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CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 14, 2010

Traditional Tokyo explored in mystery and quiz show; CM of the week: Docomo-Fujitsu

Traditional Tokyo gets the two-hour mystery treatment in "Yorozuya Chobei no Sumidagawa Jiken Fairu Sono Ni" (Chobei Yorozuya's Sumidagawa Incident File No. 2; TBS, Mon., 9 p.m.). The hero, Chobei Yorozuya (Kotaro Satomi), is a pawn shop owner in Tokyo's Asakusa district who has quit the police force...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 14, 2010

An 'eroduction' to Japan's saucy cinema

The Nikkatsu studio is the Japanese film industry's oldest — it will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2012. In the 1950s and early 1960s it was also a box-office leader, turning out hit after hit with Japan's biggest postwar star, Yujiro Ishihara. By the 1970s, however, Nikkatsu and the rest of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 12, 2010

'Broken Embraces'

Feminists like to gripe about the "male gaze," the way in which male-created art tends to objectify women, and y'know, every time I see some leering Michael Bay shot of Megan Fox's butt, I'll admit they have a point. But, on the other hand, where would cinema be without films like "In The Mood For Love,"...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Feb 12, 2010

Four Seasons Chinzan-so maiko show

Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzan-so's Japanese restaurant Miyuki will offer a Kyoto-themed meal and entertainment event on Feb. 28, inviting maiko from the ancient capital.
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Feb 9, 2010

Hay fever ad campaign nothing to sneeze at

An ad campaign cleverly promoting a hay-fever medicine gets a free ride on social media.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 5, 2010

'Surveillance'/'Paranormal Activity'

You've got to hand it to Jennifer Chambers Lynch: The daughter of cinematic visionary David Lynch is nothing if not persistent.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 5, 2010

Kamikozawa-tei: Shabu-shabu in modernist mode

There's no finer way to eat on a chilly winter evening than sitting around a bubbling nabe hot pot. No matter what the ingredients — meat, fish, tofu or vegetables — just cooking and eating from the same communal casserole is nourishment for both body and soul.
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2010

The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up

The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jan 31, 2010

Rags and riches by the Myoshoji

Few writers have been able to evoke the bare beams of poverty or the lambent lives of those who endure it with more dignity than Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951).
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 30, 2010

Nintendo chief on iPad: So what?

The president of Nintendo on Friday shrugged off the new iPad tablet computer from Apple as delivering "no surprises" and displayed as little enthusiasm for 3-D technology and high-definition upgrades for games.
BUSINESS
Jan 29, 2010

Diet passes stimulus worth ¥7.2 trillion

A ¥7.2 trillion supplementary budget aimed at avoiding a double-dip recession cleared the Diet on Thursday, giving Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama some relief in the face of a series of money scandals and a declining approval rate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 29, 2010

Blooming successes flower in artwork

East Asian flower-and-bird painting emerged as a genre in China around the 8th century and the tradition has survived through to the present. Its resonances for modern and contemporary Japanese artists are currently the theme of two very different exhibitions: "By the Water-lily Pond" at the Asahi Beer...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Jan 28, 2010

Design for keeping everything warm and just so

Drastic desk changes Hopefully you're still keeping your New Year's resolutions, and if one of them was to pay more attention to the little things in life, such as your desk space, then the latest from Japanese stationery brand Craft Design Technology can help fulfill those good intentions. Released...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jan 27, 2010

Toshiba Blu-ray recorders, mCube90 make life more compact

Blu-ray recording: If you can't beat them, don't join them — just copy their ideas and improve them. Toshiba is endeavoring to do just that having abandoned its HD-DVD format and instead opted to craft versions of Sony's brainchild, Blu-ray. Nobody can accuse Toshiba of not doing a wholehearted about...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 22, 2010

'Frozen River'

Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is not a pretty sight. One of the first shots of "Frozen River" shows her slumped in a chair in the early morning hours, and the camera moves slowly and meticulously over her features, ravaged by age and nicotine, the crisscross lines around her eyes testifying to what seems like...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Jan 22, 2010

Royal Park stay with flavor of old Edo

The Royal Park Hotel in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, is offering a plan that combines a one-night stay in an executive floor room and dinner in one of the area's long-established Japanese restaurants, through March 31.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Jan 22, 2010

'Shinganist Showcase 3 Tokyo'

Tokyo Hipsters Club
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jan 20, 2010

Buffalo dock serves dual purpose; Panasonic's compact cam

Dock 'n' lock: Innovation and iPods go hand in hand, but the creativity rarely extends to iPod docks. Buffalo bucks that trend in the form of its unusual HDD Dualie. In essence, this is a standard docking station paired with a 500-gigabyte hard disk. Unlike run-of- the-mill iPod docks, the Dualie does...
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jan 19, 2010

8-bit sound goes above ground

For some, 'retro' is the clang and twang of electric guitars; for others, it's the primitive chirp of a computer chip: that crazy 8-bit sound.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 17, 2010

Seeking exactitude can sometimes exact a high cultural price

I freely admit a prejudice. It is against the concept of "national character," or kokuminsei in Japanese. Is there really such a thing or is it merely a jumble of stereotypes, whichever is the country or culture in question?
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 17, 2010

Okinawa on a plate

"Everywhere in this house and its stone walls you can find the wisdom of our ancestors and how they lived," says Masako Kinjo, as she gazes around Makabe Chinaa, a 110-year-old traditional wooden home in Itoman City in the south of Okinawa Island.
Reader Mail
Jan 14, 2010

Not in the mood for fiction spreads

The Jan. 10 edition of The Japan Times asks readers if they are "Feeling like fiction?" Personally, no. More than a full page of fiction subtracts from space that could have been devoted to news, features or photos of Japan — the reason I subscribe to the paper version of the paper. One assumes the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 8, 2010

' Bandage'

Shunji Iwai was once Japan's hottest young director following the smash success of "Love Letter," a 1995 film about a woman who writes a letter to her dead lover — and gets a reply.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 8, 2010

Japan's festivals all at once

While winter is an off-season for traditional Japanese festivals, Tokyo Dome will be alive with matsuri madness from Jan. 8-11.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 8, 2010

Aosando market set to cater to shoppers, features German electronic-music band

Hidden in between Aoyama Street and Omotesando, there is a back alley called Aosando that connects the Aoyama and Omotesando districts.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past