For Joji Sakurai's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
The first woman to establish a domaine in Japan, vintner Mie Ikeno cut her teeth in France before returning to carve out her own niche (and producing some highly sought-after wines).
Forget its reputation for cloying sweetness. A group of pioneers on a quest for perfection are putting Japanese wines on the global map.
In a cramped studio in Ravenna, Italy, Takako Hirai runs her finger along the cracks in a mosaic artwork depicting dappled light in a park. The spaces between the tiles, she explains, determine the flow and movement of a mosaic, even more than the ...
In the Roman amphitheater of Verona, Italy, the elephants and horses in ancient Egyptian regalia marched onto stage to the thunderous chords of Guiseppe Verdi's opera "Aida." The singers filled the balmy night with their voices, soaring over the trumpets and crashing cymbals of the orchestra — and for one girl watching the spectacle it seemed like "a world of dreams." ...
On a sweltering summer day in Venice, the temperature in Yasuhiko Tsuchida's glass-making atelier feels at least 10 degrees hotter than it is outside. Men roast their faces against groaning furnaces, shirts drenched with sweat, pulling clumps of luminous molten glass from the fire as the glass artist directs the works. ...
Kiyomiya is keeping alive a way of thinking about books that may be finding itself under threat in our world of Kindles.
A renowned craftsman in Florence is working hard to maintain his freedom of expression as a shoemaker.
Etsuro Sotoo cuts a distinguished figure on the Barcelona culture scene. As the Sagrada Familia's only official sculptor, he exudes old-world style in his felt fedora, flowing scarf and manicured goatee. Yet his life's work of turning Antoni Gaudi's art nouveau cathedral visions into stone ...
In a letter home to Portuguese brethren, Jesuit missionary Pedro de Alcacova writes of singing a Mass to Japanese believers in 1552: "Our voices weren't good," he recalls, "still the Christian believers rejoiced." It was Christmas Eve in Yamaguchi, and the patience, if not faith, ...
The cherry trees will soon blossom in Japan. It will be a particularly poignant sight. Even in normal times, the "sakura" flowers are a cause for rejoicing tinged with sadness, because they fall at the moment of their greatest beauty. They are the embodiment of ...
