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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 20, 2007

Dr. Manny Sultan and Yasuko Emmei-Sultan

Three people have had major influences on the life, character and career of Dr. Manny Sultan, Cairo-born architect, interior architect, and space planner.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 11, 2007

Big mouth strikes again ... and again

Is Lily Allen an outspoken genius or an unwarranted meanie? To help you decide, here are 10 of her top tongue-lashings.
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 31, 2006

Eyeing Japan's new year and far, far beyond

The future may be fundamentally uncertain, but people's appetite for predictions of what will be happening in days, weeks, months, years or even decades to come is one thing, at least, that is certain to be part of it.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 22, 2006

Mountain of dread

The stench of sulfur hits you long before you get off the bus. And when you do step off, it hits you all the stronger. Before you stretch the sickly, yellow-green waters of a caldera lake, whose acidity has expunged all fish life except for one hardy species (ugei or big-scaled redfin). Signs everywhere...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 30, 2006

Moving beyond nonsense

Born Kazumi Kobayashi in Tokyo, 43-year-old Keralino Sandroviich -- or Kera, as he is best known -- started his career with the techno band Uchoten (Rapture) which he formed in 1982 when he was a student at the Japan Academy of the Moving Image. Although he had planned to be a film director, when Uchoten...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006

Akebono: Yokozuna to K-1

GAIJIN YOKOZUNA: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 301 pp., $24.95 (paper). Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks --...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 22, 2006

NHK's "Premium 10," Nihon TV's "Catherine the Great" and more

On Sept. 23, 35,000 people flocked to the Tsumagoi resort area in Shizuoka Prefecture to attend a concert featuring folk-rock singer Takuro Yoshida and the soft rock trio Kagu-yahime. In 1975 these two artists played for 12 hours at the same site in front of 50,000 fans at the first-ever concert of its...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 15, 2006

Fuji's "Boku no Aruku Michi," TBS's "Kiraware Matsuko no Issho" and more

Japanese television gets around to the difficult subject of autism in the new drama series "Boku no Aruku Michi" (The Road I Walk; Fuji, Tuesday, 10:15 p.m.). SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi plays Te-ruaki, an autistic 31-year-old man whose emotional development is that of a 10-year-old boy. Teruaki lives...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Oct 3, 2006

"Each Little Bird That Sings," "The Girl With the Broken Wing"

"Each Little Bird That Sings," Deborah Wiles, Harcourt; 2006; 247 pp.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 1, 2006

Hisashi Inoue: Crusader with a pen

So wide-ranging are 71-year-old Hisashi Inoue's talents and activities that it is difficult to know which to focus on at the expense of others.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 1, 2006

Age-old 'naked friendships' lay bare new bathhouse concerns

I do it about three times a week, but I tell you I would double that frequency if I could. It is surely one of life's great pleasures, and it takes on average (for me) 45 to 50 minutes. Some people smoke afterward, but I just like to cool down and think about things -- you know, life, the human body,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 24, 2006

Japan's hordes of hoarders still look to their navel nest eggs

I have spent nearly 40 years writing about Japan, virtually all of the time trying to show how Japanese people are really no different from other nationalities. But, by God, there is one aspect of Japanese life that makes this country unique. I defy any reader to name a society that has a custom like...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 10, 2006

Out of the well, but into the fire

FROG IN THE WELL: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 290 pp., including endnotes, bibliography, index and 38 color illustrations, £24.50 (cloth). Watanabe Kazan is not nearly as well known in Western countries as his contemporary...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 3, 2006

Controversial tales of cats, Pluto and Britney's belly

Controversy No. 1: Cats are people, too
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 2, 2006

Tyler Foundation helps other sick kids shine on

There are many pictures of Tyler Ferris on the Web site his mother, Kimberly Forsythe, created after his death just over a year ago. In every one he is smiling, if not grinning from ear to ear.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2006

Japan Post drafts 10-year plan

Japan Post Corp. submitted to the government on Monday outlines of its 10-year postal privatization road map that includes plans for its savings bank to provide loans to individuals and for its life insurance firm to offer health and casualty insurance policies.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 29, 2006

Deven Arora

In his book "A Yen for Yen," Deven Arora from India describes his life in Japan as a "rupees-to-riches success story." He has always, he said, followed six rules: being committed to a dream; believing in self; daring to try unconventional ideas; being unafraid of making mistakes; persevering; and enjoying...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 27, 2006

The revenge of the Red Demon

Playwright, actor and director Hideki Noda has been the undisputed leader of the Japanese contemporary theater world for 30 years. In that time he has written, directed and often acted in more than 60 plays in Japan -- all of them hits or superhits among his mushrooming fanbase. In fact, Noda has been...
COMMUNITY
Jul 22, 2006

No such as thing as the average 'gaijin' in Japan

Charles Lent points out landmarks from the 31st floor of Tokyo Sankei Building in Otemachi with confidence and pride. After 13 years in Japan he knows more than a few.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 9, 2006

Classical Japanese text -- what is lost and found in translation

THE TALES OF THE HEIKE, translated by Burton Watson, edited with an introduction by Haruo Shirane, glossary and bibliographies compiled by Michael Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 216 pp., illustrated, $24.50 (cloth). The "Heike Monogatari," that famous account of the events that led...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 9, 2006

Home from home from home

Three days ago marked an anniversary of my own personal day of independence. Thirty years ago, on July 6, 1976, I became an Australian citizen and legally forfeited my U.S. citizenship.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2006

Swimming in the same sea

Oceans have always been an important part of many cultures, and today we understand the oceans more than we ever have in any part of human history. The question now is, has this knowledge and understanding led us to conserve and protect this beauty and resource and its inextricable links to human lives?...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 4, 2006

Pensive view of a city's declining identity

KYOTO: A Cultural and Literary History, by John Dougill. Signal Books, 2006, 242 pp., 2,500 yen (paper). "Everyone knew," the wartime narrator of Hisako Matsubara's Kyoto novel "Cranes at Dusk" relates, "there was not a single Japanese city of over a million people that hadn't already been bombed." But...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2006

Sompo facing partial suspension

The Financial Services Agency is set to partially suspend Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. from business for about a month over unlawful sales practices that surfaced earlier this year, FSA sources said Tuesday.
Japan Times
LIFE
May 14, 2006

Home and away

Young Japanese lead the way in a cultural exchange set to erode their homeland's hidebound mentality
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2006

Children of Lesotho orphaned by AIDS

MASERU, Lesotho -- If I had heard a sadder song, I could not remember.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years