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April 24, 2024
 

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Michelle Leigh
For Michelle Leigh's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Mar 15, 2001
An audacious urge for color
Shimmer and glimmer have been around long enough for their glint and sparkle to start to seem a bit boring, don't you think?
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Mar 1, 2001
International spa secrets
Some of the best recipes for a do-it-yourself spa come from those cultures known to go in for a bit of sybaritic pampering. Japan is high up on the list: A highly developed sense of aesthetics, a long tradition of bathing and a sublime appreciation of ritual have helped beauty practices here evolve into an art form.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Feb 16, 2001
Scrub a dub dub: DIY spa treatments
Though spring isn't far off, it's that time of year when even the last dregs of winter seem to be lingering too long. To cheer yourself up and conjure up a sense of renewal, give yourself a DIY spa treatment.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Feb 1, 2001
Beauty standard takes a new shape
The big news from the Paris collections is that the hourglass figure is back. Perhaps it was the only direction the silhouette could take -- the fashionable form had become so super-skinny that it couldn't go any further without vanishing. With the preferred dress size in Hollywood recently reported as zero, we'd no doubt reached the far end of the thin, thinner, thinnest continuum.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jan 18, 2001
Oranges for body and soul
Continuing with our citrus theme from the previous column, today we'll discover a few more uses of the spiritually potent, beautifying, healing orange and its citrus relatives.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jan 4, 2001
Festive citrus delights to brighten up the new year
If there is a companion plant to the evergreen that is so characteristic of this time of year, it must be the orange or one of its immediate relatives: the tangerine, the clementine, the mandarin, or even the citron or grapefruit.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Dec 21, 2000
Refresh your soul with the scent of eternal rebirth
For me the special warmth, freshness and magic of this time of year is beautifully embodied in its piny scents. The pine of Christmas trees and wreaths segues nicely into the pine of Japanese New Year displays.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Dec 7, 2000
Counting down to Christmas in gold and silver
When you're getting into a Christmas mood, nothing expresses this festive state better than sparkly, shimmery, glimmery things, and when it comes to buying special gifts from the beauty realm, there is plenty of that sparkly stuff out there to choose from.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Nov 16, 2000
Spoiling yourself with beauty treats and baubles
Sometimes a girl needs to indulge herself -- or, better yet, be indulged by some generous other. (You could always clip this column, color-highlighting your most-desirables, and leave it lying around in some conspicuous spot to drop the perfect hint.)
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Nov 2, 2000
Essential oils for happiness
In addition to St. John's wort and Bach Flower Remedies, there are other natural means of lifting the spirits.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Oct 19, 2000
Restoring health with flowers
To continue with our rather jolly theme of happiness-inducing strategies, today we take a look at the Bach Flower Remedies.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Oct 5, 2000
The power of St. John's wort: A herb to make you happy
In these days of miracle medication for nearly any psychological complaint, the botanical alternatives are getting a lot of attention. There have been happiness remedies around for millennia, of course; as with most botanical treatments, the knowledge is ancient.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Sep 21, 2000
The healing power of ginger
This is a good time of year to bring out the ginger. As we move into autumn and the days get shorter and the air cooler, ginger is a great way to replace sunshine and summer heat and warm things up a bit. I've written about ginger before, but like a few other special classics in the botanical medicine panoply, it is something well worth rediscovering from time to time.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Sep 7, 2000
Tattoos: painful to acquire, but even harder to remove
More and more people are getting tattoos, so perhaps it is not surprising that more and more people are getting tattoos removed.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Aug 17, 2000
The tawdry charm of the tattoo
Tattoos are everywhere these days. What are we expressing with this new vision of beauty, that calls for the tattoo to complete it? Until a few decades ago in the West, tattoos were associated mostly with sailors, prisoners, gang members, soldiers and carnival performers.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jul 20, 2000
Haute couture for your face
Along with Terry de Gunzburg's new haute couture beauty venture, By Terry, discussed in the last column, which is perhaps the most high profile and exclusive of the current custom beauty lines, there are some others worth having a closer look at.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jul 6, 2000
Cosmetics with the personal touch
One of the most interesting new trends in the world of beauty right now is the development of the personalized product. This is a phenomenon that started to emerge some years ago, along with the trend toward fresh beauty products, the sort of things sold by companies like Lush: refrigerated face packs and hair treatments that are all-natural and have a short shelf life due to their freshness.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jun 1, 2000
Losing weight the intelligent way
In my last column we had a look at some of the substances now on the market as fat-fighters: chitosan, bromelain, caffeine, Fucus vesiculosis, aromatherapy diet pens, Urtica urens and St. John's wort. Today we'll consider a few more options in our hunt for what might work and what probably doesn't.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
May 18, 2000
The facts you should know before trying to take it all off
More people than ever are overweight, and I would guess that the percentage of people on diets has gone up proportionally as well. Add the number of dieters who really do need to lose weight to those who diet out of some misguided desire to be skeletal, and you've got a lot of people. Weight loss is big business as a result, and companies keep coming out with new and exciting products which claim to put you on the path to slenderness.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
May 4, 2000
How to hang on to luscious locks
Rakugami, kuzume: When you're happy, your hair grows; / when sad, your fingernails -- Japanese proverb
'Sugar Baby Riri' gets nine-year prison term over romance scam
Mai Watanabe, who went by the moniker “Sugar Baby Riri,” dated older men and swindled them out of money by telling them fictitious heartbreaking stories about herself to gain their sympathy.
Japan’s cannabis market growing rapidly amid regulatory shift
The legality of products that contain cannabinoids, a group of substances derived from the cannabis plant, has been somewhat murky in Japan.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores
Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
Hybrid work takes root in Japan, survey finds
A dealer works in the trading room at a foreign exchange brokerage in Tokyo on March 28. An overwhelming majority of respondents who currently work remotely in some capacity say they wish to continue to do so.
Shohei Ohtani signs deal with sports technology company Rapsodo
Shohei Ohtani has been appointed as the new technology ambassador for Rapsodo, the company announced Monday.
A craft beer crawl through Tokyo’s top bars, brewpubs and dives
If all you drink is Asahi, Sapporo and Kirin, you're depriving yourself of some of the best craft beer Tokyo has to offer — and there sure is a lot of it out there.
'Sugar Baby Riri' gets nine-year prison term over romance scam
Mai Watanabe, who went by the moniker “Sugar Baby Riri,” dated older men and swindled them out of money by telling them fictitious heartbreaking stories about herself to gain their sympathy.
Tsukiji 2030s: A stadium, culinary center and transportation hub
A computer-generated image shows redevelopment plans for the former site of the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
Hearing the impact of climate change in Okinawa, one bird call at a time
Toshihiro Kinjo (center), a research support technician at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, inspects an audio recording device in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, on April 3 as Masako Ogasawara, a research support specialist at OIST, looks on.
Japan’s cannabis market growing rapidly amid regulatory shift
The legality of products that contain cannabinoids, a group of substances derived from the cannabis plant, has been somewhat murky in Japan.

Podcast

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

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Students ‘study abroad’ on island of Suo Oshima
Students ‘study abroad’ on island of Suo Oshima

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