the north of the prefecture, Soma was hard hit by the Great ...
Is the hikikomori phenomenon unique to Japan — or does it exist in other societies, too? A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from Japan and France is currently trying to answer just that question, in a project that could change how the issue of those ...
Transgender people are popping up everywhere in the current Japanese media landscape. Whether it’s appearing on variety shows or hawking soft drinks or makeup in TV ads, the current crop of “new-half” celebrities have established themselves in the mainstream in a way that has ...
