For Catherine Makino's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Maggie's Tokyo opened its doors in October last year, offering a space for cancer patients and their family members and friends to talk.
'What did I do to the Japanese people," asks Merdem Yousif. "I came to Japan because I thought the people would be warm-hearted. It was my big mistake. I should have gone to another country." The 34-year-old Kurdish man, wheelchair-bound as a result of abuse ...
When American students Angela Luna and Richard Nishizawa tried to board a plane bound for San Francisco in March, airport authorities threw them in a small holding cell and held them incommunicado for several days before banishing them from Japan for five years. Luna and ...
Disabled people should not take trains -- at least that's what Take Maruyama, who needs a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy, was told by his family when he was growing up in a small town in Tochigi Prefecture. Fortunately, he didn't listen. Fast forward a ...
A serial killer who preys on attractive Western women may be on the loose in Tokyo, according to a well-known Japanese criminologist and psychiatrist who has advised the family of Lucie Blackman. Blackman, 21, who was working in Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district, disappeared two months ...
Painting the kind of life he would like to live instead of the hard one he actually has, artist Andrew Boerger creates an appealing, serene world on canvas that has art buyers snapping up his work. Boerger, whose fourth show in Tokyo runs until May ...
In the past 10 years, 71-year-old Atsuko Yasumoto has fulfilled many lifelong dreams. She has swum with dolphins in Hawaii, climbed mountaintops in Japan, traveled to the United States, and won first prize in a ballroom dance contest in Tokyo. These feats, spectacular for most ...
At the turn of the millennium, marketer Kenneth Walker will be seeing lots of zeros. Not only will he be seeing the numbers 01-01-00 everywhere, he'll be seeing lots of zeros coming behind dollar signs. Walker has figured out a way to cash in on ...
