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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.
BUSINESS
Dec 9, 2004

Vodafone Japan chief vows to catch up

Vodafone's Japanese unit is aiming to become the country's second-largest mobile phone carrier, the mobile giant's new president said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2004

'Sesame Street' making waves -- in Japanese

Rena Mizushiro sits in a cramped position with other puppeteers as she works her character, Teena, to sing in a scene about Elmo's birthday in "Sesame Street."
Features
Dec 5, 2004

Revealing 'The Japanese Sensibility': Intimacy

To punish men for their sins The smoothest skin The longest black hair All that Is me
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2004

Chanel opens boutique in Ginza to long lines

Chanel launched a boutique Saturday on ritzy Chuo-dori in Tokyo's Ginza district, with 200 people lining up before the doors opened at 11 a.m.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 3, 2004

Nintendo fires first shot in new console war

Nintendo Co. launched its DS portable video game console Thursday, gearing up for a yearend sales battle with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., which plans to release its PlayStation Portable later this month.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2004

Opening of new Haneda terminal heats up air war

With the Wednesday opening of a new terminal at Tokyo's Haneda airport, the nation's two main airlines have launched yet another fierce battle to woo domestic passengers with new services.
COMMENTARY
Dec 2, 2004

Risks to secular government

MANILA -- In the Cold War era, the global confrontation was basically ideological. Two radically different socio-political blueprints were pitted against each other: democracy and capitalism on one side, one-party-rule and communism on the other. The opponents, then, were two superpowers and their allies...
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Dec 2, 2004

The biggest game of the year

I look at "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," a new urban crime role-playing game for the PlayStation 2, about the same way I might view gorgeous graffiti painted on my front door.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 1, 2004

Wanting a piece of the rebel

Aoi Kuruma Rating: * * * * (out of 5) Director: Hiroshi Okuhara Running time: 90 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] Plenty of Japanese directors are making films about the way the young live now, so many that I could probably fill this space...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Dec 1, 2004

Instruments of invention

It has been 91 years since Luigi Russolo published his manifesto "The Art of Noises," in which the Italian Futurist implored, "We must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds."
Japan Times
Features
Nov 28, 2004

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

On a rainy Saturday night in the neon-drenched streets of Shinjuku, Kenji Shimura looks like 1,000 other salarymen: off-the-rack black suit, sensible shoes and a face made for anonymous middle-management in an insurance firm.
Japan Times
Features
Nov 28, 2004

Revealing 'The Japanese Sensibility': Modernity

Who was this man who wrote, "When I die I forbid the erection of anything resembling a monument, and if erected I am vehemently opposed to any words being engraved into it, and if people must engrave words into it I absolutely despise when they gush on and on, because I'd rather that someone just rolled...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 28, 2004

Kaki King: "Feet to Make Us Longer"

Guitar virtuosos often sacrifice melodic beauty for string-bending technique. Many guitar-lovers' CDs sound more like showy practice routines than musical statements. Kaki King's sophomore release, "Feet to Make Us Longer," like her debut, "Everybody Loves You," avoids this pitfall. Her stunning guitar...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 26, 2004

Into Nagoya and onto Inuyama

As a destination, Nagoya is not the biggest tourist magnet, yet there is reason enough for dawdling here instead of just whisking through on the Shinkansen.

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