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Calling it a day: The sun sets on the waters surrounding Shiraishi Island in the Seto Inalnd Sea.

Breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes it needs to be done

by Amy Chavez

When I first came to Japan as a university English teacher in 1993, the hydrangea were in full bloom and I was 29 years old. Four years later, in 1997, I met my best friend here when we both started working for the same company at the exact same time. Both still relatively new to Japan, we bonded...

A handy prop: Alfred Weinzierl pulls out his puppet, Kingyo, when he needs to lighten the mood.

‘Japan has to remember that it is not just importing workers, it is importing people who have hopes’

by J.J. O'Donoghue

Alfred Weinzierl is well-known to police in Osaka: A middle-aged rakish German wearing a puppet shark and an oversized chicken hat tends to stand out. Sometimes Weinzierl even sets Kingyo, his beloved shark hand puppet, on police officers he hasn’t encountered before. While this is done in ...

Gangster chic: Models show off works by tattooist Horiyoshii III at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo in May.

Ink doesn’t always cause a stink at the onsen

by Ashley Thompson

In response to our Nov. 6 column ("If you need to bring drugs to Japan, sort out the paperwork — or else"), regarding how to find tattoo-friendly onsen, a few readers wrote in with their public bathing experiences. "Apart from private baths as you mention," suggested SA, "one obvious soluti...

Twin treasures: Sayo Kamakura says that Jin and Chako look so similar that even her family has trouble telling them apart sometimes.

A purrr-fect lesson in caring

Morty is a black cat that was first featured in this space in September 2018. At the time, the Adopt Me! entry also made mention of his equally beautiful sister, Ursula. Meanwhile, Sayo Kamakura of Osaka and her two children had lost their own cats some time earlier. “We decided if we could...

Left: The Children's Peace Monument, topped by the figure of Sadako Sasaki, is surrounded by paper cranes donated to Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park from around the world. The nine booths surrounding the monument were installed by the city in 2002 to protect the cranes.

60 years after Sadako Sasaki’s death, the story behind Hiroshima’s paper cranes is still unfolding

by Peter Chordas

"They called us the 'ragged class,'" recalls Tomiko Kawano of her sixth-grade group at Noboricho Elementary School in Hiroshima. "Half our class had lost family in the atomic bombing or were survivors themselves." Among them was Sadako Sasaki, the now-famous little girl who developed acute leu...