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Japan Times
LIFE / DISABILITY IN JAPAN
Aug 27, 2006

Is 'disability' still a dirty word in Japan?

Mainstream society is slowly, but slowly, opening up to the physically ormentally impaired, as officialdom appears happy with a 'steady' approach
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 25, 2006

Motor City soul

In the mid-1980s, when Detroit was a city in decline, Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson (collectively known as the Belleville Three) kicked off a musical revolution. By working the futuristic electro sound of European acts like Kraftwerk and New Order into a funky, dance floor-friendly musical...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 25, 2006

Graham Coxon

In mid-1990s Britain, Graham Coxon was the guitar hero of a generation. His band, Blur, were the epitome of Britpop, and his guitar style, fusing jagged, violent post-punk and melodic, melancholic '60s guitar pop -- along with frontman Damon Albarn's ear for a melody -- kept them ahead of their competitors....
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 25, 2006

Best in animation at Hiroshima fest

The 11th International Animation Festival runs through Aug. 28 at Aster Plaza in Hiroshima. The biannual festival began in 1985 and regularly features the best in animation from around the world. Several films will be screened in English or with English subtitles, including the Swedish cut-up animation...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Aug 23, 2006

Forest green tree frog

* Japanese name: Moriao-gaeru * Scientific name: Rhacophorus arboreus * Description: A cute little, beautiful green frog; males are 4-6 cm long, females are 6-8 cm long. The backs can be mottled with brown speckles, and the number of these speckles varies according to where in the country they live....
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 22, 2006

Let's dance

The end of bon (Aug. 13-15) brings with it a sense that summer is drawing to a close, even though the weather is still hot. Summer festivals in Tokyo cap the season -- reviving culture from the Edo Period (1603-1868), incorporating regional dancing, and even imitating foreign carnivals. Communities are...
MORE SPORTS
Aug 21, 2006

Brazil runs by host Japan

Defending champion Brazil overpowered Japan to score a straight-sets victory on Sunday, denying the host a third straight win on the final day of the World Grand Prix Tokyo leg in women's volleyball.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 20, 2006

Airs and grimaces

You don't even need a guitar to let your hot licks hang out anymore. Duckwalk like Angus (Young; AC/DC), windmill like (Pete; The Who) Townshend and bow like (Jimmy; Led Zeppelin) Page -- no prob; all with air, but not like (Michael; Nike Air) Jordan.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 20, 2006

Seniors go French with a 'little pig'

During the summer months in Japan, parks, baseball grounds and school yards come alive with the grimaces, grins, grunts and cries of triumph or dismay from people of advanced years who gather together to toss big metal balls at a little wooden one.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 20, 2006

There's gold being panned in them thar hills

There may be many perfectly good reasons to spend a weekend sloshing around in water panning for gold. Trying to get rich isn't one of them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 17, 2006

Tatzu Nishi -- Cheri in the Sky

Maison Hermes 8F ForumCloses in 15 days
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Aug 15, 2006

Lanterns

Dear Japan Times,
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 15, 2006

Meet the chic sikh

Waris Ahluwalia has some good anecdotes. Like the one where Willem Dafoe asks him if it's OK to give Spike Lee his number, and a couple of hours later he gets a call and the voice at the other end of the line says "Hey Waris, it's Spike Lee," and asks him to audition for his upcoming blockbuster bank...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

His Emperor's reluctant warrior

Samurai-born and steeled in Japan's harsh military culture, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had lived five years in North America but was largely unknown to Washington's leaders when he was ordered to defend Iwo Jima "at all costs." The U.S. would pay dearly for underestimating him.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

Iwo Jima: 'A futile battle' fought without surrender

August 15 is the 61st anniversary of Emperor Hirohito's capitulation speech that ended World War II. Yet even in a world assailed ever since with ghastly images of conflicts, few rank with the ferocity both sides showed in the battle for a remote Pacific islet in the spring of 1945. That islet's name...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

'Even the dead were being forced to fight'

Satoru Omagari was a 23-year-old mechanic and a sub-lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force when he was ordered to the defense of Iwo Jima in 1944. Before he was drafted into the military he was a university student. Here, published for the first time in English, are some of his horrific recollections...
BUSINESS
Aug 12, 2006

Consumers loosen purse strings, splurge on glitzy electronic goods

Japanese home electronics and appliance manufacturers are churning out expensive, high-grade products to take advantage of the growing number of free-spending consumers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Aug 11, 2006

An attack of the cute and quirky

Fashion designer Eri Utsugi is a very lucky lady: After only one catwalk outing, her mercibeaucoup brand will open six new stores in prime locations -- starting with Aoyama and Ginza -- over the course of the next seven weeks.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 11, 2006

Showa Era star remembered

The International Theatre Institute is offering half-price kabuki tickets to foreigners living in Japan for its September program taking place at Kabuki-za theater in Ginza, Tokyo, on Sept. 15-17 (4:30 p.m.).
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 11, 2006

Cravin' more of that summer wine

Summers in Japan are associated with boisterous matsuri filled with men in fundoshi sweating under the great weight of omikoshi portable shrines, and colorful yukata-clad girls clip-clopping in their geta en route to see fireworks-filled skies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Aug 10, 2006

A loving tribute at the Watari-um for a close friend

"Bye-Bye, Nam June Paik," the current exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, is a loving tribute to an artist who has always been close to that Aoyama art space's heart.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Aug 9, 2006

Drone beetle Kanabun

* Scientific name: Rhomborrhina japonica * Description: Large, handsome and sturdy insects, drone beetles have distinctive antennae that end in a club that can be fanned out to form a leafy antenna with a large surface area -- the better to detect odors carried in the air. The beetles are around 4...
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2006

Japan wants near South-held isles

Japan has told South Korea it will attempt to measure radioactive waste levels from late August to early September in waters near a pair of disputed islets controlled by the South in the Sea of Japan, a Foreign Ministry source in Tokyo said Wednesday.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jul 31, 2006

BOJ should have based hike on consumer needs, worldwide inflation trend

The Bank of Japan raised the unsecured overnight call rate from virtually zero to 0.25 percent at the end of its July 13-14 Policy Board meeting and hiked the official discount rate from 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent.
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2006

Obituary: Yoshinori Aboshi

Yoshinori Aboshi, the archaeologist who in 1972 discovered the renowned Takamatsuzuka tomb in his home village of Asuka, Nara Prefecture, died of cancer Saturday night, his family said. He was 78.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 30, 2006

No mountain too high for oldest man ever to scale Everest

This story is part of a package on "Growing old healthily." The introduction is here
LIFE
Jul 30, 2006

What's Japan's secret of 'many happy returns'?

Japan may never have become the world's No. 1 economy, and, faced with other rising Asian powers, it probably never will be. Nonetheless, there is one thing at which Japan proudly excels above all nations: its people's longevity.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 30, 2006

Gran, 71, leaves world in her wake

This story is part of a package on "Growing old healthily." The introduction is here

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