Search - life

 
 
JAPAN
Oct 21, 2000

Shirakawa urges firsthand science classes

Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa suggested Friday that elementary school children in Japan more firsthand experience in their science education.
JAPAN
Oct 20, 2000

Web schoolmate-finder flourishes

If you are Japanese and want to "meet" your old schoolmates, try accessing www.yubitoma.co.jp on the Internet, a virtual alumni association Web site with more than 1.3 million members.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 20, 2000

On living in the best of all possible worlds

In "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" (1933) Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) remarks: "The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him . . . To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for...
COMMENTARY
Oct 20, 2000

Still no respite from turmoil

The world is reeling from severe turmoil. The Middle East situation remains volatile after an emergency summit in Egypt ended with a shaky pact to halt violence between Israelis and Palestinians, skyrocketing crude-oil prices are threatening a new oil crisis and the U.S. economy is showing signs of trouble...
JAPAN
Oct 19, 2000

Blackman suspect remains tight-lipped

Police have yet to make any significant progress in the Lucie Blackman case, despite the arrest last week of a company executive suspected of having had some connection with the missing Briton.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Oct 19, 2000

Restoring health with flowers

To continue with our rather jolly theme of happiness-inducing strategies, today we take a look at the Bach Flower Remedies.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 19, 2000

Talking head Tanaka wows 'em in Nagano

Yasuo Tanaka, candidate for the governorship of Nagano Prefecture, was supposed to meet voters at 2:30 p.m. at a shopping arcade in downtown Nagano, but it was a long arcade. A campaign worker wearing a bright orange windbreaker was handing out literature in front of Ito Yokado. "I think it's been changed,"...
COMMUNITY
Oct 19, 2000

Glittering prizes on the Ginza

There's a new tenant on Ginza's shopping street, a new jewel.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 19, 2000

A prize for all South Koreans

This century's last Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The honor caps a checkered career that includes adduction from Japan by intelligence agents, years of imprisonment under the threat of execution and, most recently, a historic summit meeting in June with North...
COMMUNITY
Oct 19, 2000

Kyushu reaches out to Asia through education

FUKUOKA -- For years it's been said that Kyushu's economic nerve center, Fukuoka, is one of Japan's most promising areas when it comes to forging new business and cultural links overseas. The city's proximity to the East Asian continent, as well as government and business activity, have all contributed...
EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2000

The case of Bessie's gaur

Cloning is in the news again, as it has been regularly since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep in Scotland in 1996. The last four years have seen a flurry of Dollies -- more sheep, cattle, pigs and mice -- and numerous bulletins on their progress, which has mostly proved surprisingly normal. In the...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 18, 2000

Seeing spots before your eyes

Rain brings changes to the African savanna. As storm clouds near, even the smells change. The temperature flutters, falls; the stuttering, buzzing and sawing of insects takes on a different pitch; then a hush, before the pittering of raindrops splashes dust from the baked ground. The pittering turns...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 18, 2000

Rootless, wandering nomads on the shifting sands of time

Of all the things I have given my children (bicycles, braces and bald chromosomes) and of all the things I would like to give them (resilience, compassion and an early introduction to Rogaine) nothing seems farther beyond my meager means than the one gift I care to bestow the most:
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2000

An unambiguous democrat

At the moment of his greatest personal triumph, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung once again demonstrated his magnanimity. "I return all my honor to the people and the citizens of the world, who love democracy and human rights," the president was quoted as saying after he was awarded the Nobel Peace...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2000

Globalization proves a taxing issue

Listening to the bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and in other transnational organizations like the European Union, it appears that the most pressing issues about globalization is the impact upon governments' ability to collect taxes. Of course, these international...
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Oct 15, 2000

Rexroth revolution comes home to Japan

Yokohama-based essayist and poet Morgan Gibson has been and continues to be one of the most prolific contributors to Japan's English literary scene. Of his own work he had poems published in the 1970s in pioneering journals like One Mind and Kyoto Review and later, in the '80s, in publications like Blue...
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2000

Honesty is JAL president's policy

Entranced by the view from the windows of an executive meeting room on the 24th floor of the headquarters of Japan Airlines in Tokyo's Tennozu Isle, I almost missed the entrance of JAL's president, Isao Kaneko. Luckily he is not the kind of man to take offense. Slightly built, in a pale gray suit, he...
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2000

Here she is . . . Miss Stereotype

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Miss America Pageant may aim to represent the ideal of U.S. womanhood, but it's got its problems; it's about as internally conflicted as Al Gore trying to act like respects George W. Bush's intelligence.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Oct 15, 2000

Roll out the mauve carpet and put the sake on ice

When I heard that the ambassador of Haiti and a voodoo priest would be visiting my house, I rushed around in a flurry to get things ready. After all, how often do you have an ambassador and a voodoo priest in your house at the same time?
CULTURE / Music
Oct 14, 2000

King's not dead, long live Crimson

Robert Fripp is rock 'n' roll's quintessential English eccentric. Not in a flamboyant, over-the-top way like the late Vivian Stanshall or Keith Moon, but in an offbeat, understated manner -- like a country vicar whose avocation is the study of reptile eggs or quill pens. Fripp's quirky, yet iron-willed...
COMMUNITY
Oct 12, 2000

Till bedtime do us part

At midnight every night, Shoko Ohara, a 39-year-old construction company employee, drives to the station to pick up her hard-working husband Takeshi, an engineer. The two chat during the 10-minute ride to their suburban home, and while Takeshi takes a bath, Shoko warms up his dinner in the kitchen. She...
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2000

Nikkei sinks to 19-month low

The benchmark 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average plunged to a 19-month low Wednesday, dragged down by weakness on Wall Street.
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2000

Nobel Prize surprises Tsukuba chemist

Hideki Shirakawa of Japan and Americans Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid have been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery that some plastics can conduct electricity. Shirakawa, 64, a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, said the honor came as a total...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2000

In Labor's moment of crisis, Blair delivers

The recent Labor Party conference in Brighton saw Prime Minister Tony Blair in an unprecedented position. Set against a backdrop of enormous public discontent, evident in the response to the fuel strike by the major oil companies, the Labor Party staged its centenary conference. The phony peace that...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Oct 12, 2000

A long, reflective sip of sake's craft and science

Sake's history goes back centuries and centuries, but just how many is a matter of debate. Regardless of the answer, over the last century or so gains in sake-brewing methods and technology have been exponential.
COMMUNITY
Oct 11, 2000

A perfect picture of a garden in Shimane

The Adachi Museum and its Japanese garden in Shimane Prefecture, part of the beautiful San'in district in western Honshu, is near historic Matsue with its castle and the home of writer Lafcadio Hearn.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2000

Palestinians fight decades of injustice

AL-BIREH, West Bank -- Areen, my 6-year-old daughter, has been unusually quiet. This normally energetic, very talkative child could not fully understand why school was canceled on Saturday after she was dressed and ready to go. On Sunday, during the news broadcast of the death of 12-year-old Mohammed...

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami