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LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Aug 29, 2007

Save the planet: wind-powered toys and PC ways to catch insects

A nimal rights are as important to me as they are to the next Homo sapien. But I draw the line at in sects inflicting their unwanted presence on me, mosquitoes most especially spring to mind. Frankly, the first solution that comes to mind is finding use No. 1,001 for a newspaper. Those who prefer a less...
MORE SPORTS
Aug 28, 2007

Worlds notebook; Day 3

OSAKA — News and notes from Day 3 of the 2007 IAAF World Athletics Championships.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 19, 2007

Moses trying to help less fortunate hurdle obstacles

Edwin Moses was an untouchable, unbeatable performer as a track and field superstar during his heyday in the 1970s and '80s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2007

'Rosso Come Il Cielo'

In many ways Mirco was a typical 10-year-old boy; skittish, puppyish and with a very short attention span. One second he'd be playing with a spinning top, and a nanosecond later he'd be running down the street in pursuit of the next fun thing. Mirco was the only child of adoring parents living in the...
EDITORIALS
Aug 16, 2007

Subdued hopes for a Korean summit

The leaders of South and North Korea have agreed to hold a summit, the second ever between presidents of the two countries. Any dialogue among Korean heads of state is to be welcomed, but the timing of this meeting is suspicious. It is tempting to dismiss the summit as a political stunt to shore up the...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 14, 2007

Manga frenzy proves that we're all kids at heart

That whole deal about growing up and behaving like an adult? Scrap it, you don't have to — at least not in the Japan of recent years. Adult responsibilities, adult worries, adult concerns — while we all know such things exist, it's become possible to dodge them well into your 30s and 40s, in a kind...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 10, 2007

Wise-guy George woos Tokyo

It's not clear whether George Clooney was in character for his Tokyo press conference (along with "Ocean's Thirteen" producer Jerry Weintraub), or whether he'd just been knocking back the hooch with lunch, but either way, he rarely answered a question straight.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2007

A playground by the sea

Naughty Atami is the Shizuoka resort with the beachfront soaplands and other salacious establishments. It's got the fraying Hihokan (literally: House of Secret Treasures), likely the world's least scholarly sex museum, with its holographic strippers and a Marilyn Monroe mannequin that exposes itself...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 10, 2007

'One Day in Europe'

"One Day in Europe" is a comedy of cultural and linguistic misunderstanding that toys with the idea of a unified Europe, where everyone shares the same singular, unifying identity. Unlike many Americans, who proudly admit to being "American," Europeans — single currency and the EU notwithstanding —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 9, 2007

After 100 years of change, Nitten moves to the NACT

R esearch the biography of any prominent Japanese artist in the last 100 years and you'll likely run into terms such as Bunten, Teiten, Shin Bunten and Nitten. Though the plethora of names may be off-putting, they all refer to the same thing: Japan's largest, annual open art exhibition.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 8, 2007

How is it our time seems to speed up?

"I never think of the future; I find it comes soon enough."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 4, 2007

Nuptial hopeful livens up the island

Man-chan and Kio-chan are my favorite Funky Old People who come to the Moooo! Bar on the beach. Local historians and the island's unofficial welcome party for tourists, they come to the bar hoping to meet some interesting gaijin. And gaijin come to the Moooo! Bar in hopes of meeting Man-chan and Kio-chan....
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2007

Let the punishment fit the spam

Among life's many hassles, the most recently invented is e-mail spam. Nowadays every single e-mail arrives sandwiched between garbage that must be cleared away before getting to friends, family and business. Even those few foolish people who follow up on spam probably hate spam. However, restricting...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 1, 2007

Kotaro Sawaki: Writer on the road of life

Kotaro Sawaki is one of the most popular nonfiction writers in Japan. He made his name with "Shinya Tokkyu (Midnight Express)," a reportage of a yearlong overland trip through Asia and Europe he took when he was in his mid-20s. Those stories — whose title refers to a euphemism for "prison break" used...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 28, 2007

Russia as it wanted to be

Sir Winston Churchill, one of history's most quotable characters, once described Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." The Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad summed it up as "an Asiatic monster with a European veneer," while the English writer Rudyard Kipling had a slightly more...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 19, 2007

Second Life, second lingo

There probably aren't many English teachers in Japan who go to work carrying a samurai sword, dressed in battle armor, with a large Stars and Stripes strapped to their back. But happily for Chris Flesuras, in 3-D virtual world Second Life little is impossible.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2007

One man's porn is . . .

Sexuality is polymorphous. It has to be. This is because — rightly or wrongly — it often faces rigid repressive structures that it can only outflank by changing its forms and pouring its energy in new directions.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 22, 2007

Seeing from the Korean side

In February this year over 300 people attended the performing arts festival at a junior high school in Okayama. It was much the same as any other arts festival at any other junior high school in Japan; the students sang, danced, played music and performed skits for an audience made up of family and friends....
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
May 20, 2007

Book on Brooklyn Dodgers triggers memory of a cold case

It was 1955. I was 7 years old and living in northern New Jersey and just getting interested in baseball.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 17, 2007

Parodies in pottery

At first glance, the colorful, classically shaped vase adorned with flower prints and pictures of doll-like young girls seems harmless enough. It's the second look that throws you.
CULTURE / Books
May 13, 2007

Opening the shutter to internment

IMPOUNDED: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, by Dorothea Lange, edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, 205 pp., $29.95 (cloth) Reviewed by DAVID COZY On Feb. 14, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed "Executive...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 10, 2007

Looking at the garish and the free

Let's face it, there really is nothing like the face. Lovers dream of faces, poets stretch and struggle to juggle the words so that they might capture and communicate a countenance. Even businesspeople, the ultimate pragmatists, will travel across towns or oceans — when a telephone or e-mail could...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 10, 2007

Modern girls and outrage

The Taisho Era (1912-1926) saw young habitues of Japan's cafe society challenging and outraging their parents as they danced, smooched and smoked cigarettes, aping their idols of the silver screen. Emblematic of the age was the moga (modan gaaru, or modern girl) with her Western shoes, dresses, makeup...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
May 9, 2007

BYO cool air and pet stress patches

Climbing Mount Fuji is a right of passage that comes with a price tag. Just breathing at that elevated altitude is a challenge. Technology offers a solution, at a cost, with canned oxygen. An object of some ridicule during the climb's early stages, it is a blessed relief near the top. Now, strutting...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
May 6, 2007

Celebrity cooking game, manga coming-of-age story and obscure hobbies variety show

No one is waiting for yet another TV variety show about food, but TV Asahi's new program "Oishinsuke" (Monday, 7 p.m.) at least has the advantage of being hosted by comedian Shinsuke Shimada, whose lightning-fast, cynical wit might give the subject matter a funnier spin.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes