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Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 25, 2003

Festival celebrates 400 years atop Atago-yama

Meet the Matsuoka family: Mineo (that's Dad), Yuriko (Mum), older sister Rie and younger sister Iku. Oh, and let's not forget Vino, the Mexican Chihuahua, who wears a hand-knit coat against the cold and makes pretense to be as fierce as a Rottweiler.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 16, 2003

When two hemispheres of the brain work as one

The French surgeon Paul Broca had a patient in his care in 1861 who had fallen and broken his hip. Eighteen months earlier the man, called Lelong, had collapsed with a stroke that left him unable to speak. When Lelong died on Broca's ward, a hip fracture being a fatal condition in those days, an autopsy...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 12, 2003

Shopping queen shelves host 'illusion'

Popular writer Usagi Nakamura is known to many Japanese as "Shoppingu no Joo (The Queen of Shopping)," which is also the title of her popular column in the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun. Nakamura, 44, who describes herself as "shop dependent," writes frankly about how she impulsively purchases luxury...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 11, 2003

Get ready for Japanese inside and out

People often ask me what they should expect before coming to Japan. It's hard to say, but if you don't speak Japanese, at first you'll be limited to communicating with Japanese people who can speak English. Be ready to meet these people:
MORE SPORTS
Jan 10, 2003

Takahashi setting sights on another Olympic gold in 2004

This is the second and final installment of an exclusive interview with Naoko Takahashi, the gold medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympic women's marathon.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2003

Ackerman and tpt bend theater's rules

Whether a person becomes a theatergoer often depends on a crucial encounter with this dramatic art form -- and a play that just opened at the Benisan Pit in Tokyo's Sumida Ward is indubitably the stuff that makes theatergoers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Dec 30, 2002

An Ainu 'homecoming' for journeying Navajo

When Marcus Mose, a Native American from the Navajo Nation and an assistant language teacher in Gonohe, Aomori Prefecture, visited the popular Ainu musician Kano Oki in Hokkaido this November, it was like a journey home.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2002

Withholding food aid only kills innocents

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara does not like Japanese charities sending dog biscuits and old rice to North Korea to feed its hungry people.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 15, 2002

From jobs to robots it's all about chance

It's that time of year again, when hundreds of people can be seen lining up in front of the shopping arcades in Ginza and Shinjuku. No, we're not talking about Christmas. We're talking about the big Yearend Lottery.
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 8, 2002

Man United director Charlton has no complaints

England and Manchester United legend, Sir Bobby Charlton, is confident that his English Premiership club is back on track after last year's trophyless season despite its problems so far this season.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2002

Myanmar's generals allergic to dialogue

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and many world leaders have welcomed the recent release of 115 political prisoners from various prisons in Myanmar. At the same time, many leaders have voiced concerns about the more than 1,000 remaining political prisoners, human rights abuses and the lack...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 7, 2002

Journeying back to tribal roots with eagle feather

Two years ago, after more than a decade in Japan, Shirley (Blackstar) Macdonald and her husband, Chris, decided it was time to go home. Now they run Eagle Feather Gallery in Victoria, British Columbia, with a magnificent cedar house in deep forest north of the city. A long way from working in Tokyo,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TANGLED WEBS
Nov 14, 2002

A false sense of air security

I travel a lot, too much, really.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 10, 2002

A straight-shooter wherever she goes

With her Nikon camera, dozens of film rolls and a strong social conscience, photojournalist Natsuko Utsumi travels the world to capture the human face of the issues that shape public debate.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Nov 3, 2002

Terror in our own backyard

A key phrase in my recent e-mail exchanges has been, "The world has gone crazy." The hostage drama in Moscow; the shooting spree in the Washington, D.C. area; the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali; the Finnish teenager who blew up himself and six other people in a suburban shopping mall; the killing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2002

Emergency psychiatric care falling short

Her schizophrenia repeatedly sent her over the edge.
Japan Times
Uncategorized
Oct 26, 2002

Japan shares its antipollution expertise

The city of Kitakyushu has moved ahead of other municipalities in transferring Japan's industrial knowledge and technology -- including measures to combat pollution -- to developing countries.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2002

'Tax evaders' steal the talk of Shanghai

SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 17, 2002

Searching within ourselves for the vaccine against HIV

It is 2005, in what was formerly the state of California. After a massive earthquake, the golden state has been divided into two: So. Cal and No. Cal. Scrawled and sprayed on walls and wreckage is the name of the people's savior: J.D. Shapely.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2002

Koizumi almost pulls it off

SHANGHAI, China -- My perspective for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to North Korea is that of the Chinese. I have been in Shanghai since just before his visit. The reports I have been reading and listening to are those of the Chinese media and my Chinese friends and colleagues.
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2002

Yukio Ninagawa: visionary player on the world's stage

Internationally acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa has staged countless plays in Japan, elsewhere in Asia, and in the United States and Europe.
JAPAN
Sep 24, 2002

Cloud of population decline may have silver lining

"Rabbit hutch" is a stereotypical term coined years ago by outsiders referring the cramped dwellings of crowded, urban Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2002

Veteran builder lives his art

Toshio Konuma, 43, is a Japanese bodybuilding legend. He started training at 17 and entered his first competition two years later. He won that, and he's been winning ever since. In 1985, he scaled the pinnacle of Japanese competition, capturing the Mr. Nihon title. Then he won it again in 1987, and held...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2002

Myanmar's SPDC must honor its word

Visits to Myanmar by United Nations Special Envoy Ismail Razali and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi ended in hopes that change would take place. Unfortunately, however, Myanmar's generals have shown no sign of turning their words into action, and the country's situation continues to deteriorate. If...
COMMENTARY
Sep 17, 2002

When to 'sup with the devil'

LONDON -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will pay an official visit to North Korea this week, where he will meet with dictator Kim Jong Il. He wants to deal with a number of issues between Japan and North Korea, including Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals. No doubt Koizumi would also like...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 8, 2002

Back to the old house to raise our spirits

Japan likes to present itself as the world's shining example of rapid economic development, the "postwar miracle." The government's extensive overseas development aid is more than just the gesture of noblesse oblige expected of the world's No. 2 economic power. It is an assertion of everything that is...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2002

Sept. 11 boosts Japan's interest in Islam

As kimono-clad people danced through the streets of the Minami Otsuka district of northern Tokyo during a summer festival last month, a small Pakistani curry stall was doing a roaring trade.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2002

Lofty words with little impact

CAMBRIDGE, England -- As I write, the world's leaders, well most of them -- U.S. President George W. Bush is too busy clearing his desk after a month's holiday -- are lining up to make their speeches at the Johannesburg global conference on sustainable development.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2002

No fear of flying

"There's no such thing as improvisation," the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia once said. "There's only composition. Only you do it quickly; you're composing on the spot."
CULTURE / Film / CLOSE-UP
Sep 1, 2002

Films, Zen, Japan

Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film. He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational forces -- an intelligent, restless 22-year-old in search of purpose.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight