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LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Dec 25, 2009

A New Year's gift from Nikko Tokyo

Hotel Nikko Tokyo's six restaurants are offering special-price "Otoshidama Lunch" courses from Jan. 6 until Jan. 31.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 20, 2009

Stunning book speaks volumes about the ravages visited on Tibet

Ten years ago, near the end of 1999, the Chinese author Wang Lixiong received a package from a young woman of Tibetan origin named Tsering Woeser. It contained several hundred black-and-white negatives.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 20, 2009

Alexandria's library: A phoenix amid the tea fields of Uji

Recalling the glorious Heian Period in Japan's history from 794 to 1185 at once conjures up images of a world of courtiers, 12-layered kimono, elegant poetry competitions beside winding streams — and secret trysts in scented chambers.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 20, 2009

Tuning in to Alaskan bears

With temperatures falling steadily, amazing things are happening in the natural world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009

The beauty of subtle deceit

More than in any other country where the lacquer tree grows, the art of working with its hard-drying sap has excelled here in Japan. Two leading exponents were Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747) and Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), who both stand out not only for their inventive sense of design in decorating three-dimensional...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 18, 2009

'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime'

They say that losing a child is the greatest misfortune to befall anyone — at the beginning of "Il ya longtemps que je t'aime" that misfortune is already the defining element of Juliette's (Kristin Scott Thomas) life. The camera zooms in on her profile, the skin dry and wan, inhaling a cigarette. Juliette...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 13, 2009

Stone cold serenity

JAPANESE STONE GARDENS, by Stephen Mansfield. Tuttle, 2009, 160 pp., $24.95 (hardcover) Reviewed by Anna Kunnecke This book carries the qualities of a stone garden within its very pages. It is disciplined, serene, deep . . . and dry. I will admit to briefly fantasizing about a mad monk hopping across...
CULTURE / Film
Dec 11, 2009

Let us celebrate the miracle of wondrously difficult movies

The more movies you watch the more you become convinced how they are wondrously difficult things to make. Billy Wilder didn't say that exactly, but he did say something about the job getting harder as he got older, so I figured it out. I'm always awed by the fact that so many incredibly watchable films...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 11, 2009

Mono

Considered one of Asia's top postrock acts since their 2001 "Under the Pipal Tree" debut and now a decade into their career, Tokyo's Mono are listed alongside the global leaders in their genre. Taking full advantage of their continually growing stature, the instrumental quartet invited a 28-member chamber...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2009

Australia shows off Asia's talent

BRISBANE, Australia — Over the past year, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made waves in his country and across the region with his plans to spearhead the development of an Asia Pacific Community. Rudd is in part picking up where former Prime Minister Bob Hawke left off 20 years ago, when Australia...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 3, 2009

Platter of the day: Flash Sushi

LONDON — Nyotaimori — aka "female body arrangement" aka "naked sushi," in which the food is eaten from the nude body of a beautiful woman — is as much legend as fact in Japan (see accompanying article). But that hasn't stopped the Western imagination from seizing upon it as supposed shorthand for...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Nov 29, 2009

Kichijoji captivations

Kichijoji has shopping covered, literally and figuratively. The roofed malls at this popular stop on the Chuo Line 15 minutes west of Shinjuku sport prices markedly lower than those of central Tokyo, and the lure of its bargains is easily as strong as its famed live jazz and blues scene.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 26, 2009

Cable guy Yasushi Sano

Yasushi Sano, 30, is a "cable guy" living and working in Tokyo. By his estimates, over the past six years, he has installed cable TV into about fives homes a day, averaging 25 hook-ups a week, 100 a month and 1,200 a year, bringing quality entertainment into a total of 7,200 households. Sano's passion...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 22, 2009

How to save the planet, Edo Japan style

JUST ENOUGH: Lessons in Living Green From Traditional Japan, by Azby Brown. Kodansha International, 2009, 232 pp., $24.95 (hardcover) Azby Brown is fascinated by Edo Japan because it once faced dire environmental degradation and yet did not collapse. Through a combination of ingenious technological advances,...
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Nov 20, 2009

Hannaryz trying to shake slump

Every expansion team is expected to struggle during its inaugural season. And if Aristotle had focused on athletics instead of classic philosophy, he could've written volumes about this subject.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 20, 2009

'Loft'

It's probably easy to make a complete hash out of something like "Loft" — five men share a loft purely for the purpose of enjoying their mistresses until one evening the bloodied, nude body of a young woman is left on the bed, her wrist handcuffed to a bedpost.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 15, 2009

Notable memories and ones forgotten

On my most recent journey overseas, to southern Brazil, a fellow traveler gave me a large Moleskine-brand notebook. Though grateful for the present, at first I was uncertain what to do with it. I generally use a particular-size pocket notebook to write up all my field observations, and this new acquisition...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2009

Freedoms on the outer limit

There's something special about places on the outer limits of great nations or continents; a sort of liberated and reflective space, away from it all, yet still connected to it. Think Alaska, Vancouver Island, the Koh Chang islands in Thailand, Xining in far western China or the pearl of Sri Lanka hanging...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2009

Freedoms on the outer limit

There's something special about places on the outer limits of great nations or continents; a sort of liberated and reflective space, away from it all, yet still connected to it. Think Alaska, Vancouver Island, the Koh Chang islands in Thailand, Xining in far western China or the pearl of Sri Lanka hanging...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 31, 2009

Putting a little bug in your ear

Sometimes beauty resides not to the eye of the beholder. Instead, it lives in the ear of the listener.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 30, 2009

'Watashi Dasuwa'

"A fool and his money are soon parted" and all its many variations is a common theme in films, from the heist-of-a-lifetime that ruins so many lives in "Goodfellas" to Gary Cooper handing out his inherited fortune to total strangers in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and then coming to regret it.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2009

Ibaraki turns matchmaker to curb population decline

NAMEGATA, Ibaraki Pref. — With fat black clouds hanging ominously overhead, a sludgy field of sweet potatoes in rural Japan might not seem the best place for a date with the woman of your dreams.
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Oct 28, 2009

Tarasova must go if Mao wants shot at Olympic glory

Sometimes you have to throw the game plan out the window.
COMMUNITY
Oct 24, 2009

Seasonal rules permeate daily life in Japan

I grew up in Florida, and our year divides itself into seasons of bearable and unbearable. Even the most creative mind could hardly find illumination in topics around the weather, as there are only so many ways to say "the sun is shining with ferocious force today" or "the sweat is running into my eyeballs...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 23, 2009

Unified by Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau's birth at the end of the 1900s not only affected the art world but also radically transformed the public's visual awareness, helping to propel product design, graphic design, typography and manufacturing into the 20th century.

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?