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SOCCER
Jul 28, 2006

Barca earns bye for FIFA CWC

European Champions League winner Barcelona has received a bye into the semifinals of this year's FIFA Club World Cup to be held in Japan in December, the Japan Football Association said Thursday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 28, 2006

Endorphin II gets the juices flowing

As any decent dictionary published after 1980 will tell you, an endorphin is "any of a group of peptide hormones that bind to opiate receptors and are found mainly in the brain. Endorphins reduce the sensation of pain and affect emotions." In other words, they make you feel good.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 28, 2006

Los Van Van

MICHAEL PRONKO
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Jul 26, 2006

Galleyworm

* Japanese name: Baba-yasude * Scientific name: Parafontaria species * Description: Galleyworms are not worms but millipedes: elongated, cylindrical arthropods, with two pairs of legs on each body segment. Millipede means "1,000 legs" but these species have around 20 body segments, so therefore about...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 25, 2006

Soaking in the urban onsen scene

Taking a nice, long, hot bath has for eras been an ideal way to unwind, whether it is a soak crammed in the tub at home after a hard day's work, a trip to the local sento (public bath) for a leisurely scrub-down or a weekend getaway to the countryside in pursuit of hot springs and the healing powers...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 23, 2006

Faces of terrorism

The Richman's Cafe seemed an unlikely place to meet a terrorist, but at least it was well lit and public.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 23, 2006

The many hazards -- especially for kids -- of living the high life

Some news stories make you laugh and some make you cringe. If you live in an apartment you may have done both while reading the July 13 story in this newspaper about an employee of Schindler Elevator K.K. getting trapped in a Schindler lift in the same Tokyo residential building where a teenager was...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 23, 2006

Democracy falters as underworld forces flourish

Kyrgyzstan is referred to as a faltering state, meaning that it is not quite failing.
JAPAN
Jul 21, 2006

Online paper OhmyNews set to recruit writers

OhmyNews International, a joint venture preparing to publish a Japanese edition of the South Korean online newspaper OhmyNews, said Thursday it will start recruiting people as registered writers.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 21, 2006

Celtic epic set in Ryukyu

In an outdoor treat to rival summer's traditional fireworks displays, Satoshi Miyagi's renowned Ku Na'uka contemporary theater company is this week staging its version of the Celtic chivalry epic,"Tristan and Isolde" in the grounds of the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno from July 24-30.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 21, 2006

Refuge through film

Starting one month after World Refugee Day (June 20), the U.N. Refugee Agency presents for the first time in Japan the Refugee Film Festival running through July 27.
SOCCER
Jul 20, 2006

Japan gets bye for qualifiers

Japan has received a bye into the second round of qualifiers for the soccer tournament of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which features three qualifiers from Asia in addition to host China, Japanese soccer officials said Wednesday. According to the qualifying schedule set by the Asian Football Confederation,...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 16, 2006

Up close . . . and virtually personal

When the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan characters fell in love via the virtual world of Web chat in the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail," it seemed a classic case of something that could only happen in the movies, not in the real world.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 16, 2006

Dental 'charm school' puts bite on competition

The Omori Group is a booming dentistry franchise company that doubled its sales to 1.07 billion yen last year and now aims to double them again to 2 billion yen this year.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2006

Horie's next feat: trans-Pacific trip via wave power

Adventurer Kenichi Horie said Thursday he will embark on a two-month voyage in March 2008 from Hawaii to the Kii Channel in southwestern Japan in what would be the first attempt in the world to sail a boat propelled by waves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 13, 2006

Antiestablishment for all

Founded in 1970 by director Sho Ryuzanji, the Engekidan company was a natural bridge between two major theatrical movements in postwar Japan: the 1960s underground scene of dramatists such as Shuji Terayama and Juro Kara and the so-called "small-scale theater movement" started in the 1980s by the likes...
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Jul 12, 2006

Jewelwing damselfly

Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 9, 2006

Japan fashions a menswear coup d'etat

For a week in July, Paris becomes an outpost of Tokyo as Japanese designers and buyers throng the catwalks, parties and cafes where business is done at the biannual men's clothing collections
LIFE
Jul 9, 2006

Fashionistas relish rumor over top job

Paris last week was rife with gossip over whether the menswear world's leading light, Hedi Slimane, was about to exit hyper-cool brand Dior Homme when his contract expires at the end of the month.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Jul 7, 2006

Reach for the sky

Sumida Ward spans an area that has endured ruinous fires, floods, plagues, and seismic as well as economic jostlings. Residents of this battered part of the city nonetheless have always kept their pride buoyant and their spirits aloft. Even when the chips are down, residents of Sumida Ward insist that...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 7, 2006

Film fest explores digital format

The 3rd Skip City International D-Cinema Festival takes place in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, from July 15-23, and aims not only to unearth the next generation of filmmakers working in the digital format, but also to serve as a forum for discussion on the latest trends in digital cinema.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 7, 2006

Foreign carmakers cash in as the rich get richer

One Sunday in June, a man in his 30s visited the spacious BMW showroom in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jul 6, 2006

An animist explores old themes

Over the last few years, the traditional art form of nihonga has emerged as a player on the Japanese contemporary art scene. I can only guess why this is -- something connected to nostalgia or nationalism perhaps? Or could it be that growing social and economic uncertainty has led Japanese to regard...
JAPAN
Jul 2, 2006

Lawson opens test stores tailored to elderly shoppers

Convenience store operator Lawson Inc. has opened outlets tailored for the elderly in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, and in Awaji, Hyogo Prefecture, the first attempt of its kind among major convenience store operators.
LIFE
Jul 2, 2006

Showdown at Budokan

The rightwing reactionaries were arriving in their menacing black-and-white trucks, blasting military music. The politicians were shaking their fists and telling people to go to a garbage dump. The police had locked down all entrances to the Imperial Palace grounds. Riot police lined the road leading...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 2, 2006

Journeys across turbulent waters

MAD ABOUT THE MEKONG: Exploration and Empire in South-East Asia, by John Keay. HarperPerennial, 2006, 294 pp., £8.99 (paper). The long-lasting conflict in Vietnam made the name of the Mekong familiar to people in other countries, but to those who live along its banks and tributaries it is known simply...
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2006

Halted reactor in Shizuoka yields broken turbine blades

Fifty turbine blades have been found cracked or broken in a Chubu Electric Power Co. nuclear reactor in Shizuoka Prefecture, the Nagoya-based company said Friday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 1, 2006

Mike Price

Tokyo International Singers, conducted by Marcel L'Esperance, will present its 104th concert on July 9 at Suntory Small Hall, Akasaka, Tokyo. This "Summer Serenade 2006" features Latin-American music. Guest artists on the program will be the Mike Price Jazz Ensemble.

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