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CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2001

Woodstock: three days of . . . whatever

My Generation Rating: * * * * Director: Barbara Kopple Running time: 104 minutes Language: English Now showing
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2001

Asia's best shine at cinema showcase

Film festivals are addictive, especially if you've got that magical piece of laminated paper called a press pass. Volunteers smile at you, directors schmooze with you and theater doors swing open for you at the flash of a badge. Best of all, you can spend all day watching movies with no guilty feelings...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 26, 2001

India Express

While it was Ravi Shankar who brought Indian music to the world, it's been left to others to help it sink roots. In Japan, that task has been taken up by Nagoya-based sitarist Amit Roy, who has been imparting the Hindustani tradition to his Japanese students for the past decade.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 25, 2001

No, really, it's completely unspoiled!

Paradise in the South Pacific? Isn't that only ad copy for getaway resorts that put little beach umbrellas in the cocktails and charge prices the locals could only afford after a winning lottery ticket?
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 22, 2001

Adhering to the law of the Japanese letter

The theme of today's Culture Quiz is "sending and receiving a Japanese letter."
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Sep 21, 2001

Riding tall in the classroom

When Tom Kodiak's grandfather offered him 2,200 head of cattle and a 17,000-hectare ranch in South Park, Colorado, he told his grandfather he'd think it over. It was his last year of college and Kodiak was afraid that if he went straight from school to managing a big cattle ranch he'd be stuck there...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 19, 2001

Savor the compassionate complexity of kirei-sabi's 'elegant simplicity'

Credited with shaping the Rinpa style of Japanese art, Ogata Korin (1658-1716) once caused a sensation at an opulent riverside picnic by nonchalantly producing his lunch tied up in a bamboo leaf. Onlookers watched in disbelief as the master unwrapped his simple fare, revealing that the underside of the...
CULTURE / Film
Sep 19, 2001

Poetry and the pursuit of freedom

Before Night Falls Rating: * * * Director: Julian Schnabel Running time: 133 minutes Language: Spanish, English Now showing
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 15, 2001

On flying futons and other mysteries

I've ushered enough tourists through Japan to become expert on answering strange questions about Japanese culture. Here are some of the most common:
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Sep 12, 2001

Power and purity both old and new

The colorful ceramic culture of Kyoto meets the darker, subdued world of Karatsu potter Jinenbo Nakagawa this week at the Tachikichi department store in Kyoto.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Sep 9, 2001

Katsuya Takasu, holding back the years

Katsuya Takasu regards his body as a vehicle to carry his mind. So what he had done to his face two years ago was, as he puts it, "just like fixing an old jalopy."
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 5, 2001

Nils Petter Molvaer: 'Solid Ether'

Being a respected regional musician has its good points and its not so good points. Nils Petter Molvaer, who was born in 1960 and raised on an island off the northwest coast of Norway, eventually made his way to Oslo in the early '80s and became the most acclaimed trumpeter in the city's burgeoning jazz...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 5, 2001

Connoisseur's selection from the vaults

Times have certainly changed. Corporate art acquisition, once fueled by bubble-era prosperity, is now low down the list of boardroom priorities.
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2001

'Ichiban Utsukushii Natsu'

CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2001

Bridging the gap

Ichiban Utsukushii Natsu Rating: * * * * Director: John Williams Running time: 95 minutes Language: Japanese Now showing For decades, foreign directors have been going to Hollywood and making movies with American settings, stories and stars that American audiences have accepted as their own. Charlie...
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2001

Chinese woman found suffocated

A Chinese woman was found dead Tuesday morning in her apartment in Kita Ward, Tokyo, after being bound with adhesive tape in an apparent robbery, police said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 19, 2001

Sights of the city

"Public art," according to Sokichi Sugimura, president of the Public Art Research Institute, "is anything that has artistic value in the eyes of the general public."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 19, 2001

Natural resources

FUKUOKA -- More than 100 years of mining has given the town of Tagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, a masculine, working-class character, with widespread associations of gangs and violent crime. Abandoned concrete plants and mines line its hilly outskirts, and a coat of dust covers its many boarded-up shops....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 12, 2001

She's got legs . . .

You've probably seen her somewhere -- on product packaging, in fashion catalogs or TV commercials. But no one would recognize her, because she is famous only for her legs.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Tokyo prepares to introduce 'ad trains'

"Ad trains" may hit Tokyo as early as the fall as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government moves to lift its ban on city trains carrying exterior advertisements, it was learned Thursday.
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Aug 10, 2001

Getting a different perspective

Before coming to Japan, Jennifer Biggers had achieved some success as a musician in her native Texas. The world music enthusiast had composed and produced two tapes and a CD of original music.
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2001

Eyes wide open

French auteurs rediscover the human condition French cinema has long been identified with auteur filmmaking of a certain kind. While the idea of a highly personal cinema shaped by obsessions and concerns of the director is a good one, for too long this has been used to justify overly intellectualized,...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Aug 8, 2001

Treasures to be hoarded

Here's an odd request: have a look in my closet.
Events
Aug 7, 2001

Kansai hoping to revitalize with return to cultural roots

KYOTO -- The Kansai region is about to host a unique performing arts festival that organizers hope will spark a regional renaissance at a time when the nation is facing a bleak future.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 5, 2001

When love breaks down

Yes -- I was beachball-eyed with love.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2001

Bath salt vendors flout norm, chase smell of success

OSAKA -- The Japanese affinity with hot spring resorts has long provided a market for firms selling bathing salts containing various minerals and ingredients.
CULTURE / Film
Aug 1, 2001

. . . And then there's angst

Ghost World Rating: * * * * 1/4 Director: Terry Zwigoff Running time: 111 minutes Language: EnglishNow showing If you're lucky, you made it all the way through high school as one of the in-group, one of the "normal" kids. The next least-bad fate was to not fit in, but remain convinced that somehow...
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2001

A monument in the sand

Over the past quarter century, a dream has slowly been taking shape on the edge of the Mediterranean in the fabled but faded Egyptian city of Alexandria. This autumn, the world will finally get a chance to take the measure of that dream.
ENVIRONMENT / IN BLOOM
Jul 26, 2001

Chosen asagao (Korean morning glory)

"Kae stretched out her hands and snatched the cold, wet flowers. One after the other she picked them in defiance, as she was too upset merely to contemplate their rapaciousness and beauty. 'Do you know the name of that flower?' inquired a voice overhead. Kae had been too engrossed to hear footsteps....

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