David McNeill - The Japan Times

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David McNeill

David McNeill is a Tokyo-based writer from Ireland. He writes for several international publications and teaches political science at Sophia University. His new co-authored book is "Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster."

For David McNeill's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink

Jun 19, 2005

Man bites dogs like never before

Meeting Takeru Kobayashi is like coming face-to-face with someone who has slept with Julia Roberts or had a near-death experience: You long to ask what it felt like. How does it feel to cram 4 kg of food into your stomach in less time than it takes most people to walk to the pub?

Japan Times

Features

Apr 10, 2005

Drop-dead gorgeous

Eiko Koike is a leggy, lushly upholstered Japanese celebrity, famous for her doe eyes and D-cup breasts.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Mar 29, 2005

Exhausted Kurds desperate to leave

Two large portraits adorn the walls of the otherwise colorless apartment in a Tokyo charity home that Meryem Dogan shares with her two young children.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Feb 1, 2005

'I want to make Japan a better place to live'

Chong Hyang Gyun has just written herself into the history books, but not for the reason she wanted.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Jan 25, 2005

Japan's enemy within

Riding home from school on the crowded Tokyo underground recently one day, 12-year-old Kim says she felt something hit the back of her head. When she checked what it was, her hand came away covered in saliva spat by a middle-aged male passenger. As he was getting off, the man said: "Get back to your own country."

Japan Times

Features

Nov 28, 2004

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

On a rainy Saturday night in the neon-drenched streets of Shinjuku, Kenji Shimura looks like 1,000 other salarymen: off-the-rack black suit, sensible shoes and a face made for anonymous middle-management in an insurance firm.

Features / WEEK 3

Nov 21, 2004

Lolitas' bard is sitting pretty

The morgue-like, air-conditioned lobby of Tokyo's Keio Plaza Hotel is the haunt of businessmen in crisp black suits who sip $10 coffees and nod along to conversations that never rise above a murmur. But the studied cool is broken when Novala Takemoto swishes in, drawing faces in his direction like sunflowers to the sun and in his wake a faint whiff of Christian Dior perfume.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Oct 5, 2004

Trouble in paradise

It is one of the more uneven fights in the history of Japanese protest movements.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Sep 28, 2004

To hell and back again

For a woman who barely cheated death earlier this year and who has since spent months recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Nahoko Takato looks in remarkably fine fettle.

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Jul 13, 2004

The big squeeze

The news from Japan these days is untypically sunny. The economy is performing at its sharpest clip for 13 years, investment and profits are up and analysts are gingerly forecasting a sustained recovery.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Feb 24, 2004

McEnglish for the masses

American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to describe how a method of production that originated in fast food restaurants is sweeping through every aspect of society.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Feb 1, 2004

Japan: pink heaven for traffickers

How many of the 700,000 to 4 million global victims of human trafficking a year (according to a 2002 U.S. State Department survey) end up in Japan?

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Dec 9, 2003

Burden of proof impossible to bear

It may not have been exactly what the government has in mind by the cliche "international cooperation," but dozens of ordinary Japanese folk recently gave up a precious Sunday to help out foreigners in trouble.

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Nov 11, 2003

Running the sex trade gantlet

It could be a scene from most neighborhoods in urban Japan but it happened to be mine in Hashimoto, Kanagawa Prefecture.

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Oct 28, 2003

Convicted Briton says he was drug run patsy

Most of us can name a time when our lives changed forever, but few can do so as precisely as Nicholas Baker: 11.30 a.m. on April 13, 2002.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Sep 23, 2003

Confessions of a foreign correspondent

These are not happy times for people who make a living writing about Japan. With the country apparently having become, as one magazine put it, the "Switzerland of Asia," i.e., rich but boring, foreign newspapers are shuttering their Tokyo bureaus as fast as they can move their correspondents to cover bigger stories in China and elsewhere.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Sep 2, 2003

Time running out for shrinking Japan

Last week when I started to research this article I went looking for foreign factory workers.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Apr 29, 2003

Refugees treated like criminals

Last month, these pages carried the story of a Kurdish family that came to Japan seeking asylum, only to be torn apart by the country's arcane immigration laws.

COMMUNITY

Apr 15, 2003

Shintaro Ishihara on North Korea

"Japan's support for the war is special," believes Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Apr 15, 2003

Has rightwing hijacked Japan abductee issue?

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who says he has been "humiliated" by Prime Minister Koizumi and will never again talk to him, formed a secret alliance with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, even as his regime was preparing thousands of liters of chemical weapons to drop over Japan's cities.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Spotlighting a Niigata castle town through sushi

Spotlighting a Niigata castle town through sushi

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