Search - shop

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jun 20, 2006

Should the "Kimigayo" be forced on schools?

Masae Takase Web shop owner, 31 When I was at school, singing the national anthem was just a natural thing to do. We didn't think of it as being right or wrong. I don't believe people should be forced into it, though. We should have the right to choose.
EDITORIALS
Jun 18, 2006

Magic bean talk

Well, here's news worth celebrating with a big glass of Irish coffee. The more coffee you drink, U.S. researchers announced last week, the less likely you are to suffer alcohol-related liver damage. In a world sloshing in bad news, the assertion had the effect of a morning-after double espresso on anxious...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 13, 2006

Bando POW camp: chivalry's last bastion

NARUTO, Tokushima Pref. — At 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 23, 1914, despite opposition among many pro-German military officers and politicians, Japan honored a 1902 treaty with Britain and declared war on Imperial Germany.
SOCCER / World cup
Jun 9, 2006

Fans' 'Bonn' voyage builds before kickoff

Japan fans staying in Bonn unable to head to Munich for the opening game of the World Cup between Germany and Costa Rica on Friday won't be missing out on the carnival atmosphere.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 9, 2006

Breezy mall brightens up a down-at-heel district

As home to myriad love hotels, hostess bars and seedy nightlife establishments, Kinshicho in Tokyo's Sumida Ward has earned itself an unenviable reputation as a center of iniquity. Though it bustles after dusk, during the daytime, the east Tokyo town is an unremarkable shitamachi (downtown) district....
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2006

Big lessons from a small town

LONDON -- Al Gore has been visiting Hay-on Wye. Who is Al Gore and where is Hay-on-Wye?
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 4, 2006

Everybody gets to be a detective this week in TBS's "Uranaishi Misuzu" and more

Everybody gets to be a detective this week. In "Uranaishi Misuzu: The Incident Beyond Fate" (TBS, Monday, 9 p.m.), it's one of those street fortune tellers you see parked outside of office buildings at night. Misuzu (Kumiko Okae), however, isn't your run-of-the-mill palm reader. She's one of the most...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 25, 2006

Incidentally Capturing the city

Berlin is not beautiful like Paris, rich like London, or charming like Amsterdam. Prewar buildings in the German capital are pockmarked by bullet holes, while postwar architecture testifies to the city's division due to the Cold War -- American, British and French sectors were restored or rebuilt, the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
May 23, 2006

Hanabi light, Kai series of pots and kettles, 60VISION bags, Sharp cordless phones

Anyone who follows this column regularly might accuse me of being a slave to all that is white -- and with a name like "Snow," that criticism does seem justified. So in order to get it all out of my system (at least for a few months), this month I'm covering all things white. There is a zen-like satisfaction...
JAPAN
May 22, 2006

Store robbed twice in three days

A man armed with a knife held up a "bento" store in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, early Sunday and made off with some 170,000 yen, the second time in three days the store was robbed, police said.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 21, 2006

Hopes and fears fuel soccer fans' far-flung parties

Walking up Gaien-Higashi Dori, the road that begins at Tokyo Tower and cuts through the Roppongi entertainment district, at 7 in the morning last Saturday there was more than the usual bags of garbage being torn at by crows, bleary-eyed hosts and hostesses knocking off work, or resting ticket touts and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 19, 2006

It's all music for Warp label

Warp, home to sonic pioneers such as Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada is arguably the most influential electronica label in the world. But don't tell Warp founder Steve Beckett. For Beckett, who began the label with now deceased partner Rob Mitchell in a Sheffield record store in 1989, genre, and in...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 19, 2006

Mount Koya -- Japan's holy retreat

The young priest Kukai made his perilous journey to China as a member of a Japanese diplomatic mission in 804. Records indicate that he was already a master at dealing with bureaucratic superiors, not only by securing a place on the mission in the first place, but by negotiating (in accomplished Chinese)...
JAPAN
May 16, 2006

'Waribashi' from China to end

Walk into any noodle shop or restaurant and chances are high you'll soon be eating with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from China.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
May 12, 2006

Kitting out the kids in the finest gear

It might seem safe to assume that with a rapidly dwindling number of kids being brought into the world here in Japan, the market for kids' clothes and toys would be shrinking fast. Not so: with fewer children around, more and more money is being spent on them, and a host of top-class kiddie stores are...
JAPAN
May 5, 2006

Program develops Dutch dropouts' vocational, social skills

AMSTERDAM -- As Japan gropes for ways to motivate undereducated youths to look for jobs, other developed nations facing similar challenges are experimenting with steps to integrate them into the working population.
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2006

Chinese reoccupying Russia

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- 2006 is the Year of Russia in China; 2007 will be the Year of China in Russia -- if the current friendly relationship of the leaders of the two countries lasts that long. Friendly relations are not something that the peoples of the two countries support that much.
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 30, 2006

On the road to . . .

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, . . . Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages . . . ''
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 29, 2006

A boom time for Japanese electronics

Recently the day that my wife had long been predicting finally arrived -- sort of.
BUSINESS
Apr 25, 2006

Sweden's IKEA back in Japan after 20-year hiatus

Furniture giant IKEA marked its return to Japan with the opening of a store Monday in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, but some domestic rivals question whether the Swedish firm has learned enough about Japanese consumers to please them.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 25, 2006

Toshie Kobayashi

Toshie Kobayashi, 76, has been working six days a week, since she was 14 years old. As a highly skilled typesetter, she made a good living until the 1980s, when digital systems replaced her and analog typesetting machines. At 54, she registered with a cleaning service, and ever since then she has been...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2006

"Jack McLean & Carly Fischer -- Are You Here?"

Tokyo Nakaochiai Gallery Closes May 28
JAPAN
Apr 18, 2006

Repeat robber who killed gets life prison term

The Tokyo District Court sentenced a 65-year-old man to life in prison Monday after convicting him of six crimes, including the 2004 robbery-murder of a restaurateur and attempted murder of a Tokyo subway employee.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 14, 2006

Sigur Ros warm to a wider world

When Sigur Ros proclaimed from their remote, treeless, volcanic island in 2000 that they would "change music forever, and the way people think about music," there was something mythical about their otherworldly sound and the made-up language of their lyrics that had some listeners actually believing...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Apr 14, 2006

Knight expands fashion empire

Eccentric British fashion designer Paul Smith is currently presiding over a rollout of stores across the globe. Following on from the December 2005 opening of a bubblegum-pink store on Melrose Avenue, L.A., last week he was in Tokyo to unveil a four-story flagship in the Aoyama district. Later this year...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Apr 11, 2006

Massage has its good and bad points

In today's deadline-driven, high-stress society, it's no longer uncommon to experiences headaches, stiff shoulders and carpal-tunnel pain every now and then. While many people turn to painkillers for relief from minor complaints, which in some cases can snowball into a chronic condition, massage treatments...

Longform

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