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Japan Times
Features
Mar 6, 2005

Issey Ogata: Comic chameleon

Issey Ogata is nothing if not versatile. Alone on an empty stage, he has audiences in fits as he performs his seriously funny one-man shows portraying characters as diverse as a classic sarariman (office worker) and a folk-song diva -- one after another.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Mar 1, 2005

More pet care, honey and advice on quacks

Pet service In reply to a dog owner in Tokyo last year seeking a sitter or pet hotel while abroad, here are Susan and Takashi Shiobara with a great service: Pet Mate, located in the Fuchu/Koganei area of west Tokyo, offers petsitting at the owner's home while they're away as well as dog walking services...
Japan Times
Features
Feb 27, 2005

Inquest service fuels ardor for 'democracy'

Earlier this month at a coffee shop near JR Matsudo Station in Chiba Prefecture, Tatsuhiko Ojima, 64, recalled how startled he was two years ago to receive a letter from the Matsudo branch of the Chiba District Court. It notified him he had to attend the court because he had been selected to serve a...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 20, 2005

LCD Soundsystem

James Murphy wants it both ways. A walking encyclopedia of the underground scene, he loathes the narcissism and one-upmanship common among record-shop insiders. His NYC label, DFA, produced some of the most infectious dance singles of the decade thus far, yet Murphy turns down remixing work from Duran...
COMMENTARY
Feb 17, 2005

Racist banner looks frayed

Understanding Japan and the Japanese was never meant to be easy. This is especially true for the Japanese attitude to foreigners -- at times exclusivist and at other times extremely open. There is an answer to the seeming contradiction, but it requires outsiders to accept that the Japanese might have...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Feb 11, 2005

Sweetest temptations

Japan's unique take on Valentine's Day sees women present their men with chocolate on February 14th, while the recipients reciprocate, often with branded trinkets or jewelry, one month later.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 10, 2005

Ramen food courts seek to slake slurping throngs

Ramen eateries in Tokyo have started banding together in food court-style complexes in response to red-hot competition.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 6, 2005

"Matthew's Best Hit TV" and "Shojiki Shindoi" gets joint special on TV Asahi and more

Next month will mark the 10th anniversary of the sarin gas attacks carried out by Aum Supreme Truth cult on a Tokyo subway during the morning rush hour. On Tuesday, NHK's documentary series "Project X" (NHK-G, 9:15 p.m.) will take a detailed look back at the medical-emergency measures implemented immediately...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 5, 2005

'O-baa-chans' on the loose in Bali shops

I recently had the opportunity to accompany two Japanese women to Bali, Indonesia. This is not the first time I have been a personal tour guide for Japanese going to Bali, but this time was different because I was taking two very special people: my next-door neighbor Kazuko and another islander, Hiroko....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 4, 2005

In search of the real flavor of Yokohama's Chukagai

In some quarters it's become almost knee-jerk to denigrate Yokohama's Chinatown. Too clean and tidy, they sneer, it feels like a theme park. It's just for tourists. And, the most serious charge of all, the food just isn't authentic. To which the Food File would retort: Perhaps so; not necessarily; and...
COMMUNITY / LIFELINES
Feb 1, 2005

Used CDs, pensions and a good resource

More used CD info On the subject of where to buy and sell used CDs in and around Tokyo, there are a number of shops that will take your old discs off you as well as Recofan (mentioned in our column of Jan. 18).
Japan Times
Features
Jan 30, 2005

'Curiosity' at the core of days packed with lots to chew on

Atsuko Tanuma's day begins at 5 a.m. It's a routine she has followed for 17 years, since she started preparing lunch-boxes for her first son when he began kindergarten at the age of 4.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 29, 2005

All good things come to those who wait

Judy Ishizu holds up her latest English textbook, "Sekando Raifu no Eikaiwa" ("Second Life English Conversation"), and can scarcely contain her enthusiasm. "It's a dream come true to be in print. This is not my first book, however, but the fifth. To date the second -- "Eigo de Imi . Kangae wo Ieru Hyogen"...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2005

Kobe remembers earthquake with candlelight vigil

KOBE -- This city on Monday morning marked the 10th anniversary of the January 1995 earthquake that resulted in the loss of 6,433 lives, with ceremonies paying tribute to reconstruction efforts and offering condolences and promises of further assistance to survivors of national and international disasters....
Japan Times
JAPAN / 10 YEARS AFTER
Jan 18, 2005

City's new face conceals unhealed wounds, a sense of communities lost

KOBE -- A decade after the massive Kobe earthquake, there remains little visible trace of the damage to this port city.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Jan 16, 2005

Wota lota love

The 90-minute event on the eighth floor of an electronics shop in Tokyo's Akihabara district one recent Sunday afternoon was unlike anything you'd expect to encounter in the bubble-gum world of Japanese teen fashion.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jan 11, 2005

Habitat destruction, work gear and photos

A distressing end to 2004 . . . off to a resilient and positive start in 2005.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 9, 2005

NTV's "87 percent — My Five-Year Chance of Survival" and more

A new year means a whole new set of drama series, though the themes remain the same. Fans of terminal illness stories will find a lot to cry over in "87 percent -- My Five-Year Chance of Survival," which premieres Wednesday on Nihon TV at 10 p.m. Yui Natsukawa plays Akiko, a 35-year-old insurance saleslady...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jan 6, 2005

Buckwheat booze lifts locals' spirits

The first flurries of snow usually fall here where I live in Kurohime in mid-November, just at the start of the hunting season.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 4, 2005

Racism is bad business

The Community Page has commented at length on socially-sanctioned exclusionary practices in Japan. However, it has rarely touched upon their quantifiable, longer-term effects.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 1, 2005

These are a few of my favorite things

One duty of all foreign residents of Japan is to pick up a bunch of Japanese "things." You know, the knickknack, bric-a-brac, give-the-junk-a-home type of stuff that is probably cluttering up your dwelling even now.
Japan Times
Features
Dec 26, 2004

The voice

The first time he met her she told him everything, but he wasn't listening to the words.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Dec 26, 2004

Rip, burn, play: crucial tunes in 2004

Here is the definitive list -- albeit a bit fuzzy (it's been a tough few weeks of pre-Christmas partying) -- of the best albums of 2004. I wish there were more Japanese bands here, but in 2004 most of my favorite bands -- The Gimmies, The Saturns, Melt-Banana, Thee '50s High Teens, Watusi Zombie, etc....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 22, 2004

Making love from the inside out

Vital Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Shinya Tsukamoto Running time: 86 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] When Shinya Tsukamoto released his first feature, "Tetsuo," in 1989, many critics compared the crazed black-and-white speed dream...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 18, 2004

Talking (and talking) about talking

"Did I ever tell you about the time I was kidnapped by Gypsies?"
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 18, 2004

Japanese firms wake up to wonders of fair trade

Japanese corporations have begun to sell fair trade-certified products in a belated effort to catch up with an international movement that has existed for nearly two decades.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 17, 2004

Raising a glass to the Food File's faves

The goose is getting fat and so too is your humble correspondent, after another year of gobbling his way through some of the best dining that Tokyo has to offer -- not to mention a sizable dollop of the mediocre and worse. But it's not just gluttony that keeps the Food File going, nor merely devotion...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 16, 2004

Serendipities abound in a wintery wonderland

Recently I spotted a Quetzal from Central America, a Snowy Owl from the Arctic, a Short-tailed Albatross from a remote Pacific island -- and a hovering Skylark. Amazingly they were all together, along with woodpeckers and barbets, thrushes and flycatchers, finches, frigate birds, other albatrosses and...

Longform

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