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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Mar 13, 2002

Jad Fair: 'Words of Wisdom and Hope'

Though many consider it a dubious distinction, Jad Fair has fashioned a lasting career out of what is essentially a negative musical talent. Willfully ignorant of theory and mostly tone-deaf, Fair, first with his groundbreaking group Half Japanese and more recently as a kind of plug-in solo artist, creates...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 10, 2002

'Genji': the long and the shorter of it

The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler. Viking, 2001, 1,174 pp., $60 (cloth) In the February 2002 issue of the monthly journal Eureka, Fusae Kawazoe gives a rundown of translations of Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji" -- not only into foreign languages, but into modern...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 6, 2002

A syllable becomes a word -- and a world

"When you say the word 'dog,' " the Swiss founder of modern linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) once remarked, "everyone imagines something different." But as Hasse Mitsuko's new one-woman show, "Voice," triumphantly demonstrates, even the simplest sounds, too, can be full of meaning.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 3, 2002

Where to go to get hooked

So now you're kitted out with all your brand-new fly-fishing gear. But don't get too excited just yet. Before taking the plunge for the first time at some idyllic lakeside spot, or by a glittering river you're told is teeming with prime specimens, take time to visit a kanri-tsuriba (a pond or stretch...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 28, 2002

Japanese teams treat Guam to rugby spectacle

For many Japanese people, the island of Guam conjures up images of duty-free shopping, cheap golf courses and unequaled diving around the reefs that surround this Pacific island.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 26, 2002

Beauty in the land of blood and bones

Angola is not a tourist destination for the faint-hearted. In fact, it's probably fair to say that it's not a tourist destination at all. Period.
COMMUNITY
Feb 23, 2002

Beauty and brains behind company clear as glass

Company President Narumi Tanaka is alone Monday morning, holding the fort in her office in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward. Her staff -- three full-timers, one part-timer and her husband -- are out and about on what she calls "the client site." A good thing, we agree, because it means TRANSe Project is at full...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 20, 2002

The mind has mountains

"It's true," a friend who has lived here for more than a decade insisted. "Because for them it's the most important mountain in the world, Japanese schoolchildren don't draw Mount Fuji the sloping shape it really is, but as incredibly tall and pointed."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 20, 2002

Views from a place you've been before

It's always a pleasure to discover an exhibition space in Tokyo that you've never been to before, especially during these difficult economic times when old favorites are closing down. My latest find is Gallery Senkukan, tucked into a tiny Yoyogi side street, which opened a little more than a year ago....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 10, 2002

Love in a time of decline for homegrown literature

Is there a future for Japanese literature? That is the question posed by an article in the February issue of Bungakukai. Writer Akira Nagae visited various bookstores and publishers in search of an answer. The manager of a bookstore near an arts university in Tokyo feels authors and publishers are deceiving...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 7, 2002

Precipitate beauty of nature's own ice sculptures

"The sky has holes to let rain in; the holes are small, that's why rain is thin." So wrote the zany British comedian Spike Milligan. Rain. Some hate it; I love it. It's a gift (thin though it may be) from the heavens.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2002

Impressionist master of time and space

If the world seems like a dark place at the beginning of the present century, an exhibition of work completed at the beginning of the last may help put things back in a more optimistic perspective. "Monet -- Later Works: Homage to Katia Granoff," is on show at the Iwate Museum of Art till Feb. 11 and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WORKING IT OUT
Feb 5, 2002

Are 'freeters' result of slump, source of next one?

Tomoko Noguchi, 22, got her first bar hostess job about three years ago, while studying to become an aesthetician at a vocational school.
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 31, 2002

Learning their ways makes sharks much safer

During the blistering heat of last summer, which was accompanied by unusually warm waters to the east of the Philippines and the Nansei Islands, a juvenile hammerhead shark wandered into the Sea of Japan. After being sighted off Shimane Prefecture it was hunted ruthlessly -- but apparently never caught....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 30, 2002

Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble: 'Mnemosyne'

The collaboration between saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the a cappella vocal quartet Hilliard Ensemble is an avant-garde blend of modern European jazz and early music. On "Mnemosyne," their recent collaboration, the origin of their songs extends back to the second century B.C. with a Greek hymn to Delphic...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 27, 2002

Can't start a fire without a match

A popular format for variety specials is the omiai, bringing together single men and women for the purpose of making couples. Often the stated goal is nothing more than dating, but of course the ultimate goal is matrimony.
COMMUNITY
Jan 27, 2002

Crash diet with a soft landing

"That's impossible!" said my colleague. "Ten kilos in three months? That's . . ." "Don't say it!" I put my hands over my ears, but he continued anyway. "That's 100 grams a day."
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2002

Get market forces on the side of reform

There are episodes in history that deservingly draw our attention -- some very small in scale but major in impact. In American history, one such moment at the start of the Revolutionary War has come to be known as "the shot that rang through the world." Another such momentous event recently appeared...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 20, 2002

Fifty lashings for serving up wet noodles

This week, former teenage beauty queen Ryoko Sakaguchi returns to "Tuesday Suspense Theater" (Nippon TV; 9:03 p.m.) for the fifth time. She stars in "Rinsho Shinrishi (Clinical Psychologist)" as college lecturer Yuri Matsunami, who uses her psychoanalytical skills to solve murder mysteries that leave...
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Jan 13, 2002

Take me to your anti-leader

The Shibuya Takeshi Orchestra is one of the most singular, challenging and unusual jazz units in Tokyo. Many local groups strive for accomplished technique, pushing their instruments to the far edge of rapid-fire playing or polishing one style to perfection. The Shibuya Takeshi Orchestra, however, delights...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 9, 2002

Back from the brink

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) said that people not drawing on 3,000 years of tradition are living on the edge of extinction. How, then, did Japanese craftsmen recover from the trauma of World War II, when their proud traditions, seemingly tainted by recent history, were thrown...
Events
Jan 8, 2002

Tourists take on Takla Makan aboard thirsty ships of desert

AMAGASAKI, Hyogo Pref. -- To enter the Takla Makan Desert in China's Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region may mean to never return.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 6, 2002

Deconstructing Tokyo

INSIDER'S TOKYO, by Angela Jeffs. Times Books International (Singapore), 2001, 280 pp., with numerous maps and photographs, 2,100 yen (paper) Tokyo must have more foreign-language books devoted to it than any other major city -- not only the guides, which endlessly proliferate, but also serious books...
JAPAN
Jan 3, 2002

Chinese teas overcome coffee boom as Japan turns new leaf in Asia

Unlike Starbucks coffee, it can be drunk steadily over three or four hours, with no risk of caffeine addiction.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2001

Simply, the best

This was a year in which the most memorable screen image belonged to reality, not cinema. Indeed, as many have noted, the spectacle of airline jets ramming into the World Trade Center towers was all too reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster's money shot -- and that may have been the point. Terrorists...
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2001

What stressed directors want

Mortel Transfert Rating: * * * * Japanese title: Aoi Yume no Onna Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix Running time: 122 minutes Language: French Now showing
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2001

My heart will go on . . . for 1,000 years

Sennen no Koi Hikaru Genji Monogatari Rating: * * * Director: Tonko Horikawa Running time: 143 minutes Language: Japanese Now showing
CULTURE / Art
Dec 26, 2001

Borderless beauty of ink art

An exhibition of sumi art (ink art), a style combining calligraphy and painting, by Byakko Kashiwagi is running from today to Jan. 14 at Gallery ef in Tokyo's Asakusa.
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Dec 25, 2001

Marketplace of religion and commerce

Where there are shrines, temples and other places of worship in Asia, invariably there are markets. Japan is no different. Commerce flows in through the temple gates and then back out -- a cordial division of profits ensuing, generally to everyone's satisfaction.

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