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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 7, 2004

When life gives you lemons, make an underground comic

American Splendor Rating: * * * * (out of 5) Director: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini Running time: 101 minutes Language: English Opens July 10 [See Japan Times movie listings] Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but surely comic books are the opiate of the misfits. Walk...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 7, 2004

The cutting edge of samurai swords

Attention to detail, design, and decoration are hallmarks of traditional Japanese aesthetics, and these values are shown off splendidly by the decorative elements and accoutrements of the Japanese sword. Furthermore, the sword is believed to be an almost sacred item, capturing the soul and spirit of...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 3, 2004

Never been there, never done that

"Twenty-five" seems a fine number for the necessary hours in a day or an easy-to-find shoe size in centimeters, yet for me that digit has now garnered a special significance. It marks the number of years I have lived in Japan, soon to inch one step forward to 26 -- more than a quarter of a century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 30, 2004

Ryu Murakami's number is up

69 Rating: * * * (out of 5) Director: Lee Sang ll Running time: 113 minutes Language: Japanese Opens July 10 [See Japan Times movie listings] How was your 1969? A student at the University of Michigan at the time, I grew my hair into a Bob Dylan halo, blew my mind with LSD and got tear-gassed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 27, 2004

H. Art Chaos explores poetry in motion

One of Japan's most innovative dance companies will tackle the challenging task of giving form to an almost forgotten music and dance concept, developed by a composer some 90 years ago.
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2004

'Country, your sport is summer'

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the official beginning of the season that inspires so many mixed feelings. Reflect for a moment on the associations, literary and otherwise, that come to mind when you think of the word summer. There are happy ones: the boys of summer; the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 18, 2004

Enjoy a taste of Boso's byways

When I got off the train at Sanuki-machi on the Uchibo Line in Chiba Prefecture, I realized, in a vague kind of way, that I knew the old little station. Perhaps I'd visited this rural town near the sea on a grade-school summer trip. Certainly, the 89-year-old station at the foot of the hills was exactly...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 17, 2004

Some pictures worth 1,000 words

I take my hat off to those folk who can draw and paint. What a wonderfully inspiring skill. And when they can illustrate living creatures in lifelike form then I am in awe. What has prompted this outpouring is the fact that I am currently at work on a new field guide, so I am heavily involved in both...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 16, 2004

Give 'em enough dope

The Tesseract Rating: * * (out of 5) Director: Oxide Pang Running time: 96 minutes Language: English Opens June 19 [See Japan Times movie listings] Spun Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Jonas Akerlund Running time: 102 minutes Language: English Opens June 19 [See Japan...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 16, 2004

ReJoyce! Fans fete Bloomsday centenary

DUBLIN -- One hundred years ago today is the day described in arguably the greatest novel of the 20th century, James Joyce's "Ulysses." June 16, 1904, was when Joyce's hero, Leopold Bloom, set out on a meandering stroll through Dublin, and the date is now celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 5, 2004

Glitzy city jars journeyer to 'real' Japan

"We are having a gale all night and a beauty too. The waves are lashing about us at a desperate rate, even against my window at times away up on the upper deck, but they can't drive us off our course. I go to bed at night, I fully expect to find myself on the floor in the morning. Please have a cradle...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Jun 4, 2004

Down by Edo's lost canal

The landscape in the accompanying 1830s woodblock print depicts the valley of the Kandagawa River.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 30, 2004

TV Asahi's animated family comedy "Atashin'chi" and more

Monta Mino, look out! Comedian Shinsuke Shimada is looking to overtake you as the most popular emcee on TV. Unlike you, Shimada can't be seen every single night of the week, but some nights he can be seen more than once.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 27, 2004

Picking the brains of teenagers shows how we 'mature'

What an age we live in. Science is progressing in ever greater leaps and bounds. The way things are going, we might one day even understand that most enigmatic and mysterious of natural phenomena, the teenager.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 25, 2004

The mane attraction

In 1979, Japan was in the Dark Ages. Dark that is, in terms of hair. No one dyed their hair any other color but black and when they reached for lighter tints, were considered a bit on the bizarre side.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 21, 2004

Osaka's west side story

In the cult-film classic "Death Ride to Osaka," there is a scene in which tough Tokyo yakuza drag a Western hostess kicking and screaming out the door. The hostess has just been banished from the bright lights of Tokyo's Ginza to the foul backwater of Osaka.
Features
May 16, 2004

On the trail of manifest destiny

Two hundred years ago this week, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their Corps of Discovery set out to explore the American West. Sunday TIMEOUT asks what the expedition, its leaders and the Shoshone woman who was their guide still mean to us today
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 12, 2004

Ozon playing God

Just a few years back director Francois Ozon was one of France's enfants terribles, his films like "Sitcom" (1998) or "Criminal Lovers" (1999) often mentioned in the same breath as those of Gaspar Noe or Catherine Breillat. These days, though, Ozon is better known for his sensitive, subtly perceptive...
JAPAN
May 12, 2004

War criminals' poems uncovered

The themes found in a newly uncovered collection of traditional Japanese verse would be familiar to any reader here: the melancholy passing of the seasons, fleeting beauty, the inevitability of death.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 9, 2004

If only divorces were scripted by TV writers

It's easier to get a divorce in Japan than anywhere else in the world. If both parties agree, all they have to do is affix their seals to a document and their union is instantly dissolved -- no trial separation period, no grounds, no mess.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 4, 2004

Effort afoot to put Japan on eco-tour map

The government has embarked on a project to make Japan a major travel destination in the 21st century, hoping this not only boosts the domestic tourism industry but offers other windfalls as well.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 4, 2004

Effort afoot to put Japan on eco-tour map

The government has embarked on a project to make Japan a major travel destination in the 21st century, hoping this not only boosts the domestic tourism industry but offers other windfalls as well.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 30, 2004

Get away from it all without going so far

HINASE, Okayama Pref. -- Most people, if asked to name their favorite islands in Japan, might plump for the southernmost and most exotic ones which together comprise Okinawa Prefecture. Others, less enamored of balmy climes, might prefer Niigata Prefecture's Sado Island in the Sea of Japan; while some...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 28, 2004

Selling oneself short in the South

Sonny Rating: * * (out of 5) Director: Nicholas Cage Running time: 110 minutes Language: English Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] There was a time when one could relish seeing Nicholas Cage's name in a film's credits, a fertile period that encompassed 1991's "Wild at...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 28, 2004

Afloat in Mount Koya's spiritual sea

Mention Mount Koya, a highland in the north-central part of the Kii Peninsula in Wakayama Prefecture, and most people think immediately of the priest Kukai (774-835). Also known as Kobo Daishi, Kukai was the founder of the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism, and Mount Koya became the new sect's headquarters....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 28, 2004

It's back to the future in style

Casshern Rating: * * * * (out of 5) Director: Kazuaki Kiriya Running time: 141 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] The great age of the megalomaniac director, who dreamt of making big, visionary, no-expenses-spared movies, ended with the silents....
JAPAN
Apr 25, 2004

Half of women here feel they're fat, poll

Nearly half of the female respondents to a Cabinet Office survey released Saturday believe they are overweight, up 6.1 percentage points from the previous survey taken in October 2000.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 25, 2004

Frank Gibney's league of Japanese gentlemen

FIVE GENTLEMEN OF JAPAN: The Portrait of a Nation's Character, by Frank Gibney. D'Asia Vu Reprint Library, Eastbridge, 2002, 356 pp., $24.95 (paper). Fifty years ago, a young American writer named Frank Gibney, fresh out of the U.S. Navy where he had been a Japanese-speaking intelligence officer, published...

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb