For Toshihiko Ueno's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Hideko Tsukida appears more spirited the more she sings on stage, and shows no signs of fading strength in her fight against cancer. The 65-year-old is one of the few Japanese singers of "fado," a style of traditional Portuguese music. She received the Order of ...
A campaign is underway in Okinawa to get awamori liquor added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Awamori, a distilled spirit indigenous and unique to the prefecture, was on the brink of disappearing amid the turmoil of World War II. A campaign is now afoot ...
Amid growing controversy over moves by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration toward allowing Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, an 88-year-old man wants people to know the story of his younger brother, who he says is the only Japanese man killed serving ...
Eizo Kimura, 92, says his fascination with Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese prince who became a key figure during the Age of Exploration, helped him navigate his own life. Recalling his time as a sophomore at Keio University in 1941, when the Pacific War broke ...
MIYAZAKI (Kyodo) The image of Japan's iconic drink has taken a knock following revelations of a scam operated by one of the country's major sake breweries. Bishonen Shuzoh Co. of Jonan, Kumamoto Prefecture, reportedly sent out high-grade rice for polishing and received back lower-grade rice ...
In early August, 5 tons of newly harvested Campbell Early grapes were brought to the Tsuno Winery in Tsuno, Miyazaki Prefecture, to start this year's batch. Last year, a typhoon landed before the harvest, damaging the grapes, but this year winery manager Satoru Obata, 50, ...
Miyazaki Gov. Hideo Higashikokubaru was one of Japan's most visible personalities in 2007. The 50-year-old, who went by the name Sonomanma Higashi as a comic, was elected governor of Miyazaki last January with the local dialect slogan of "dogenkasento ikan," or "something must be done" ...
characters marched down a main street in Fukuoka, chanting "the recent business recovery was possible because of freeters." Many of the demonstrators were people classified as "working poor," who get by on a monthly wage of around 100,000 yen. The rally was staged under the sponsorship ...
Master brewer Hanako Kudo has brought her family's sake brewery in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, back to life by returning to the traditional recipe. Kudo, 42, and her father, Mikio, 71, began making "junmai" pure-rice sake on the morning of Jan. 23 in a big storehouse ...
, "karei" (sole) and "asari" (littleneck clam). Koizumi and his friends held a party in late September at an "izakaya" pub in Tokyo's Fukagawa district, drinking sake and dining on marinated whiting, sea bass and goby from the bay. "Almost all the ingredients except for 'maguro' ...
