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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 14, 2005

Kobe: picturesque city by the sea

As last month's terrible tsunami off Sumatra and the subsequent tidal waves showed only too well, the shiftings of the earth's crust can lead to horrific natural calamities. Sitting atop one of the world's geological hot spots, Japan is of course no stranger to these phenomena. And the ever-present threat...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Jan 13, 2005

Japanese white-eye

* Japanese name: Mejiro * Scientific name: Zosterops japonicus * Description: The white-eye is a small, delicate bird, with an olive-green upper body, wings and head, and a gray to pale-brown belly. The distinguishing feature is the bright-white eye ring made of feathers (the Japanese name means...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 11, 2005

Gaijin in cyberspace

It's a pretty lively gathering. A group of eikaiwa teachers are noisily denouncing their employers, while nearby a pair of leery Charisma Men are swapping tales of sexual conquests, and next to them some language students are loudly debating the Yasukuni Shrine.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 5, 2005

Momix: taking it to the top

Moses Pendleton remembers well his first taste of live performance. He was an elementary school kid when his father -- a dairy farmer in northern Vermont -- hired his young son to show off his prized Holstein cows at the county fair. "My job was to walk the animals around and make them look good in order...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 30, 2004

What is behind 'shocking' Hokkaido bid for World Heritage Site status?

Recently I was lucky enough to visit no fewer than six World Heritage Sites (WHS) in northern India. An astonishing cultural, ethnic and biological diversity is well represented in India's array of national parks (NP) and WHS, and, my goodness, they have a huge wow factor.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 28, 2004

BMW unit gets female touch from on high

Before Fumiko Hayashi applied for a sales job at a car dealership 27 years ago, she hadn't planned on entering the automobile industry. Today, she is president of BMW Tokyo Corp.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 26, 2004

Mapping out a metropolis

TOKYO CITY ATLAS: A Bilingual Guide, supervised by Atsushi Umeda. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2004, 124 pp., 2,205 yen (paper). Here is the third revised, updated edition of the handiest of all Tokyo atlas guides. Since the 2001 edition came out, there has been, as always, an amount of change in this...
COMMUNITY
Dec 26, 2004

Revealing 'The Japanese Sensibility': Humanism

What could be said for the human being after Nanking, Dresden, Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Whatever the motivation, this is what we did to each other, and continue to do to this very hour. How can a writer write about goodness when people of all nations, autocratic or democratic, take up murder...
Japan Times
Features
Dec 26, 2004

The voice

The first time he met her she told him everything, but he wasn't listening to the words.
Japan Times
Features
Dec 26, 2004

Men or monkeys in 2004?

A year is a novel that writes itself. The plot may be incoherent and the main characters disappointing, but the overall effect never fails to be riveting.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 24, 2004

Minato Mirai: Loading bay to pleasure haven

Originally home to a huge shipbuilding dock, Yokohama's Minato Mirai 21 area is today a great attraction for day and nighttime visitors alike. The "21" of Minato Mirai's name stands for the 21st century, but plans to redevelop the coastal area were underway by 1965, just as Japan's economy started soaring...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Dec 23, 2004

Rock ptarmigan

* Japanese name: Raicho * Scientific name: Lagopus mutus * Description: Ptarmigan are medium-size, plump birds about 35 cm long with a 54-60 cm wingspan. They weigh around 500 grams. Since the birds depend on camouflage for defense, their plumage changes with the season. In summer, the top half is...
MORE SPORTS
Dec 23, 2004

Tsurumaki golden in Greco-Roman

Tsukasa Tsurumaki won the Greco-Roman 74-kg class with a victory over defending champion Taichi Suga in the final to claim his first title at the national championships on Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2004

The lady takes to King Lear

Utopia may be a little while coming in the real world, but -- earthquakes and broken bullet-train lines notwithstanding -- Ryutopia is not too hard to find if you are in Niigata, where it is the name given to the city's magnificent Performing Arts Center. Opened in 1998, the vast oval-shaped glass building...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Dec 19, 2004

PM's barber keeps 'Beethoven' top of the locks

Tadashi Muragi is a 46-year-old Tokyo hairdresser with a 22-year career of scissor wielding already behind him. Clad in a clean white barber suit at his classically styled, five-seat shop, Muragi may look little different from others of his professional ilk -- though the fact that he is tonsorially responsible...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Dec 19, 2004

Mannequin sculptor stars crafting heavenly bodies

Next time you spot a short, bespectacled old man closely examining a woman's curves as she climbs the station stairs, don't jump to conclusions. Instead of a would-be groper or pervert, that man could be Makoto Kakeda -- one of Japan's most respected mannequin sculptors.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Dec 19, 2004

Hot and bothered -- but just about Jeb

There is a scene in the screwball British movie "Carry On . . . Follow that Camel" in which Jim Dale and Pete Butterworth are buried up to their necks in the desert after they upset the local sheikh. As they are slowly being cooked by the sun, a turbaned extra suggests that their eyeballs might make...
BUSINESS
Dec 17, 2004

Toshiba gives tallest building fastest lift

Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corp. said Thursday it has installed the world's fastest passenger elevator in the world's tallest building, located in Taipei.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 15, 2004

Larger than life

Director and animator Sylvain Chomet had a different childhood (in Maison-Laffitte, in France) from the little boy in "Les Triplettes de Belleville," but the two had some things in common.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 14, 2004

Rice genome is decoded; now expect new varieties to crop up

An international team of scientists has completed the sequencing of the rice genome, an accomplishment that should lead to the development of new varieties of rice to meet different needs, including resistance to disease.
Features
Dec 12, 2004

'Trophy' reflects on what might have been but for bed freeze-out

Seated elegantly at a table in a Tokyo cafe, 37-year-old Kazumi Nakazawa is recalling the brief period seven years ago when it wasn't obvious her marriage was doomed.
Features
Dec 12, 2004

Sex-starved wives get men on prescription

Champions of conventional concepts of matrimony may well be shocked -- dismayed, even -- by the current slew of stories in Japanese magazines detailing just how likely the nation's married women are to have sex outside their marriages.
Features
Dec 12, 2004

'Clueless' husband rues lost love

Masatoshi Hoshino, a 56-year-old distribution company manager in Tokyo, had an arranged marriage 16 years ago to a woman he met just six months before.
Features
Dec 12, 2004

'Betrayal' in bed began after happy family was complete

As he was growing up, Shinsuke Horiuchi assumed marriage and physical affection went hand-in-hand. Then wedlock showed him how wrong he was.
Features
Dec 12, 2004

Cold comfort feeling warmth

Hiroko Kataoka is a cosmopolitan 35-year-old who has lived abroad and was working at a prestigious investment bank in Tokyo when she met Masaki, 36, at a corporate party.
JAPAN
Dec 11, 2004

Film depicts Japan's gender equality strife

A documentary film about an American woman's struggle to achieve gender equality in postwar Japan, sponsored and made by Japanese women, is set to be released next April.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 11, 2004

Pink Cow princess with two feet firmly on ground

In the early 1990s, artist-sculptor Traci Consoli left her native California to see a bit of the world. "I made a life in Tokyo, married to a Japanese guitar player, but found I was still not happy. Something was missing."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Dec 9, 2004

Long-tailed tit

* Japanese name: Enaga * Scientific name: Aegithalos caudatus * Description:The long-tailed tit is a small, fluffy, pinkish bird; it would be the Bridget Jones of the bird world if only it were better fed. The flanks and shoulders are pink-brown; the eyes red; the wings black; and the tail, which is...
BASEBALL / MLB
Dec 9, 2004

Sasaki's deal with BayStars is the richest ever in NPB

Yokohama BayStars closer Kazuhiro Sasaki confirmed the terms of his final contract year with the Yokohama BayStars on Wednesday and revealed that he earned 650 million yen in the 2004 season, making him the highest-paid Japanese ballplayer in history.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami