"Continuing a small toy shop for five generations is a kind of miracle,” says Masaki Terao, 58, proprietor and purse-string holder at Toys Terao, which his family has been running on Nakamise-dori in front of Asakusa's Sensoji Temple for nearly 130 years.

Sitting in his home recording studio in Tokyo, surrounded by dozens of instruments that he has collected over the years, Morgan Fisher is in the center of his universe.

For Akiko Kuraoka, filmmaker, lecturer and freelance French translator, films have always been her passion. Over a span of nearly four decades, Kuraoka has made three documentaries and is now deep into her fourth. Her films have dealt with chromium pollution, nuclear radiation, war, ...

On the floor of an eight-tatami workshop sits master craftsman Yoshio Inoue in a spot he has occupied for decades. His atedai, the long, low slab of wood that serves as a workbench, is in front of him, and within easy reach are scores ...

When Lyon-born French chef Christophe Paucod arrived in Japan in 1998, he came on a one-way ticket with no job prospects and no idea of what he would do.

Akiko Kuno, 72, believes her destiny is tied with a red string to the United States. So she says as she speaks of her and her family's life at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, where as a child she first tasted ...

A few dabs of equine DNA found in so-called "beefburgers" caused quite a kerfuffle last month, shocking unsuspecting customers of the British supermarket chain Tesco (and then other stores) into outrage.

Sitting at a wooden table in the glass-enclosed sun room of the miraculously preserved 95-year-old Yasuda House, Sumiko Enbutsu, a very youthful 78, radiates enthusiasm. The house, a superb example of Taisho Era architecture and construction techniques, is now owned by the Japan National Trust. ...

Four months ago, Miguel Sosa, a composer, concert pianist, conductor and teacher was asked by Taizo Oba, organizer of the Bond Made of 1,000 Tones project, to write an original composition for one of the two "tsunami-debris" violins. Sosa's first thought was "Me? Really? I ...