Community | The Japan Times

Deal with clutter while the choice to toss is still yours

A big part of retirement is spent organizing your home and your affairs, but tidying experts advise decluttering well beforehand.

General

'Disturbance' gives a voice to victims of domestic violence

Standing alone, high up on the balcony of the Musicasa theater in Tokyo, the character of Jane — a wife, mother and a victim of domestic abuse — leaves a red analog phone with a coiled cable hanging over the balustrade. "That's a bit of ...

Our Lives | JAPAN LITE

A Buddhist priest reflects on growing up on Shiraishi Island during a time of war

by Amy Chavez

Living on an island that was too small to receive direct attacks didn't stop the people living there from having to take extreme measures.

VOICES

Voices | FOREIGN AGENDA

Cleaning toilets with a smile: The lessons you can learn from a convenience store side job

by Megha Wadhwa

Learning Japanese and want a bit of extra cash? Getting a part-time job in the service industry can teach you a lot more than the language.

ISSUES

Issues | LAW OF THE LAND

With changes in emperors come amnesties, so who will benefit?

by Colin P.A. Jones

One convenient thing about Japanese law for those of us who are professors of it is that it is quite modern. Virtually all Japanese laws and institutions antedate the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and, of those, most have a 20th-century provenance. Compared to Anglo-American ...

OUR LIVES

Our Lives | ADOPT ME!

Here's to the tabby cat that brightened up one family's home

The gorgeous tabby cat Tournesol was first featured here in June 2015. We are happy to report that he was adopted and has been living in Hyogo Prefecture with the Matsumoto family. Tournesol — or "Tour," as he's usually called — "fit in straight away," ...

HOW-TOS

How-tos

Japanese companies claim there's a purpose for far-flung job transfers, but workers are growing increasingly skeptical

by Rochelle Kopp

The viral story of how a Japanese chemical company, Kaneka, reassigned an employee to the Western part of Japan immediately after he returned from paternity leave in Tokyo left netizens indignant last week. And the story has also caused many non-Japanese to scratch their ...

WHAT PEOPLE ARE READING

Issues

Hague jars with Japan’s family law, a zero-sum game with only one outcome

by Colin P.A. Jones

On April 1, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction went into force in Japan, as did the necessary implementing legislation. Having already written about this legislation in a prior column, I won't revisit the subject here. While Japan's accession is a welcome ...

Old haunt: A Family Mart in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood close to where writer Megha Wadhwa used to live. The branch she used to work at has closed.

Voices

Cleaning toilets with a smile: The lessons you can learn from a convenience store side job

by Megha Wadhwa

I quit my job at a Japanese company in New Delhi 12 years ago to try my luck as a Japanese-language student in Tokyo. In order to bolster my linguistic abilities (and make a bit of extra cash), I got a side job at a Family Mart convenience store close to my apartment. My Japanese wasn't great ...

Issues

Body image and the foreign female in Japan: survey shows frustration with one-size-fits-all thinking

by Louise George Kittaka

Killing time at the hairdresser's the other day, I started to flick through a Japanese women's magazine. "Their world changed after they lost weight!" declared one article, depicting "before" and "after" pictures of six readers, along with each woman's height and weight. I whipped out my cellphon...

Soaped-down but not stirred: James Bond (Sean Connery) gets a lesson in Japanese omotenashi (hospitality) in "You Only Live Twice." While much of the film is cringe-worthy today, it serves as a crude historical record of Western views of Japan in the 1960s.

Voices

Japan is seen through a lens warily in ‘You Only Live Twice,’ James Bond’s sole sojourn to Tokyo

by Philip Patrick

"You Only Live Twice," the only "James Bond" film — to date — to be set in Japan, celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. While undoubtedly great fun, it must be admitted that it's a long way from being a masterpiece of cinema. Its own screenwriter, Roald Dahl — yes, he of "Charlie and the ...

Related Posts

WHAT PEOPLE ARE READING