Search - search-places

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 27, 2013

Sincerity is the new ecstasy in Funkot's 'Summer of Love'

At the end of the 1980s, British DJs imported a potent new style of house music from the Spanish party island Ibiza in what came to be known as the ecstasy-fueled "Second Summer of Love." Inspired by this trade route two decades later, Katsumi Takano, aka Mandokoro or DJ Jet Baron, hopes to launch a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 20, 2013

Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?

Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn't work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that carries with it the curiosity of a detective who...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 8, 2013

How did Germany become the new champion of Europe?

Sitting in his brightly lit office overlooking the green hills of rural Westphalia, surrounded by photographs of aluminium and titanium castings, Phillip Schack has drawn a blue triangle on a piece of paper. Pointing to a small shaded section at its apex, he says: "Look. If that's your market, up at...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 4, 2013

As evidence of Agent Orange in Okinawa stacks up, U.S. sticks with blanket denial

In April 2011, these Community pages published the first accounts of sick U.S. veterans who believe their illnesses were caused by exposure to Agent Orange on Okinawa during the Vietnam War era.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2013

Apple isn't the core of a taxing U.S. problem

There may be a better way to tax multinational corporations: tax them on their revenue in a country rather than on their profits.
LIFE / Food & Drink
May 31, 2013

Why it matters where our food comes from

The latest trend in fine dining has nothing to do with molecular gastronomy or pan-Latin fusion: Sustainability is the new order of the day. At the influential World's 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony in London last month, the organizers presented their first Sustainable Restaurant Award to Narisawa,...
WORLD / Politics
May 27, 2013

U.S. military's camouflage conundrum defies logic

In 2002, the U.S. military had just two kinds of camouflage uniform. One was green, for the woods. The other was brown, for the desert. Then things got strange.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 26, 2013

History shows one man's rape is another's wooing

"The evolution of political thought in this relatively isolated island nation during the period in question is unique to the point of being somewhat freakish."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 5, 2013

Our tree dragon fires new hopes for tsunami survivors

Ever since the massive Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and the catastrophic tsunami it triggered, badly hit villages, towns and cities in the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu have been struggling to recover and rebuild.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2013

The disconcerting unity of Raphael

Harmony can sometimes have a disconcerting side. This is one insight to emerge from the Raphael exhibition at the National Museum of Western Art, the centerpiece of which is one of the artist's acknowledged great works, the "Madonna del Granduca" (c. 1505).
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 28, 2013

Daytime in Kin Town's nocturnal city

The three drunken U.S. Marines who stumbled into my motorbike headlamps were clearly combat-trained, as their agility in shifting from advanced inebriation to performing a nimble leap onto the sidewalk suggested seriously attuned reflexes.
JAPAN / Media
Apr 14, 2013

Vice magazine hits TV with journo-tourism for hipsters

Vice is a brash Brooklyn-based magazine and international media company, but mostly it's a brand of thinking and marketing that has extended itself over the past decade to a popular website and YouTube channel. With bureaus around the world, Vice makes as much news as it reports: A recent foray involved...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2013

Stubbornly shrinking workforce dims prospects for U.S. growth

Put out an all-points bulletin: Millions of Americans have gone missing from the workforce.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2013

Processing the bitter to a durable, beautiful form

KICKING THE BLACK MAMBA: Life, Alcohol and Death, by Robert Anthony Welch. Darton, Longman and Todd, 2012, 240 pp., £12.99 (paperback)
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Apr 7, 2013

What's with the police purge on dance clubs?

If you're ever minded to dance the night away to trance music, or even old-fashioned rock, you may have a tough time finding a venue in Japan these days. In fact, you may end up waltzing away hours inside a police station, peeing into a cup after being rounded up in a raid. Yes, indeed, a War on Dance...
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 1, 2013

Historian seeks to have Jefferson speak for himself

Thomas Jefferson died 186 years ago. But J. Jefferson Looney still wants the nation's third president to speak for himself.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 25, 2013

Long-ago wiretap inspires a battle with the CIA for more information

Paul Scott, the late syndicated columnist, was so paranoid about the CIA wiretapping his home in the 1960s that he'd make important calls from his neighbor's house. His teenage son Jim Scott figured his dad was either a shrewd reporter or totally nuts.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 26, 2013

Take a deep breath of everyone else's air and pollution

Perhaps it was due to the fever of impending flu, or the arctic winds rattling our Tokyo home, but recent media photos of Beijing's thick smog suddenly brought to mind thoughts of the late U.S. president, John F. Kennedy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE YEAR IN BOOKS
Dec 23, 2012

Four aspects of Japan's history

"Oh, what happy people they must have been!" Thus Yukie Chiri (1903-22), reflecting on the pristine past of her people, the Ainu of southwestern Hokkaido. "Ainu Spirits Singing" (University of Hawaii Press) by Sarah Strong is an elegy to a lost time and an almost lost culture, seen largely through Chiri's...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Oct 9, 2012

Call to stop dolphin hunt in Taiji makes waves

Some of the many readers' letters The Japan Times received in response to the Sept. 11 Hotline to Nagatacho column, "Stop the annual Taiji dolphin massacre, make your children proud" by Deb Bowen-Saunders:
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 30, 2012

What nightmares may come, when we shuffle onto an immortal coil

"In 20 years human beings will neither die nor age."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012

Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage

Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 28, 2012

Hunter Shoji Kuramochi

Shoji Kuramochi, 73, is one of Japan's few surviving hunters, and he may be the only one with 100 trained hunting dogs. Besides being a hunter of wild boars and deer, he's also an expert at the traditional Japanese art forms of bonsai cultivation and the breeding of beautiful and rare types of kingyo...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Aug 7, 2012

The size of your dog could depend on your landlord

A 53-year-old woman was recently arrested after she moved out of a 50-sq.-meter rental apartment in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, leaving behind 26 dogs. She hadn't paid her rent for some time and went missing in early June. By the time someone entered her apartment on July 3, one of the dogs was...
COMMENTARY
Jul 2, 2012

Entering uncharted territory of broken models

We live in a world of broken models. To understand why world leaders can't easily fix the global economy, you have to realize that the economic models on which the United States, Europe and China relied are collapsing. The models differ, but the breakdowns are occurring simultaneously and feed on each...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 17, 2012

Rock on down to a geopark near you

To naturalists and hikers, the renown of 810-meter Mount Apoi near the southern tip of Hokkaido towers mightily above its lowly elevation.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jun 13, 2012

Gadgets and games to keep you dry in the washroom

It's not the classiest of topics, but here I go touching on the taboo — toilets. We all visit the bathroom several times a day, and what a relief that we do! The experience can conjure a curious mix of emotions: pleasure, pain, anxiety, boredom, impatience, pride. Japan famously produces toilets with...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 13, 2012

Born of disaster, modern architecture is itself now an ongoing disaster

In the French writer-director Jacques Tati's superb 1967 film "Play Time," people are like prisoners condemned to roam about in and amid the glass cages of high-rise office blocks. They are lost, both to the world and themselves. In the world of Tati, who died in 1982 aged 75, all cities look alike;...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji