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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Aug 22, 2008

Pampering at the Otani, curries at the Hyatt

Treat yourself to luxury, ladies Through Sept. 30, the Hotel New Otani in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, is offering "Ladies Selection" plans that combine a healthy lunch and a treatment at one of the hotel's four beauty salons.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2008

Betting on Beijing

In late April this year, two Tokyo galleries set up shop in Beijing just in time for the Olympic fervor, believing that Beijing, rather than Tokyo, was the place to bring contemporary Japanese art to an international audience. Sueo Mitsuma of Mizuma Gallery in Nakameguro opened Mizuma & One and Yumie...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2008

Are '70s landmarks savable?

Standing along Tokyo's Omote-sando Dori leading up to Meiji Shrine, the glassy, glittering, five-story Hanae Mori Building has been a landmark in the swanky Aoyama shopping district for 30 years.
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 16, 2008

Phelps on doorstep of unthinkable feat

BEIJING — This column begins with terrific inspiration: the Olympic flame, steadily casting a bright light high above the track at the National Stadium in Beijing.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 16, 2008

Get back to where you once belonged

The countryside in Japan has a reputation for being backwards. This is partly true. In the countryside where I live we walk backwards, we drive backwards and sometimes we even do our laundry backwards — by drying it out first, then washing it.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 13, 2008

Firm plugs consumers into funny USB goods

Working in an office during the summer can be an uncomfortably sweaty experience, and Hiroyasu Yamamitsu, president of humorous PC accessories maker Thanko Inc., spotted a business chance there.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Aug 12, 2008

Jimmy Choo, Mickey Mouse, Fred Perry and more

Fashion mouse Disney has inspired a lot of people, from little girls to Superbowl champions. Even designer Vivienne Tam has now taken inspiration from her childhood and decided to pay tribute to the famous mouse with a capsule collection of playful dresses for this fall/winter season.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2008

Nanjing now: philosophy, history and Jacuzzis

Nanjing is a bustling city of 7 million, about six times its population before the Japanese rampage of 1937, and looks like many of the other modern, gleaming urbanscapes that have mushroomed up across China.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 8, 2008

Atami's Kiunkaku ryokan: The art of a great garden

You enter Kiunkaku through a beautiful, tile-roofed wooden gate flanked by tall trees, reminiscent of some temple gates, which gives a hint of the purpose:historical grandeur you will find within.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 7, 2008

Mad about deke-deke-deke

The Ventures' 1962 trip to Japan sparked the "eleki boom." Thousands of young men bought electric guitars and taught themselves how to play. As a movement it worried their elders, who believed such distractions were an obstacle to schoolwork, or worse.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 6, 2008

City gone wild

In June this year I took a group of Japanese friends and members of our Afan Woodland Trust up here in the Nagano hills on a trip to Britain. We went on an All Nippon Airways tour designed for people with an interest in ecology and nature restoration, and we visited our "twin" forest, the Afan Argoed...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Aug 3, 2008

Maserati: The ultimate in automotive artwork

Ask any concert pianist whether they would rather play a Steinway & Sons piano or a Yamaha, and I'll bet you a season ticket to the Opera House in London's Covent Garden that they would nod for the former. When I chatted with just such a virtuoso several months ago, he was smitten with the Steinway....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Jul 31, 2008

You can always buy your way in

Art changes with the times, so why shouldn't art galleries? Some say that Japan's unique "rental gallery" system, where young artists pay hundreds of thousands of yen per week to show their work, is on its last legs. If so, is it a case of good riddance? Or does this represent the retreat of a perfectly...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jul 30, 2008

New compact Lumix makes room for better summer memories

More sensor: Increasing the number of pixels in a digital camera's sensor without increasing the sensor's size is an underhanded act designed to sell more cameras, and in that regard, Panasonic is as guilty as any compact camera maker. But the Japanese electronics giant is earning early points for parole...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 29, 2008

It came, it saw, and it bowled over Japan

It has slurped its way into becoming Japan's favorite food.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 25, 2008

'Kung Fu Panda'

He's fat, he's lazy, he's an underachieving slob. But Po the Panda could just be the answer to the prayers of a martial-arts master in "Kung Fu Panda," this summer's animation blockbuster from Dreamworks, opening in Japan to precede the Beijing Olympics.
EDITORIALS
Jul 25, 2008

Deadly escapes from society

The fatal stabbing Tuesday of a bookshop clerk in Hachioji, Tokyo, brings to mind the senseless killing of seven people in Akihabara on June 8. The man who crashed a rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians in the world's largest electronics shopping district and started stabbing people was quoted by...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Jul 20, 2008

Rethinking the tiniest class of car

They are Japanese cultural icons, easily recognizable by their diminutive size and yellow license plates. But unlike their even smaller anime cousins, such as Pokemon, kei-jidosha (subcompact cars) have remained a completely domestic phenomenon.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 20, 2008

Tokyo: A guide for a certain type of resident

TOKYO: The Complete Residents' Guide, by Andy Sharp, Beau Miller, Frank Spignese, Jennifer Geaconne-Cruz, Julian Satterthwaite, Karryn Cartelle, Tamsin Bradshaw. Dubai: Explorer Group, Ltd., 2008, 444 pp., profusely illustrated, $14.99 (paper) This book, says the introduction, "is going to help you to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 18, 2008

Unagi Akimoto: Tradition beats the summer heat

Squeezed in between towering modern neighbors, Akimoto's traditional low-rise architecture is so self-effacing you barely notice it. From the tiled eaves to the wood-slatted second-floor windows and the sliding door set back from the street, all is inscrutable.
BUSINESS
Jul 17, 2008

Toyota buys land in Brazil for plant, studies plans to build compacts

Toyota Motor Corp. is acquiring land in Brazil for a new factory and is studying plans to build compact vehicles there in 2011 or later — the latest move in the aggressive drive by automakers in emerging markets.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 15, 2008

Famed electronics hub still sparks the curious, bizarre

Tokyo's Akihabara district draws throngs not only with its hundreds of electronics shops but also because it is the mecca for "otaku" computer geeks, and fans of "manga" and "anime" pop culture.
Reader Mail
Jul 13, 2008

Treated better than the natives

I don't get it. Do I live in a different part of the galaxy from professional victims like Debito Arudou and others who whine about alleged discrimination in Japan? Certainly, Japanese suffer from narrow perspectives, stereotypes and ethnocentrism -- like people the world over, but no worse.
BUSINESS
Jul 12, 2008

Apple iPhone rings up sales in Tokyo debut

Hundreds of gadget lovers lined up Friday outside stores in Tokyo for the iPhone's Japan debut, as analysts closely watch whether the device will catch on among consumers other than Apple fans.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes