For Yoshino Matsui's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
A Japanese woman hopes a documentary she has made will help opponents of Japan's hunting of whales and dolphins acquire a better understanding of the practice. "Japanese have failed to argue against the criticism, mostly from the West, because silence is a virtue in Japan ...
After working more than 10 years as editor-in-chief for a successful magazine catering to young, skinny Japanese male "hosts" who entertain female clientele at nightclubs, Norihito Kurashina made a 180-degree shift and launched a magazine targeting plump middle-aged men more like himself. Touted as Japan's ...
In an attempt to revive the popularity of skiing in Japan, an event will soon be held in Yamagata Prefecture to lure back middle-aged people who used to hit the slopes during the go-go days of the late 1980s bubble economy. The event's bizarre name ...
Paris may have the Moulin Rouge, but Tokyo now boasts its own distinctively futuristic cabaret experience: the Robot Restaurant, replete with giant robots operated by scantily clad women amid a dazzling profusion of lights. "Foreign customers who come here all say the same thing — ...
YAKAGE, Okayama Pref. — Today there are colorful portable gadgets and iPhone applications to cover up the sounds people make when using the toilet, but a museum here has a large bronze urn dating from the 19th century that could be the earliest form ...
URUMA, Okinawa Pref. — For 21-year-old Elza Sasaki, Japan's representative for the Miss World contest in December, winning the beauty pageant is not just about opening doors to achieve her childhood dream of becoming a super model, but also about generating media exposure to ...
Thousands of young Japanese men are expected to take a nationwide exam next month that would, if they pass, grant them recognition as experts in the field of "otaku," or geeks. Since word of the first-ever Otaku Certificate exam broke in late June, publisher Biblos ...
One of the hottest companies in Japan today doesn't produce cars, electronics or, for that matter, anything else. Its business is pure destruction, and by singing its praises the tiny Yokohama demolition firm has become dynamite. Nihon Break Kogyo Co.'s song splashed onto Oricon, one ...
Women are facing a cunning new strategy aimed at loosening their purse strings -- attractive young men working as clerks in cosmetics and women's clothing departments. Printemps Ginza Co., a department store in Tokyo's Ginza district, was one of the first Japanese firms to deploy ...
With the domestic market for health products continuing to expand rapidly, appliance vendors are now marketing a range of home-use oxygen units. On March 10, electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. debuted the MS-X1 Oxygen Concentrator, a compact oxygen-supply unit that looks like a standard ...
