Exotic dancing. Nonsensical poetry. Harsh electronic noise. Doughnuts. These are just some of the manifold sights and sounds you'll find on the bill at Paint Your Teeth, a bimonthly performance art event in Tokyo. "PYT is billed as 'a celebration of experimental music, literature and ...

If you'd gone down to Shimokitazawa that day — the Saturday before Christmas, around 3 p.m. — you'd have been sure of a big surprise. No, not a teddy bears' picnic, though in Shimokita you never know; instead, among the usual bustling crowds of ...

"Everyone likes a laugh now and then, right?" So says Chris Wells, and he should know: He's one of the movers and shakers behind Tokyo's lively English-language comedy scene. In bars and cafes around the city, you can watch live standup and improv (think "Whose Line ...

It's said that the bigger they come, the harder they fall, and it's difficult to imagine a harder fall than Nova's. Following Nova Corp.'s well-documented troubles over the last few months, Japan's biggest language school chain is now in the hands of administrators, and is ...

As regular readers of this newspaper will know, reports on the human rights situation in North Korea tend to read more like a litany of inhuman wrongs. Aid agencies estimate that in recent years, more than two million people have died of starvation, while a ...

Before Aug. 9, 1945, Nagasaki was best known for its churches, Chinatown and a tasty noodle dish called champon, and but for heavy cloud cover that day over the nearby city of Kokura -- which was slated to be the world's second atom-bombed city ...