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CULTURE / Art
Feb 25, 2001

Funakoshi: Two heads are better than one

What distinguishes an artist from a craftsman? An obvious difference is the pricing of their work. Whereas craft products can sometimes be expensive, this usually reflects the time and trouble taken to make the piece. Art prices, however, are arranged on an exponential scale starting at almost nothing...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 25, 2001

Metal chaos and the forces of artistic evil

Love him or loathe him, you just can't ignore him. That old cliche certainly rings true with Marilyn Manson. Rap might have thrown up its first genuine white rapper, Eminem, to get up the establishment's nose, but metal has the ghoulish Goth freak to take care of the other end.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 25, 2001

The best of young modern art

Once a year, Tokyoites have the opportunity to see some of the best contemporary painting and photography from across Japan in one location, the Ueno Royal Museum.
COMMUNITY
Feb 25, 2001

Top industrial designer to lecture on lunchboxes

The ninth-floor room in Tokyo's Mejiro where Kenji Ekuan receives guests is a perfect reflection of his personality. One wall is stacked with diplomas, photos and portraits, all neatly framed but in no particular order. Opposite, floor-to-ceiling glass shelving is crammed with memorabilia and knickknacks...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 25, 2001

Love Psychedelico hits the blue notes

It's every struggling musician's dream: One moment you're scrounging around for gigs and a record deal while trying to keep food on the table and pay the rent, and the next moment, you've got a hit record on your hands and suddenly the talk of the town.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 25, 2001

Japan studies has explosive effect on U.S. kids

Recently I gave a presentation on Japan to a class of preschoolers in the United States. This month, these 4 and 5-year-olds were studying Japan. Last month they studied Pakistan. They can write their names in Urdu.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2001

Putin, history and the Korean Peninsula

SEOUL -- The inter-Korean railroad project across the DMZ makes a great deal of sense for the two Koreas, but it also makes sense for outside powers, above all for Russia. With space to spare on the trans-Siberian route on the return trip east, Moscow is looking south for passengers. It is offering huge...
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2001

Space . . . the funny frontier

Think of it as a "Seven Samurai" in outer space. OK, well there are only six warriors in "Galaxy Quest" but the comparison kinda works. They are a group of has-been actors whose sole claim to fame is a TV series called "Galaxy Quest" that went off the air 18 years ago. But American human beings weren't...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2001

India's census will only confirm the obvious: the nation is overpopulated

The ongoing census in India, the sixth since its independence in 1947, is bound to unfold an ocean of data, perhaps bewildering to an outsider given the country's complex social and caste divisions.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 22, 2001

Interview with a hooligan

This past Thursday, 10 supporters of English soccer club Liverpool were stabbed while in Italy to watch their club take on AS Roma in a UEFA Cup clash.
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Feb 22, 2001

Take time to savor the days of wine and oysters

Once again fate finds me back in Japan, wondering what I can enjoy eating here that I can't enjoy back in lovable Leuven, Belgium, where one can have excellent cuisine of all kinds with a glass of well-made wine for a pittance (the norm is the Belgian franc equivalent of under 1,000 yen). It's hard to...
COMMUNITY
Feb 22, 2001

The gentle hands and kind hearts of Toyko Union

The panda bears are hard at it. Up to their elbows in flour, they vigorously work their wooden rolling pins, then use cookie cutters to stamp out heart shapes from the flattened dough. Soon, a sugary aroma drifts down the halls.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 22, 2001

Sticking to sophisticated yakitori

Yakitori. The term covers a multitude of chicken possibilities, ranging from smoky yatai and stand-up nomiya under the proverbial tracks all the way to plush establishments for Ginza madames where every bird on the menu is reared in free-range bliss, cooked over premium charcoal and washed down with...
COMMENTARY
Feb 21, 2001

Japan-U.S. ties: lost at sea?

LOS ANGELES -- The Japanese people are angry about a lot of things these days, not just their soggy economy. They are angry about the collision of a U.S. submarine with a Japanese fisheries ship off Hawaii. They are angry about their prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, who incredibly continued with a golf...
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 21, 2001

Spud the magic surfer

www.geocities.com/Baja/4954/ This is how Spudster entertained himself this past weekend, trawling through sites like Internet Magic and challenging the online wizard to do things like figure out what Pokemon character he was thinking about. The wizard can also tell you who you were in a past life and...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Feb 21, 2001

Who's napping now?

As any music fan knows, the future of Napster, the biggest free lunch of MP3s on the Net, is still very much in legal limbo. Last week a San Francisco appeals court confirmed a decision made this summer: Napster is knowingly infringing the copyrights of recording artists. The court asked U.S District...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 19, 2001

Genome decoded: evolution, religion and what it all means

The publication of the human genome sequence has been compared to the detonation of the first atomic bomb and the landing of the first human on the moon.
COMMENTARY
Feb 18, 2001

This cup of coffee is on George W. Bush

NEW YORK -- I admit it: The money's already spent. I know, I know. I should have waited until that huge GOP windfall actually hit my bank account before going out on a wild tax-cut bender, but I just couldn't help myself. The mere thought of all that budget surplus loot -- trillions! of dollars! just...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 18, 2001

Rainy days and Mondays won't dampen baseball

"Rainy Days and Mondays (Always Get Me Down)," Karen and Richard Carpenter's hit record out of the 1970s, might have been an anthem for baseball fans in Japan several years ago.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2001

Osaka leaders' talk fest serves up more than usual platitudes

KYOTO -- When the Kansai region's leaders gather here every year for a two-day seminar to discuss the regional economy, corporate heads, economists and local government officials pontificate on issues ranging from information technology to employment.
COMMENTARY
Feb 17, 2001

Press is partly to blame for Mori's image

On Dec. 10, 1954, Ichiro Hatoyama became prime minister after a long and bitter political struggle with Shigeru Yoshida. In the immediate postwar period, Hatoyama had appeared to be the most promising of the candidates aspiring to head the government. But he was forced to leave the political arena after...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 17, 2001

They came from Zeta Reticuli

Mudvayne are often said to be the "new" Slipknot. Slipknot wear masks and are very famous; Mudvayne wear makeup and are getting there. And they both fit snugly into the new-fangled rock genre known as nu-metal. What's nu-metal? It's old metal but louder, faster and much more pretentious: It makes the...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2001

Departing Foley believes strength of ties will prevail

The following are excerpts from U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley's interview with The Japan Times: What do you think the U.S. and Japanese governments should do to prevent overall bilateral relations from being damaged by the Feb. 9 accident in which a Japanese ship sank off Hawaii when it was hit by a...
EDITORIALS
Feb 16, 2001

The Lucie Blackman case

One piece of a sad, grim puzzle was solved last weekend when police confirmed that human remains found in a beach cave in Kanagawa Prefecture were those of a 21-year-old British woman missing since last July. The other piece of the puzzle -- who killed her, how, where and why -- is not quite in place,...
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Feb 16, 2001

Keeping it pure and personal

There are people who have character and there are people who are characters. Coppe, the coolest musician you've never heard of, is both.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 16, 2001

Black Eyed Peas try to bring it all back

Whither hip hop? Since it's still relatively young, a better question might be: When will it become as redundant as rock? I think it already has, and not because, musically at least, hip hop is by definition a pastiche, but because thematically it's stuck in a rut.
BUSINESS
Feb 15, 2001

G7 nations' options limited on Japan's 'financial bomb'

All eyes will be on Paul O'Neill at the upcoming meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the Group of Seven industrialized nations in Palermo, Sicily.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji