Search - columns

 
 
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jun 26, 2003

"Follow Me Down," "Frank and the Chamber of Fear"

"Follow Me Down," Julie Hearn, Oxford University Publishing; July 2003; 224 pp. Strange things are happening in the basement of an old house in East London -- and not for the first time. The floor has parted, forming a kind of channel, and faces from the past are floating in it in an endless stream....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 15, 2003

Home of conspicuous construction

It is hardly news that Prada spent a lot of money on their new flagship store in Tokyo's swish Aoyama district. The real surprise is what they got for it.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
May 25, 2003

Take the first step toward heaven

NAGANO -- Here's one way to assure yourself a place in heaven. Get to Nagano City's noted Zenko-ji Temple by June 1 and catch a glimpse of its most sacred icon -- the Maedachi Honzon. According to tradition, making the arduous pilgrimage to this temple to pray to Amida Nyorai, the Buddha of Gokuraku...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 1, 2003

Feathered friends of the forest

In a passive way, plants have got birds sussed. They use them, abuse them (ever seen a thrush drunk on fermenting apples?) and mess with their digestive systems. Birds are willing pawns, though; brightly colored flowers and gaudy berries send a simple signal to the bird brain that shouts -- energy! ...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 23, 2003

A builder of dreams

Chuta Ito was born in 1867, the same year as the great novelist Soseki Natsume -- whom he outlived by four decades. Like Natsume, too, Ito -- who pioneered the historical and theoretical study of architecture in Japan -- had a wry sense of humor, and from 1914 until his death in 1954 he produced no fewer...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 21, 2003

EU troubles will also expand

LONDON -- The symbolism could hardly have been better. Against a background of the columns of ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, 25 government leaders signed documents that will bring into the European Union countries that spent much of their postwar existence under communist dictatorship....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Apr 13, 2003

Extracurricular cool at Hitorizawa

Hitorizawa High School in Kanagawa appears to be a normal Japanese high school. Plentiful shoe-boxes jam the entryway, a sign-in sheet for visitors dangles alongside the nub of an old pencil and lists of rules hang accusingly in the wide and somewhat dusty halls. After classes, administrative staff work...
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2003

School texts cite 9/11, toe line on SDF

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and subsequent war in Afghanistan are included in most high school textbooks that survived the latest round of screening by the education ministry.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 16, 2003

A struggle against tyranny

Composed more than 2,000 years ago and first devised for performance in religious festivals, the dramas of Ancient Greece have never lost their powerful relevance. When, for example, a pair of New York-based actresses hit on the idea of a global theatrical protest against war with Iraq, they devised...
COMMENTARY
Mar 1, 2003

Chirac remains on the attack

PARIS -- French Finance Minister Francis Mer has at last acknowledged that there is no chance the government will achieve its target of 2.5 percent growth in GDP this year. A steady increase in unemployment, a massive fall in stocks and plummeting car sales all indicate that France has not escaped the...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 19, 2003

New sports newspaper to start

is going to launch a weekly bilingual sports paper this summer, the sports media company has announced. The newspaper will put more weight on the coverage of international sports, primarily north American sports, than domestic sports news.
COMMUNITY
Feb 9, 2003

How green is your green?

What a difference a decade makes.
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Jan 20, 2003

Intellectual alienation spawns hazy polic

WASHINGTON -- The main purpose of my visit to Washington at the beginning of 2003 was to carry out discussions on U.S. perspectives, policies and strategies for the Doha Development Round, in particular, and global economic policy in general. Meetings were held with U.S. government departments, foreign...
BUSINESS / ON MANAGEMENT
Jan 14, 2003

The Bad News Bearer: How to look good even if the tidings aren't glad

The scene was a lavish business function, the type we're seeing less and less of these days. Asked by an earnest professor at a prestigious business school what sort of unorthodox job skills he would wish on today's generation of MBAs, the CEO -- and the party's host -- thought a moment before flashing...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 9, 2003

Emphasizing the positive

Perhaps more than any other individual today, Junko Edahiro is striving to share Japan's environmental successes with the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2002

International ideas take shape in Lebanon

Though the word "symposium" comes from Plato's ideal of a drinking party held to facilitate philosophical discussion, most of us are familiar with its modern usage, meaning a conference or meeting. Few people, however, know about the sculpture symposium movement, started by Karl Prantl in Austria in...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 3, 2002

A pier without peer

The Yokohama International Passenger Terminal on Osanbashi Pier is slotted into a line of redevelopments along the waterfront -- a smorgasbord of ambitious architecture ranging from renovated century-old warehouses to the Blade Runner-esque towers of the Minato Mirai 21 complex.
Japan Times
Uncategorized
Oct 29, 2002

Refurbished Taisho Era hall set to debut anew

Central Public Hall, an 84-year-old Neo-Renaissance civic gathering place, will reopen Friday after a three-year, 11 billion yen restoration.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 18, 2002

Eriksson latest victim of kiss-and-tell fast sell

LONDON -- After two months it is about time this column came up with a world exclusive. Apologies for the delay but I hope it was worth waiting for.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 17, 2002

'Tis a pity she's the leading actress

Contemporary theater in Japan existed as something akin to an underground cult in the 1960s and '70s. In the '80s, with bubble money swilling around everywhere, many of these youthful, looselyknit groups came in from the cultural margins and formed theater companies. Led by experimental directors such...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Sep 10, 2002

Studying Sri Lanka's simian soap opera

Scientists at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Ga., are sewing the eyelids of infant primates shut to see how that affects their behavior. At the New England Regional Primate Research Center, a database is maintained of self-inflicted wounds -- fingers bitten off, holes chewed...
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Sep 10, 2002

Studying Sri Lanka's simian soap opera

Scientists at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Ga., are sewing the eyelids of infant primates shut to see how that affects their behavior. At the New England Regional Primate Research Center, a database is maintained of self-inflicted wounds -- fingers bitten off, holes chewed...
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2002

Textbook makers given freer hand in curricula

The education ministry announced Wednesday that it will allow textbook publishers to stray from its guidelines under certain conditions beginning next year.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Jul 28, 2002

A taste of the renaissance

Wine lovers in Tokyo are no longer far removed from the international wine scene. We have access to great wine shops and restaurants with well-chosen wines in every price category. And as we've investigated in the last few columns, bottles of wine now turn up even in formerly unthinkable locations, such...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jul 19, 2002

S.U.N Project's 'Sexperimental' wonder; Delta captures Ebisu; Fuji calls

As their legend grows, it becomes more and more natural to recite the tale of S.U.N. Project in storybook form, which might go something like this:
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 7, 2002

Are you calling me a diphthong?

I have a friend who became an English teacher mainly because of his fondness for phonetics.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 4, 2002

Welcome to the world's most successful societies

Ants have an amazing lineage. They have been around for at least 100 million years, since the middle of the Cretaceous Period, and for at least the last 50 million years they have been among the most abundant of all insects. We think we're successful? Our population has recently topped 6 billion, but...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Jun 30, 2002

Matches made in Tokyo

From California-style cafes to French bistros, international restaurants in Tokyo possess world-class wine lists. But if consumers' experience of wine is limited to their forays into international gourmet dining, it will remain an exotic, special-occasion beverage. To establish a comfortable home for...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 27, 2002

Newshungry TV viewers fighting for English service

To start off, we have a request from "Friends of Foxnews," who are working to keep Foxnews, the up and coming challenge to CNN and BBC and the only non-edited English language news program on SkyPerfecTV here in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Jun 22, 2002

Media: bulwark of democracy

LONDON -- The British prime minister's chief of communications has publicly accepted that the overuse of "spin" in government has led to cynicism and that the emphasis should now be on policy and delivery. Most British observers would agree. But government ministers, who have spent much of their life...

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan