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LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 1, 2001

In praise of traditional values

Rustic, welcoming, friendly, relaxed -- these are not the adjectives you associate most readily with Daikanyama these days. Long since gutted as a neighborhood, there's precious little sense of community left among all the brand-name boutiques and slick, designer restaurants that have taken over the...
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2001

TV celebrity Ohashi to run for Upper House

TV personality Kyosen Ohashi announced on Tuesday his intention to run in next month's Upper House election on the Democratic Party of Japan ticket.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 26, 2001

The temples of the Nile

To float down the Nile, stopping at the temples, sleeping on my ship -- this was my desire and now I am in a stateroom on the Cheops I, a floating hotel rather than a mere boat, looking at the wharf at Aswan and reading Flaubert's journal of a similar voyage he made in 1849. I notice many of the same...
LIFE / Travel
May 29, 2001

France's last wilderness

"No one is born in the Camargue, and no one dies in the Camargue." -- Rhone Delta saying
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 5, 2001

Yoshihiro Takishita

Although Yoshihiro Takishita spent 18 months looking for land on which to place a house, he had his reward. The site he found is superlative, on a Kamakura hilltop surrounded by countryside and overlooking an expanse of sea. The unusual part is that he had already bought the house, "one with big columns...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 11, 2001

Japanese neighbors join in incinerator struggle

Two previous columns have focused on a United States government lawsuit seeking a provisional injunction against a private incinerator in Ayase City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The Americans, however, are not the only ones eager to shut down the facility. Other neighbors, too, are fired up about Envirotech...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 24, 2001

Back in the loop

This is not what you would call a lede per se, but indulge me for a few paragraphs. This will take some explaining.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 4, 2001

Blips that stayed on the media radar

Media Persons of the Year: Yasuo Tanaka and Shintaro Ishihara
COMMUNITY
Dec 10, 2000

Iron chef champ's book hailed best in the world

One of Katsuyo Kobayashi's strengths is that she is 100 percent reliable. With 140 books published to date, even the most inept cook can take home her latest compilation of recipes and come up trumps every time. Not only are they easy to make, good to eat and affordable, but joy of joys, some are now...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 5, 2000

Handful of history

COLUMBIA CHRONOLOGIES OF ASIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE, edited by John S. Bowman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, 752 pp., $85. Oh, "if men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the...
BUSINESS
Dec 4, 2000

World's tallest building planned in South Korea

South Korea's Lotte Group is to construct the tallest building in the world -- nearly one-third as tall again as the highest building in Japan, the Landmark Tower in Yokohama -- at a cost of some 1.2 trillion won, over $1 billion.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 26, 2000

The modernist innovations of Mackintosh

Tall, dark and handsome, the chairs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh are international objects of desire. Belying their age, they stand in design studios, hotel lobbies and private homes like stylish question marks.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 23, 2000

Six reasons to give thanks

A great deal of space in columns like these -- and I'm one of the culprits -- is devoted to all that's wrong with the sports world and the people who make their livings in it.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 22, 2000

Two countries, one system?

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Last week, Willy Wo-Lap Lam lost his job as the China correspondent on the South China Morning Post. That technically he resigned rather than be "promoted" to a non-China-related job is irrelevant, as it was clear that he was not going to be allowed to continue writing his weekly...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 12, 2000

Robert Whiting

For the last 50 years Japan has come under intense Western scrutiny from many quarters. Scholars, writers, professional men and women in different pursuits have contributed observations and analyses of Japanese thoughts and lifestyles and behavior. Bob Whiting crafted a way of his own to add to the body...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 8, 2000

Nihongo dekiru?

Nihongo dekiru? Since Amazon.com opened for business, its biggest foreign market has been Japan. The company has about 193,000 customers here and they ring up about $34 million worth of sales. Mind you, the domestic Japanese market for online book sales is only $46 million. (In the name of full disclosure,...
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

American fears for ecology on his island

To Japanese elsewhere, Jack Moyer may be a "gaijin," but to the people of Miyake Island, he is fellow islander Jack-san.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Oct 15, 2000

Rexroth revolution comes home to Japan

Yokohama-based essayist and poet Morgan Gibson has been and continues to be one of the most prolific contributors to Japan's English literary scene. Of his own work he had poems published in the 1970s in pioneering journals like One Mind and Kyoto Review and later, in the '80s, in publications like Blue...
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2000

Firms plan atomic waste disposal unit

The Federation of Electric Power Companies applied Wednesday to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry for approval to set up an organization aimed at disposing of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 15, 2000

Ever-unfashionable Akutagawa

JAPANESE SHORT STORIES, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Takashi Kojima, foreword by John McVittie. Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 1981, 240 pp. with 15 illustrations, $14.95. THE ESSENTIAL AKUTAGAWA, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, edited by Seiji Lippit, foreword by Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Marsililio...
COMMUNITY
Aug 13, 2000

Women! Enhance your lifestyles with Webgrrls

Talking with American Khristine (Khris) Schaffner lowered the heat in Tokyo's Nishi-Shinjuku by several degrees. She has that kind of tall, willowy, pale blonde beauty that acts as a psychological cooler even if she is talking 10 to the dozen and making a complete fool of herself over a Starbucks chocolate...
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Jul 16, 2000

When dream makers walk among us

Socrates' bestial laugh washes into the cosmic map where Blake digs with his spade and Sam stands bathed in the sparks of his youth Among colored shapes, Sam embraces the warmest softest things a woman's spirit in the shape of clouds in the shape of foam in the shape of a womb The white space of the...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 5, 2000

The tyranny of the square

When talking to Ted Nelson, strap in tight. It's quite a ride. Trained as a philosopher and film director, he is equal parts visionary and crank. Many consider him to be one of the fathers of the World Wide Web. He coined the word "hypertext" in 1965, but he has become a scathing critic of the Web and...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 28, 2000

All thumbs

In past columns, I've expressed my support for those people you've probably seen silently staring at their cell-phone screens, furiously typing away or intently scrolling. I recently joined their growing number. I think of it as a test drive; others might call it an occupational hazard. At any rate,...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 19, 2000

Sure, Japanese rice is expensive -- you're paying for all the chemicals

Don't expect the government to look out for your best interests when it comes to chemicals.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Jun 17, 2000

A tribute to Japanese world music

In two previous columns (Feb. 5 and May 20) I wrote about recently established live-music houses, WAON in Nippori and Manabiya in Yokohama, where one can hear hogaku. The familiar settings of these spaces allow for an intimate connection with the music, which ranges from relatively unknown young musicians...
CULTURE / Art
May 27, 2000

Issey Miyake: artist, sculptor or fashion designer?

"Issey Miyake Making Things," Miyake's current offering, presents the master in three different aspects. Broadly speaking, of course, sculpture, painting and fashion design are related, but no one else has such ability to convince us that these three arts can be made one.
EDITORIALS
May 14, 2000

The rites of spring

Anyone poking about in newspapers or on the Internet lately might have come across a couple of essays expressing a view that seems to pop up seductively in public discourse whenever the weather turns warm. Like a view of cool woods from the window of a stuffy classroom in spring, this idea offers the...

Longform

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The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan