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Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 18, 2014

Plan your attack before you hit the gamefloor at Tokyo Game Show

It's time to press the start button for Tokyo Game Show (TGS), and while last year's edition smashed attendance records with more than 270,000 gamers showing up over the course of the event. This year's TGS hopes to be even bigger. The number of exhibitors has reached a record 421, a significant hike...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 16, 2014

'Attack25' revists Dreams Come True's better qualities

Dreams Come True "Attack25" (Universal Music)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 13, 2014

Millennium Snow vol. 1-2

Bisco Hatori, author of the popular manga series and anime "Ouran High School Host Club," delivers a romantic comedy with a supernatural twist with "Millennium Snow," a series that will make any fan of shōjo (young girl) manga blush.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 9, 2014

Disappointment for Nishikori, but Asian tennis stars are on the rise

Tokyo's morning rush hour probably flowed a little smoother than usual Tuesday as millions delayed their journeys after finding a TV showing a 24-year-old wielding a tennis racket on a patch of concrete in a New York suburb.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 6, 2014

Yoshio Taniguchi: thriving in the shadow of greatness

Architect Yoshio Taniguchi generally doesn't like having his photograph taken for use in the media. In a way, it's a logical extension of his approach to his work, which could be described as architecture by subtraction. Having painstakingly removed everything extraneous from a design, and having overseen...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 6, 2014

So Happy to See Cherry Blossoms

From great disaster flows great poetry, and this collection of haiku, collated by Madoka Mayuzumi on her visits to the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 and translated into English, offers insight from those who lost so much.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Sep 5, 2014

Innovative products rethink generic design

Be prepared with Nosigner
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 4, 2014

Profiting off our biocapital

We must be watchful of attempts by DNA testing services to sell the private data they've accumulated from people to other companies for their own profit.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2014

'Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji'

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), one of the most renowned ukiyo-e artists of the late Edo Period (1603-1868), is still, even 165 years after his death, growing in popularity worldwide.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 2, 2014

Dustin Wong and Takako Minekawa let their imaginations run wild on new album

Guitarist Dustin Wong is upfront about not having the cleanest apartment. "There are so many plastic water bottles in the kitchen, equipment sprawled all over the place. Pieces of aluminum foil on the floor." This was where he and singer Takako Minekawa recorded their second album together.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 2, 2014

Review: Lisa Loeb at Billboard Live

Everyone has probably heard at least one Lisa Loeb song, and most likely it was her debut single "Stay (I Missed You)" — a worldwide hit exactly 20 years ago. Loeb remains thrilled with the song's continued success.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 29, 2014

After a 35-year interlude, Kate Bush wows fans with comeback gig

Kate Bush mixed note-perfect renditions of her biggest hits with two visually stunning interpretations of her longer conceptual works on Tuesday to delight fans who had waited 35 years for the British singer and songwriter to return to the stage.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 27, 2014

On this island, depopulation isn't the problem — inertia is

There is one thing most people don't realize about this island paradise amid the Seto Inland Sea: that despite many people wanting to move here, none of them can.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 26, 2014

Jazz artist Emi Meyer teams up with guitarist Seiichi Nagai for a warm, poppy album

Jazz artist Emi Meyer had plenty to be happy about in 2008. She had just self-released her debut album "Curious Creature," she was performing shows around Kyoto and major labels in Tokyo were attempting to woo her. The half-American, half-Japanese Meyer, though, says the situation wasn't so sunny.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2014

Topping the pops not as hard as it used to be

Disney's almighty Marvel Entertainment Group musters its superpowers to transform a motley collection of AM radio hits from the 1970s into the No. 1 pop music album in the U.S.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 23, 2014

Cheap train to the north with Basho

On July 19, the Yamagata Shinkansen debuted a luxury ashiya (foot bath) service. A ticket from Tokyo to Yamagata City, in Tohoku Prefecture, costs around ¥11,000, but 15 minutes in the foot bath car is extra. If Matsuo Basho, Japan's most well-known poet, were to retrace his 156-day-long trek through...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2014

Wena Poon on life and death in occupied Kyoto

As a child living in a tiny apartment in Singapore, Wena Poon listened to radio plays broadcast in a variety of languages and watched TV — everything from Chinese sword-fighting operas to popular American series such as "M*A*S*H." "There was nowhere to go outside," Poon says, "so I just sat around....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 22, 2014

Comiket grows stronger each year

Held twice a year and famous among otaku (fanboys and fangirls) the world over, Comiket, short for Comic Market, held its 86th event Aug. 15-17 at Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba. With more than 550,000 people reportedly attending the event over the three days, Comiket has grown significantly since its early...
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 22, 2014

Haruki Murakami's Cool Japan

I was in New York last week to host a launch event for the English translation of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage." My good friend and Murakami translator Ted Goossen, professor at York University in Toronto, joined me, as did pianist Eunbi Kim, whose...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 22, 2014

How WWII could have ended

A Soviet attack on Japan proper leading to the destruction of the Emperor system and the establishment of a communist government frightened Japan's militarists even more than the atomic bombings at the end of World War II.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2014

'Playing with Sound: Yuri Suzuki'

All of designer-artist Yuri Suzuki's works involve an element of play and focus on our relationship with sound, noises, music and electronics. As his first major solo exhibition in Japan, "Playing with Sound" is an interactive show that offers visitors unusual aural experiences and introduces them to...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2014

Nonprofit group aims to help female students meet their potential

Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Hanalabs is offering female college students in Japan a chance to advance their careers by devising solutions to social problems affecting communities in need of revitalization.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 16, 2014

Chasing the ghost of Musashi in Kyushu

In the spring of 1645 a man lay dying in Kumamoto, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. He sensed that his time was near, asked for someone to help him into a seated position and tucked his short sword into his belt. This way he could greet death with dignity. The dying man was the celebrated swordsman...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2014

Punk author Kou Machida on his offbeat samurai story

You wouldn't expect a punk musician to write decent novels, any more than you'd expect a boxer to be good at darning. The talents prized by the former vocation — restlessness, insouciance, hard-wired disregard for authority — don't lend themselves to the rigors of the author's life: all those long,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2014

The bright sparks of photography

Photography, because it is both familiar and accessible, is an excellent medium for young people to use for self-expression. With this as a guiding principle, the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (K*MoPA) in Yamanashi Prefecture has sought since its founding in 1995 to contribute to society by purchasing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2014

'National Treasures of the Munakata Shrine'

The location of the city of Munakata, on the coast of northern Kyushu and close to Oshima and Okinoshima islands, helped it become a historical cultural hub that welcomed incoming crafts shipped from Korea, China and Persia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2014

'Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces'

Japan first began producing porcelain during the early 17th century in Hizen Province, now the city of Arita in Saga Prefecture. Techniques from Korea were used with aesthetics influenced by Chinese Jingdezhen porcelain, a popular style at that time. Since many of the products were created for export...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2014

Barren rocks fuel South Korean passions in islet spat with Japan

Holding a notepad full of questions, 15-year-old Ko Yu-jeong rushes up to a South Korean diplomat after his speech, asking how she can better argue the case for her country's control of a set of islets also claimed by Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 12, 2014

Review: File-Under Records 12th Anniversary Party at Huck Finn

Mere seconds after Melt-Banana started into its set, I get kicked in the face and am left with a busted nose. Still, I enjoyed the show.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight