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Tokyo Skytree will celebrate its first anniversary Wednesday but has not yet completed its prime mission of reliably broadcasting to households in the capital and its suburbs. Since December, the world’s tallest free-standing tower, at 634 meters high, has been making test broadcasts to ...
If you work in an office, you probably spend a fair part of your time sitting at a desk, which, of course, isn’t very healthy. To combat that the Pomodoro technique recommends that you work in intervals with regular breaks — for example, 25 ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
“Outsider art” is relatively new in Japan and, as a genre, works made by self-taught Japanese artists are still not very well known on the category-delineating, label-loving international art scene. Now, though, “Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan,” an exhibition on view (through June 30) ...
After all these years, Rafael Nadal still knows how to dominate Roger Federer. In the 30th meeting between the two tennis greats, Nadal controlled the final from start to finish to win 6-1, 6-3 Sunday for his seventh Italian Open title. “Rafa was just ...
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 ...
“Why do we have to aim for the world’s No. 1 — what’s wrong with being the world’s No. 2?” Ever since that short question about Japan’s vaunted K computer ...
The moment Hideaki Fujitani unlocks the heavy door and enters the room, the buzzing noise — which sounded like a simple hum from the outside — gets much louder. “The ...
In today’s ever-more digitalized world, we all have a tale or two to share about how personal computers have let ...
There are outstanding tourist attractions throughout Tamil Nadu, and visitors to the gorgeous coastline can boost the local economy and ...
The ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukushima has quashed once ambitious plans for the construction of new reactors in Japan. The government does, however, remain committed to promoting exports of nuclear reactors and technology as it sees huge potential in overseas markets. Nuclear energy will ...
On Dec. 26, 2004, a massive tsunami blasted across the Indian Ocean, cutting a swath of destruction through communities in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India that claimed a staggering 230,000 lives. As Japan approaches the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake ...
The involvement of architects in redeveloping the many towns and cities affected by March 11′s Great East Japan Earthquake and the resulting tsunami is not as common as might be expected. Rather, local governments are primarily partnering for such work with civil engineering firms. ...
In late July, when the students of Osaka Institute of Technology’s Department of Architecture first arrived at the tiny port of Oharahama, an air of negativity hung over the conversation of the locals. “They were full of questions: Why did this have to happen ...
Shigeyoshi Osaki can read the minds of spiders. Or so you would think, if you see the way he handles the eight-legged arthropods. Osaki, professor at the department of biomacromolecules at Nara Medical University in the city of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, is also one ...
French-Canadian Alex Paille came to Japan in 2006 to teach English, study martial arts and try his hand as a manga artist. His artistic drive took a new direction when one of his English students turned out to be internationally renowned filmmaker Sion Sono ...
Watching the two whirling dancers’ straw skirts aflame as they kept their balance under elaborate, 4-meter-high headdresses while circumambulating the central shrine of the village to the beat of drummers amid a buzzing throng, I did not expect a nudge from the local standing ...
This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions. It is a ...
In the early hours of March 28, 1979, human errors and mechanical failures combined to cause a cooling system to stop working at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the station’s two nuclear cores overheated, thrusting the plant ...
In Japan, studying English is, and has long been, a perpetual mission for many people, and there is no shortage of books, DVDs and schools touting newer, better, quicker and easier ways to master the global language. Takehiko Kikuchi, a 52-year-old English teacher who ...
Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo’s Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be ...
Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture. “I felt I heard the voices of people ...