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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Feb 23, 2003

Try to score a pint here

Sports bars and pubs were big business during the 2002 World Cup Soccer finals cohosted by Japan and South Korea. Many opened in Tokyo just in time to milk the influx of fans. But for the three partners who teamed up to create the Clubhouse in Shinjuku, the soccer was simply a bonus. Their target had...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 19, 2003

Mary Lorson and Billy Cote: "Piano Creeps"

Aside from a newborn and an overlooked body of work, Mary Lorson and Billy Cote share a passion for film. After their band, Madder Rose, died from a bad case of under-appreciation in 1999, they began to compose music for motion pictures whenever they weren't wandering through each other's solo efforts....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2003

A new home for world-class art

With the opening of "The Romantic Tradition in British Painting, 1800-1950," The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art seems set to take its place as an art institution of international standing.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 18, 2003

Japan's TV news in a world of its own

Watch a newscast produced in United States or Europe, and you'll see a fast-paced program consisting of lots of short segments augmented by a slew of computer-generated graphics.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2003

Antiwar protesters march in Tokyo

Thousands of people took to Japan's streets Saturday to protest against a probable war in Iraq.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 16, 2003

Enslaved and liberated by lust

CONSUMING BODIES: Sex and Contemporary Japanese Art, edited by Fran Lloyd. London: Reaktion Books, 2002, 224 pp., 134 color and 34 black-and-white illustrations, £16.95 (paper). In her introduction to this very interesting collection of essays, Fran Lloyd emphasizes that the portrayal of sex and consumerism...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 16, 2003

The turbulent isles are tranquil at last

Last of two parts Despite its appearance of timeless peace and tranquillity, the Seychelles has a turbulent history. Originally discovered by the Dutch, this remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean rapidly became a haunt of pirates.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 15, 2003

Local boy with a liking for the finer things in life

Living in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's "furusato" (hometown), it seems likely that Hisataka (Issa) Koizumi is related.
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2003

Ministry to discount bridge tolls in bid to lure motorists

The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry will further reduce tolls on three bridges linking Honshu and Shikoku in a bid to get people to use the heavily indebted expressways, transport minister Chikage Ogi said Friday.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 9, 2003

In search of lost worlds

Most Westerners have heard about the legend of Atlantis, but how many have heard about the lost kingdom of Nan Mador? Like Atlantis, Nan Mador was supposedly as big as a continent, and stretched from Micronesia in the South Pacific all the way to Easter Island off the coast of Chile.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2003

Death and despair await Iraqi civilians

NEW YORK -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's forceful presentation to the U.N. Security Council failed to convince key council members of the need for an immediate war against Iraq. Concern for the consequences of another conflict in the region could possibly explain France, China and Russia's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 5, 2003

Baka Beyond: "Heart of the Forest"

Before we get into the new album by the world-beat collective, Baka Beyond, let's get something straight about the name. In Japan, "baka" may be what you call your boss behind his back, but this four-letter word also denotes the pygmy tribe indigenous to the rain forests near the Cameroon/Congo border....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 2, 2003

How the 'modern' code was cracked

The headless body of a woman in her 50s was laid on a straw mat inside a hut at Kotsukahara in Edo's Senju area. Born in Kyoto and nicknamed "Aochababa," sketchy court records indicate the woman had been convicted of killing her adopted children. She had been executed by beheading that very morning,...
BUSINESS
Feb 1, 2003

Mizuho told to boost loans to small firms

The Financial Services Agency on Friday ordered Mizuho Holdings Inc., the world's largest banking group in terms of assets, to increase loans to smaller companies and submit guidelines for doing so by the end of this month.
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2003

Newspapers and plays feature in report on polishing Japanese

A panel of experts advising the education minister on use of Japanese has issued an interim report on how to improve command of the language among elementary and junior high school students.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 29, 2003

Kimya Dawson: "I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean"

The biggest star to emerge from New York's antifolk scene is Beck Hansen, but before King Loser went legit he was more of a hanger-on than a guiding light. The Moldy Peaches -- 30-year-old Kimya Dawson and 21-year-old Adam Green -- embody the antifolkies' art-is-fun credo more convincingly, and having...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDEN PATHS
Jan 23, 2003

The bare essentials

This column is the first in a series of articles to take us strolling along some garden paths. Hopefully, along the way, we will come across some good ideas for our own patch of greenery, whether that is a garden, containers on a balcony, or just a few potted plants on the kitchen window.
LIFE / Digital
Jan 23, 2003

Move over MP3; purists demand 'lossless'

There's a whole industry built around the MP3 data-compression format, but did you know that by using MP3s to burn music CDs, you lose part of the original recording as the data compressor does its work?
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2003

Highways to abolish high-priced toll cards

Four public expressway corporations said Tuesday they will stop selling high-priced prepaid expressway cards at the end of February.
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2003

Review of moneylender interest rate caps triggers tug of war

A tug of war is under way over a government plan to review the upper limit on interest rates that consumer finance firms and other nonbank moneylenders can levy.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 21, 2003

Gadgets gnaw at polite society

A funny thing happened to me on the train home the other day. I had a conversation with a total stranger.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2003

The folly of inflation targets

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said recently the next governor of the Bank of Japan must take aggressive action to fight deflation, giving rise to expectations of inflation targeting among government and ruling coalition officials. I doubt, however, that inflation targeting will cure deflation. In...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2003

Britain's far right poses a rising threat

BRUSSELS -- The press in England has had a field day over the past 20 years chronicling the rise of the Continent's far right. The first chance came in the early 1980s with the emergence of France's National Front led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man who believes the Americans built the gas chambers in the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2003

Thais create Buddhist studies landmark

CHIANG MAI -- Against a background of terror, conflicts and violence worldwide, during times when consumerism and materialism have been elevated as never before on pedestals surrounded by a divine aura, a small group of modest but dedicated Thai scholars, monks and nuns have worked quietly and efficiently...
EDITORIALS
Jan 13, 2003

In the year 20, or maybe 33, A.I.

Maybe you missed it amid the noisy merriment of the New Year, but Jan. 1 marked a birthday worth observing. Twenty years ago on New Year's Day, the Internet as we know it was born, ushering in the era of the World Wide Web -- the closest humanity may ever get to a version of J.R.R. Tolkien's mythic global...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 12, 2003

Art that arose from the ashes of World War II

JAPANESE PRINTS DURING THE ALLIED OCCUPATION: 1945-1952, by Lawrence Smith. London: The British Museum Press, 2002, 128 pp., 40 color and 75 black-and-white illustrations, £35 (cloth) At the end of the Pacific portion of World War II, Japan was occupied by the wartime Allies, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur,...

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Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.