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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
May 2, 2018

Stressed out? Bathing in the woods is just what the doctor ordered

If you go down to the woods today — and you should — leave your smartphone behind. Find a spot by a bamboo grove or take shade under a camphor tree and immerse yourself in the total effect of shinrin-yoku, or "forest bathing."
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Apr 30, 2018

Irish emigrants set to flock home for key vote on abortion

Christine Howell planned to spend two years straight traveling and working in Australia from her arrival in Melbourne last December without breaking her trip to return home to Ireland.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 27, 2018

ESA's ExoMars Rover prepares for 'shake and bake' run ahead of trip to red planet

The European Space Agency's mission to search for life on Mars has reached an important milestone with its six-wheeled surface rover prototype ready for its "shake and bake.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Apr 25, 2018

A primer on navigating your ID landscape

A number of changes to Japanese ID registration systems have been implemented in recent years, some of them for everyone in Japan and others pertinent only to foreign nationals. The ins and outs can be a bit confusing, particularly for those who have been used to living under the old systems for many...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 24, 2018

The decoupling of economic growth and convenience

Consumers have begun to behave more rationally, and that is reducing economic growth.
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Apr 22, 2018

America's nuclear headache: old plutonium with nowhere to go

In a sprawling plant near Amarillo, Texas, rows of workers perform by hand one of the most dangerous jobs in American industry. Contract workers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pantex facility gingerly remove the plutonium cores from retired nuclear warheads.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Apr 21, 2018

Naoyuki Kawahara: Helping Sudan heal with medicine and more

Naoyuki Kawahara quit his job as a medical attache for the Embassy of Japan in Sudan to set up a non-profit organization, Rociantes, and provide much-needed medical care in Sudan.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Deep Dive
Apr 19, 2018

Dual citizenship in Japan: A 'don’t ask, don’t tell' policy leaves many in the dark

Do you have to renounce citizenship? Do you switch passports at the airport? Has anyone ever been punished? Dual nationals tell their stories.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Apr 14, 2018

Ando Shoeki: He who dared anger the gods

A mind like Shoeki Ando — bold, mischievous, unconventional, borderline crackpot, one might almost say — is worth probing, if only for those qualities, let alone for his ideas, which leave the mainstream so far behind that the word 'evil' has been attached to him.
Japan Times
SUMO / INSIDE SUMO
Apr 11, 2018

Time for sumo to ditch ban on women in ring

Less than a month after International Women's Day, sumo found itself embroiled in a gender-discrimination controversy when a female nurse administering CPR was ordered to leave the ring by an official.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 11, 2018

'Ballyturk' delivers a surreal yet exciting challenge

When Akira Shirai first read the script for "Ballyturk," he quickly understood why its creator, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, said the work "should bypass the intellect and go straight into your bones."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Apr 11, 2018

Pick up a secondhand book in Japan and unearth a mystery

Perhaps the greatest pleasure to be derived from shopping at secondhand book stores in Japan comes from never knowing what might turn up between their pages.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 9, 2018

How do you start your introduction: firm, school or you?

Is the entrenched practice of organizational identification discouraging many Japanese from seeking their own identity and purpose?
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Apr 9, 2018

In Kanagawa, homeless grow crops and confidence

Kiyoko Ojima awoke to the problems of the needy while in elementary school, when she came across a TV documentary about trying to find solutions to starvation in Africa.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Apr 7, 2018

Tak Tokumine: It's all about love and noodles

Founder of Japan Centre and Shoryu Ramen says the U.K. is now his home.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Apr 4, 2018

Artist Rob Judges: A boombox of creativity

Inspired by retro vibes, hip-hop, street slang and graffiti, artist Rob Judges says be unique and don't succumb to all the new tech of today.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2018

'Yamato (California)': Hanae Kan does well as an aspiring rapper that's straight outta Japan

The American military bases in Okinawa are often in the news, usually because of an accident, protest or crime. The bases elsewhere in Japan, not so much. These reminders of a postwar occupation now seven decades in the past have mostly faded from the public imagination.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Mar 31, 2018

Midori Sato and her 'only in America' dream

How a child of wartime Japan embraced the unknown and became a textile conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Mar 31, 2018

'The Outsider' scores a few hits among the misses

Netflix last month released a yakuza film starring Jared Leto titled "The Outsider" to critical disdain. And as much as I expected to hate the movie, I didn't. It's portrayal of the world of organized crime in Japan after World War II is not entirely inaccurate. It even has its moments.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Mar 25, 2018

Dodgy data spared Japan's workers from a labor system that's ripe for abuse, for now

At first glance, the discretionary work system looks like a dream come true in terms of work-life balance. On closer inspection, though, it has the potential to be a worker's nightmare.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 24, 2018

Once falsely convicted in Japan, rarely exonerated

A lot of eating goes on in the new documentary "Gokutomo" ("Friends in Prison"), which is about five men, all convicted of murder, who spent many years in prison. Watching one of them casually buy a sweet bean bun at a convenience store, you realize that, as an indulgence, food can be the most obvious...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / OBITUARY
Mar 21, 2018

Chandru G. Advani, 1924-2018: 'Uncle' to Japan's Indian community

Dada Chandru left his mark in the fields of business, bilateral ties and in the hearts of Indians and Japanese whose lives he touched.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 21, 2018

'Dynamite Graffiti': Sleaze to some and art to others

At the peak of its popularity in the 1980s, the innocuously named "Shashin Jidai" ("Photo Age") sold 350,000 copies a month. Edited by the self-made publishing impresario Akira Suei, the magazine featured cutting-edge photography by the likes of Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama and in-depth articles...
JAPAN / Crime & Legal / Deep Dive
Mar 19, 2018

1995 Aum sarin attack on Tokyo subway still haunts, leaving questions unanswered

Hitoshi Jin describes his younger brother spending the booming 1980s "cult surfing," exploring what new religions had to offer to fill the gaping spiritual void left by a childhood scarred by an abusive father.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: TECH
Mar 18, 2018

Figurative and literal lifesavers

Keep your ears open for BoCo
JAPAN / Society
Mar 17, 2018

The other side of crime: 'Victims left behind'

The 1995 Aum sarin gas attacks in Tokyo laid the foundations for the creation of support networks to help protect those affected by the incident.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Mar 14, 2018

Turkish Kurd seeking refugee status in Japan losing hope amid what critics call a flawed system

On a chilly afternoon in mid-January, more than 30 Kurdish asylum-seekers gathered in front of United Nations University in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward to call for U.N. action on Turkey's continued all-out attacks on Kurds in the northern Syrian town of Afrin.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?