Search - columns

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Apr 3, 2011

Japan's 'La Gaijine'

On Francoise Morechand's living room table there sits a book once owned by a samurai in the Edo Period (1603-1867) that she says she has been studying.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Apr 3, 2011

Tragic echoes from the past

Prior to the Tohoku-Kanto earthquake and tsunami of March 11, two similar seismic events — both followed by tsunami — have recently wrought destruction on the northeastern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. This week and next, we dig into the archives of The Japan Times and a forerunner later...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Q&A
Mar 20, 2011

Lowdown on nuclear crisis and potential scenarios

Frantic efforts to cool down the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's overheating reactors and spent fuel rods are continuing, as workers rush to prevent highly toxic radiation from being released into the atmosphere.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 20, 2011

The Bronze Bonze

Yoshiyuki Yoneda had a problem. As chief priest of a temple in Kyoto, he ministered to the spiritual and ritual needs of his local community. But like many other clerics in Japan's ancient capital, he also wanted to attract fee-paying tourists to his temple.
COMMENTARY
Mar 16, 2011

The Libyan revolution's best hope? Egypt

LONDON — The Libyan revolution is losing the battle. Col. Moammar Gadhafi's army does not have much logistical capability, but it can get enough fuel and ammunition east along the coast road to attack Benghazi, Libya's second city, at some point in the next week or so. His army is not well trained...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Mar 13, 2011

Study chips away further at humans' uniqueness

Time for some self-love, people: We're pretty damn cool. As animals, we're special.
COMMENTARY
Mar 10, 2011

A deathly silence grips Pakistan

LONDON — At least with a dictatorship, you know where you are — and if you know where you are, you may be able to find your way out. In Pakistan, it is not so simple.
COMMENTARY
Feb 16, 2011

Good sense of the Arabs

They wouldn't do it for al-Qaida, but they finally did it for themselves.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's favorite mushrooms spark a quest far away

Author Stieg Larsson, the second biggest-selling novelist in the world in 2008 (behind Khaled Hosseini), left three-quarters of an unfinished book on his laptop when he died in 2004.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 16, 2011

Love 101; lymphedema in Japan; CM of the week: Z-kai

This season's coveted Monday night, 9 p.m., Fuji TV drama slot is filled by "Taisetsu-na Koto wa Subete Kimi ga Oshiete Kureta" ("You Taught Me All the Important Things"), which stars Erika Toda as a high school English teacher.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 9, 2011

Japan's year of triumph in space

So, it's goodbye to 2010, the Year of the Tiger, and hello to 2011, the Year of the Rabbit.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Dec 12, 2010

In dangerous waters

As our small boat wended its way up the Wami River in Saadani National Park, Tanzania, we passed a crocodile basking on the bank. Nothing unusual about that, but this croc only had three legs. I asked if one leg had been chopped off by a boat's propeller? "No," said our guide, Eliona Sabaya, "It was...
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Nov 28, 2010

Eats, shoots and leaves in Hakusan

It's hunting season in Tokyo. I kit up and trek out to the Hakusan area of Bunkyo Ward, hoping to shoot (with camera) the wild shades of autumn.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Nov 26, 2010

'Catalysis for Life: New Language of Dutch Art and Design'

Museum of Contemporary
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Nov 17, 2010

Autumn is the perfect season to view leaf-kanji

A mosaic carpet of autumn foliage tinted in shades of green, yellow, orange, and red is currently rolling southward through the archipelago of Japan. 紅葉 (kōyō, crimson/leaves), the Japanese word for "autumn leaves," only hints at the splendor of this multihued natural phenomenon.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Nov 14, 2010

Mind who you call a 'birdbrain'

Eiichi Izawa of Keio University in Tokyo calls them "feathered primates." In Japanese folklore they are the origin of the forest demons known as karasu tengu. Scientists classify them as Corvus macrorhynchos.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Oct 12, 2010

Don't blame JET for Japan's poor English: responses

A selection of readers' views on "Don't blame JET for Japan's poor English" (Just Be Cause, Sept. 7) by Debito Arudou:
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 10, 2010

NPB news should be plentiful after playoffs finish up

Every year about this time, I am usually asked two questions about the off-season.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 10, 2010

Reflecting on some recent monkey business

In this month's column:a tale of the mythical Sea King Rin-Jin; a jellyfish that can walk on land; and a monkey that gazes, like the wicked witch in Snow White, at its own reflection in a mirror — though, unlike the wicked witch, the monkey is not so interested in looking at its face.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 15, 2010

196 more reasons to explore Heisig's imagination

Last spring, the bar was raised for kanji learners aiming to attain literacy in Japanese through mastery of the general-use (jōyō) kanji, when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced the addition of 196 characters to the original list of 1,945 official jōyō kanji...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 14, 2010

Is racism coloring debate on Japanese whaling?

Following is a selection of readers' responses to the Aug. 17 Zeit Gist columns headlined "Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric" by Dougal McNeill and "Appeals to culture, tradition ignore the historical facts" by Chris Burgess:
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 12, 2010

Travel through time on a trip to Otaru

The Hokkaido port of Otaru is less than an hour by train from downtown Sapporo. Same neighborhood, different world.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 12, 2010

Japan's mighty whale mountain

It's enough to make members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society choke on their tofu burgers. Stocks of frozen whale meat in Japan have reached 4,000 tons — that's 4 million kg.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 4, 2010

Campaigning to save the languages of Okinawa

Two stops on Naha's monorail from the tourist trinket shops of Kokusai-dori lies Sakaemachi, a tightly packed warren of tiny stalls and drinking dens. For outsiders like 40-year-old Byron Fija, it takes a measure of confidence to venture to this part of Okinawa, but as he passes the open-air tables of...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 8, 2010

Shock tests reveal rodent intelligence

I once became obsessed with following the Shibuya River as far as I could through central Tokyo. It's hard to explain the fascination, as the river is merely a concrete channel — little more than an ugly drain — and is mostly built over. But that was the key to my interest: The idea that there was...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 24, 2010

A few ifs and thens, Kipling style

Have you ever given serious thought about what might have happened if Rudyard Kipling had lived in Japan instead of India?

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan