Search - life

 
 
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2000

Aum members sentenced to death for subway attack

Two Aum Shinrikyo followers were sentenced to death Monday for releasing the nerve gas sarin on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 and for illegally manufacturing firearms.
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 17, 2000

Scope for universal understanding

It seems that Silicon Valley in California, that hotbed of blazing computer development, is now giving birth to technology for the search for origin of biological life in the stars.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 16, 2000

Setsuko Arima

For the greater part of her life, Setsuko Arima has lived in the same district of Kanazawa-ku in Yokohama. She is devoted to the neighborhood, which is highlighted by the 13th century Shomyoji Temple, its garden with red bridges over a wide pond, and its background of an open field and wooded hills....
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jul 12, 2000

With love, Jean

When I first arrived in Japan more than 40 years ago, one of the first words I learned was sayonara and that it meant "goodbye." As I stayed on, I began to learn that sayonara did not mean goodbye in the sense of "till we meet again" or "God watch over you" as such phrases are used in the West. The literal...
JAPAN
Jul 7, 2000

1932 essays recall patriotism of nisei

When 31-year-old Californian Joyce Hirohata was having difficulty writing her high school valedictory speech, her father handed her a book published by her grandfather, Paul Tsunegoro Hirohata.
CULTURE / Music
Jul 6, 2000

86-year-old composer going strong

At 86, Saburo Takata may be the oldest working composer of classical music in the world. Not that he feels like it.
COMMUNITY
Jun 29, 2000

Making home a school away from school

A typical day at school for 12-year-old Sophie Kimura could be a social studies lesson which involves finding out what life is like in Illinois where her "e-pal" Dawn lives.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 24, 2000

Glimpses of global tragedies on a long and winding road

A nameless road continues on for thousands of miles under thousands of different skies, wending its way through thousands of different landscapes. Along either side anonymous towns and cities flow by with regularity, like scenes in a photography album sorted by a methodical traveler.
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2000

Japanese women: the new faces of small business

Most people would assume that to start a business you need plenty of time and money, or at least experience working in a relevant field. But an increasing number of Japanese women are proving this assumption wrong by setting up their own companies based on little more than a good idea and the will to...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jun 21, 2000

Forgetfulness

Does it happen to you? You are looking for something which you can't find, but what you do find are all sorts of things you have looked for previously but have not been able to locate. One "something" I found was about indiscreet remarks by politicians, many of whom are still making similar indiscreet...
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jun 21, 2000

Hawaii's fire island a travel hot spot

All the Hawaiian islands are the peaks of submarine volcanoes. Only one island, however, is still volcanically active -- the aptly named Big Island, largest in the 2,400-km-long archipelago and unquestionably the wildest of them all.
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 19, 2000

Project Phoenix: sitting by the phone

The SETI Institute, based in Mountain View, Calif., is currently conducting the world's most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Project Phoenix. Phoenix searches for signs of other civilizations by listening for radio signals directly transmitted from other planets,...
COMMUNITY
Jun 18, 2000

Commemoration of a musical pilgrimage

"A Shakuhachi Odyssey -- Enchanted by Timbres of Heaven" is a collection of autobiographical essays, cultural musings, musical stories and more. It beat out over 200 competitors to receive last year's Rennyo Sho, a nonfiction literature prize sponsored by the Honganji Temple Foundation and supported...
BUSINESS
Jun 16, 2000

BTM will survive competition of new era, future chief says

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, currently the biggest bank in Japan, will strive to survive intensifying competition in the banking industry by utilizing its mostly upscale retail customer base and solid international networks, the future president of the bank said.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2000

Thai villagers protest dam's legacy of destruction

BANGKOK -- The Moon River is the lifeline of Isan, bringing sustenance to the poorest, most populous part of Thailand. The World Bank identified the Moon, the greatest of the Mekong River's tributaries, as a suitable location for a giant dam, and proceeded to fund a hydropower project that is destroying...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 11, 2000

Haven't got the yang of Japanese gardening

I came home the other day and noticed my neighbor had cut my grass, trimmed my trees and watered my plants. This is normal. I apologized profusely, thanked Ueda-san repetitively and she said, as always, "Oh, it was nothing."
COMMUNITY
May 28, 2000

All you wanted to know about Japan, and more

Why do foreigners have such big noses? Why are Japanese people so skinny? There are fundamental differences between Japanese people and foreigners that no one can explain. But we can speculate:
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2000

More and more men are getting left on the shelf

"When I come home from work in the evening, my room is dark, and in winter it's cold. At these times I always wish I had a wife waiting for me, with a hot meal," says Yoshiharu Mitamura (not his real name), a 36-year-old photographer.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
May 23, 2000

Have guitars, will travel -- extensively across Europe

Hurtling toward Vienna on the German autobahns, I have two passengers. One is Okinawan, Takashi Hirayasu. The other, Bob Brozman, is American. Both are playing Bolivian charangos to pass the time, which makes for an interesting multicultural soundtrack for driving. Something like Indian Ocean rhythms...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 21, 2000

Mohan Kumar

NEW DELHI -- "Three things are necessary for a driver: a good horn, good brakes and good luck."
JAPAN
May 21, 2000

Cult used Unzen to solicit followers in Nagasaki

The founder of the Honohana Sanpogyo religious group met with the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture in the spring of 1992 and maintained that a "voice from heaven" said the eruption of Mount Unzen would stop by the year's end if prefectural residents "awaken to the real way of life," it was learned Saturday....
BUSINESS
May 19, 2000

Firms agree to tie up on real estate

The planned Mizuho Financial Group will team up with real estate giant Mitsui Fudosan Co. in securitizing their real estate holdings, officials close to the deal said Thursday.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
May 16, 2000

Blood and gore all over the floor

"Everyone thought I'd fallen on some broken glass by accident. But . . . I just couldn't stand myself anymore, so I went behind the amps with this piece of broken glass, having decided to cut my jugular vein. I just didn't have the guts, though . . . I was aiming for the vein, but I just couldn't make...
JAPAN
May 12, 2000

Usui backs lowering age limit for adult trials

Justice Minister Hideo Usui indicated Thursday that he supports lowering the minimum age at which people can be penalized for crimes as adults, which currently stands at 16.
CULTURE / Music
May 9, 2000

They call it 'avant-pop,' but hum along if you like

Pop aficionados often feel the need to be apologetic. Few would would openly admit to preferring those early bouncy Beatles singles to the Fab Four's more musically adventurous output of later years, or to having danced around the living room to "La Vida Loca." Even the shiny surfaces of Cornelius are...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 19, 2000

Too harsh for humans, perfect for birds

Think of the automobile and which country comes to mind first? America, of course.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000

Reflective poems from well-lived lives

IN THE NINTH DECADE, by Edith Shiffert, distributed by Katsura Press, P.O. Box 275, Lake Oswego, OR 97034, USA, 1999; 78 pp., $14.95. KOMAGANE POEMS, by David Mayer, SVD, Techny Mission Books, Divine Word Missionaries, The Mission Center, Techny, Illinois, 1999; 93 pages, unpriced. "In the Ninth Decade"...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 17, 2000

Chance meeting provides valuable insights on Japan and environment

In early April I had a chance to meet with Rea Litty, an environmentalist from the Netherlands, and Fushi Zen, president of the Association for the Conservation of Humans Against the Natural Environment, and former director of Humans First!

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years