Search - beauty

 
 
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 17, 2013

Cyber-kids get a break during Bon holidays

You didn't need prophetic powers, back in the 1980s when the personal computer was starting to show its potential, to foresee something like Internet addiction. It should have been obvious. It was, to science-fiction writer William Gibson. Reminiscing to Time magazine in 1995, he recalled his shock,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

American fiction's drunken masters

Rivers run through Olivia Laing's writing — sometimes the real thing, either narrow and innocuous like a backwoods creek or mile-wide like the Mississippi; occasionally streams of memory that flow backwards, and sometimes gushers of tears; always a steady current of liquidly eloquent words.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

Reformers set sights on Scotland's immense private estates

On bleak Scottish moors and soft, mossy hills, the oldest and grandest theme park in the world rose on Aug. 12. The vast and sprawling sporting estates that possess most of Scotland's surface thrummed with the frantically beating wings of grouse and echo to the gunshot, bravo and jolly well done. The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 15, 2013

'Populaire'

It's "My Fair Lady" meets "Flashdance" meets the sweet, earnest rom-coms of the 1950s. "Populaire" is the feature debut by French filmmaker Régis Roinsard (most famed for Jane Birkin's promotional videos) but the film has the look and feel of a veteran artisan: "Some Like it Hot" director Billy Wilder,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 15, 2013

'Playing For Keeps'

Gerard Butler, most famed for his muscled marauder performance in "300," always seems on the verge of burning rage or spontaneous combustion — which is why he was a disaster in rom-coms such as "The Bounty Hunter" and "The Ugly Truth." For all his handsome-guy demeanor, he just doesn't seem nice to...
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Aug 12, 2013

The perennial 'half, bi or double?' debate rolls on

Confounding 'half' stereotypes
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2013

Toba and Kashikojima: pearls of tranquillity beside Ise Bay

In places where land submerges itself beneath water, modes of transportation immediately change and, in some cases, endings become beginnings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 10, 2013

Evocative novel bridges Japan and China, past and present

That the Western world has lost interest in Japan, and particularly in Japanese literature, and is turning its attention more and more to the colossus across the sea (China, not America) is a constant plaint on the part of Japan specialists and translators.
Reader Mail
Aug 10, 2013

A suspicious display of beauty

The photo accompanying the Aug. 6 article by The Washington Post, titled "Opening of Iwaki beaches offer semblance of normalcy," belies any notion of a typical summer day at Nakoso Beach. The two lovely young ladies look as though they're having a lovely afternoon, but in the background the beach looks...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 8, 2013

Look at Nara in a new light during To-kae

Nara, an ancient capital of Japan, is known for its changing beauty throughout the seasons. If you think you've seen the city at its best blanketed in cherry blossoms or autumn leaves, you probably haven't seen it during the To-kae Festival.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON: DESIGN
Aug 5, 2013

Easy furniture and all things green

Rearranging furniture with the flip of a coin
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / OUR MAN IN TOKYO
Aug 5, 2013

Young Ethiopia envoy brings new ideas, energy

Ethiopian Ambassador Markos Tekle Rike, 34, says he has always felt a special connection between his country and Japan, although he did not have any personal interest in this country before he arrived here 2½ years ago.
EDITORIALS
Aug 4, 2013

Kanebo and consumer protection

Whatever economic losses that Kanebo Cosmetics incurs as it recalls skin-whitening products from throughout Asia, they don't make up for customers' suffering.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 3, 2013

The Emperor and the general: a visit to Fushimi Momoyama

On the evening of Sept. 13, 1912, a cart decorated in gold leaf and lacquer and solemnly hauled by a team of oxen left the Imperial Palace in Tokyo along with a phalanx of people carrying banners, torches and weapons and beating drums and gongs. After midnight, a special train left Tokyo Station bound...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jul 29, 2013

There is more to my son than the fact he's a 'half'

For foreign residents, having a child in Japan can be a daunting prospect. Going to the hospital and trying to figure out what the doctor is saying in complex Japanese medical terms is just one of myriad trials.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 27, 2013

What if Columbus had reached his goal, Japan?

Every school child knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America. Every school child knows wrongly. When the Genovese explorer's three ships sailed westward from Palo de la Frontera, Spain, on Aug. 2, 1492, he was bound, he thought, for "the noble island of Cipangu" — Japan.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 27, 2013

NHK drama dives into the 'idea' of idols in rural Japan

When it was announced last year that entertainment Renaissance man Kankuro Kudo would write the script for NHK's spring-summer 2013 "TV novel," a few people probably wondered how the iconoclastic writer-director-actor would respond to the broadcaster's narrative strictures. In a recent interview with...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 27, 2013

At home on the Maasai Mara range

Asuka Takita has a passion for Africa and its wildlife that took root during her childhood in Singapore and flourished in the soils of Kenya during her third year of university.
EDITORIALS
Jul 27, 2013

Modern spice routes

Online cross-border shopping is booming, but Japan seems to be lagging behind in sales on these 'modern spice routes' because of problems with English.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2013

Crawling through the mud in style

It's quite fitting that the major Osamu Suzuki (1926-2001) retrospective, the first since the ceramicist's passing, is taking place at The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the hometown of the artist.
JAPAN
Jul 24, 2013

Thousands hit Kanebo over skin discoloring

Kanebo Cosmetics Inc. has announced that more than 2,000 people have complained about serious skin discoloration after using its products, with the firm saying Wednesday that it has begun meeting with people suffering from such symptoms, promising them long-term support.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 19, 2013

The weird and wonderful world of the naked mole rat

Doctor Chris Faulkes, who has been working with them almost every day for the last 25 years, has long since learned to love naked mole rats, but, as he concedes, since they are "pretty much blind and live underground in the dark, they are not necessarily naturally selecting on good looks."
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 19, 2013

Knocking on knickknacks

My grandma used to be the easiest of all my relatives to buy souvenirs for.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2013

'2 Days in New York'

If she's known for anything, Julie Delpy is known for her films "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," made with director Richard Linklater and costar Ethan Hawke. And while those films were about the giddy feeling of falling head over heels for someone even when you know better than to believe in happily...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2013

Silence is a virtue for Tokyo's Flau

Back when he still worked as a speech therapist and audiologist, Yasuhiko Fukuzono used to observe an interesting phenomenon. When deaf patients were fitted out with hearing aids for the first time, they complained that everything was just noise. "Even when they were at home, not doing anything, it was...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Jul 16, 2013

Aquariums offer summer escape

This past Monday was Marine Day in Japan. Aside from creating a much-appreciated three-day weekend, the role of the holiday is to encourage people to reflect on the integral role the ocean plays in Japan's history. So, what better time to visit an aquarium? Japan has plenty of places to ogle fish, and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 12, 2013

Okinawan musician, club owner keeps folk traditions going strong

The back streets of Naha were dark, making it more difficult to find Shima-Umui, a music club run by Okinawan folk singer Misako Oshiro. The torpid air and smell of papaya rinds from a nearby bin spoke of the subtropics. A small sign, barely visible from the street, directed customers to the basement...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 11, 2013

'Shanidaru no Hana (The Flower of Shanidar)'

Gakuryu Ishii has made something of a career of confounding fans and critics alike with his big shifts in artistic direction, his long silences and, in 2010, his name change from the unusual, if memorable, Sogo to the pretentious, if still hard-to-forget, Gakuryu (a combination of the kanji for "mountain"...

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic