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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 Japan Times is offering readers the chance to own a limited-edition poster inspired by the disaster in Tohoku and created by illustrator Chris Mackenzie, with all proceeds going to The Japan Times Readers’ Fund. The money received (excluding postage costs) will be used ...
The seemingly limited information being provided by both the government and the operating company, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), about the ongoing disaster at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is a source of widespread public concern. However, a nonprofit organization focused on ...
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Pref. — It’s a relatively minor incident that gets me. I’m at a gymnasium in central Ishinomaki photographing members of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) as they unload dozens of corpses from a truck. Each is wrapped in blankets, some with flowery ...
Yoshiyuki Yoneda had a problem. As chief priest of a temple in Kyoto, he ministered to the spiritual and ritual needs of his local community. But like many other clerics in Japan’s ancient capital, he also wanted to attract fee-paying tourists to his temple. ...
The few, seemingly miraculous, stories of survival are passed on from person to person, and some are given as much media coverage as the horrific devastation. The rescue of a 60-year-old man from the roof of his house, washed 15 km out to sea; ...
Japan’s rice-farming areas face two broad trends: field abandonment and farm modernization. Both impact the environment as well as the economy. “When rice fields disappear, species such as tadpoles and dragonflies that live in them decrease. Paddies also store water and help prevent floods. ...
What could be more Japanese than rice? Without the pearly white grain there would be no mochi (rice cakes) at New Year’s or sake at shrines, no sushi, no lunchtime onigiri (rice balls), no verdant paddies to mark summer in the countryside. But Emiko ...
Atsuo Aoki doesn’t appear to be an irrational man. At 52, he works in the banking division of the Japan Agricultural Cooperative (JA) in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, an old castle city at the foot of the Japan Alps about three hours by rail north ...
I happened to be in Chengdu during the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize wrangle. Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned human rights activist, became the third person to receive the prestigious award while in detention. When his prize was announced in October, Beijing denounced ...
In this wide-ranging feature following a recent visit to Chengdu, China, Jeff Kingston examines Sino-Japanese relations and challenges facing the government in Beijing Last December when I visited Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in southwest China, people there were still agitated about Japan ...
A powerful earthquake devastated Sichuan Province in 2008 and recovery is still ongoing, but this prosperous and fertile region of southwest China has also suffered a series of man-made disasters. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), when as many as 45 million Chinese died ...
During the Senkaku/Diaoyu imbroglio following the Sept. 7, 2010 collision between a Chinese trawler and a Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel off disputed islands of those names in the East China Sea, some NHK and Asahi reporters emphasized that the anti-Japanese demonstrations in China ...