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CLOUDY
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 ...
The feast of fish being delivered to our table is fit for the Emperor, as is the price of the room I’m eating it in at Inubosaki Kanko hotel in Choshi, a small seaside town in northeastern Chiba Prefecture. But I’m not complaining about ...
For a long time I couldn’t pronounce the word otoko (男, man) without slightly blushing; I didn’t much like the word in English either, but in Japanese it sounded a little vulgar and what women of my grandmother’s generation would call hashitanai (はしたない, crude ...
Location, location, location. It’s the cardinal rule, the holy trinity of real estate, the prerequisite for success in many a trade — and almost an essential for any restaurant. So how come one of Tokyo’s most happening little diners is in a part of ...
It took a puzzlingly long time for Japan to catch on to the pleasures of the taperia. It should be a perfect fit since, after all, the exquisite Iberian custom of slowly whiling away the evening with tapas and drinks, one dish and one ...
Second of two parts At 4 a.m., southern Minato Ward’s Shibaura Pier is an indigo city of shipping containers, wind-borne detritus and flatbed cargo trucks. It is spooky and unlit but for Rainbow Bridge and its sparse predawn traffic. By 5 a.m., fishing boats ...
The sleet was lashing down, the wind whipping off Tokyo Bay as we trudged the streets of Ningyocho, eastern Nihonbashi, in search of dinner. Appalling conditions, certainly, but worth braving for the down-home charms of an evening at Yoshiume. Just arriving there was enough ...
Tamegoro Sudo, 50, is a movie producer and actor whose many friends in Tokyo’s downtown Asakusa area provide him with the hilarious characters and plots in his movies. His five “Dekotora no Shu (Shu, the Dekotora Man)” movies star his favorite decorated trucks and ...
There’s no need to look at the changing leaves to know what season it is; just walk into your nearest 7-Eleven outlet and sniff. Those trays of oden stewing by the checkout are all you need to know that winter is on its way. ...
Jasmine, a writer who hails from Hiroshima and is much older than me but has a refined magnetizing beauty that cannot be ignored, pours me a cup of green tea on my first ever junket. It’s just before the world turns blue; just before ...
Western Taito Ward is a paradise for nonconformists who stray off the beaten track. Throughout the incense-scented alleys of Yanaka, and across the parklands of Ueno, it’s hard to miss the area’s preponderance of “strays”; tourists, artists and the homeless who, with a surprising ...
I’ve been to Nikko countless times, but really could kick myself for putting off a trip to Edo Wonderland for so long. I finally visited on June 23, and fortunately the delayed onset of the rainy season got me there on a day with ...
As the temperature rises and languid, lazy days melt into humid nights, Japan shifts gear, readying itself for the plethora of local matsuri ceremonies that blossom across the nation in the months ahead. Matsuri, or festivals, are provincial gatherings usually held on Shinto or ...