Search - places

 
 
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2007

Scholars to get OK to survey two Imperial mausoleums

in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, is shown in this aerial photo taken Thursday. KYODO PHOTO
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 21, 2007

A slow drink coming

At Takahata Wine Harvest Festival next month the quality of booze will not be a problem — and neither will your conscience as you nurse a hangover the next day.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 21, 2007

Motor show to ease way for visitors

As automakers struggle with a shrinking domestic market, participants in the 40th Tokyo Motor Show this fall hope to remind people just how much fun it is to get behind the wheel.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 20, 2007

Butoh flowers of life and decay

There is a muscular eloquence to Junichi Kakizaki's constructions. He describes himself as a floral artist — not an ikebana (flower arrangement) master — and has won awards for his interpretation of the traditional Japanese art form. He considers his works to be contemporary art — either installations...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 15, 2007

All the dirt on life's ins and outs

This summer has been hotter and longer than most. But rather than fight it and hide indoors in the air conditioning, I just put on my bikini.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 13, 2007

Twisting history for unpleasant purposes

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, New York — U.S. President George W. Bush is not generally known for his firm grasp of history. But this has not stopped him from using history to justify his policies. In a recent speech to American war veterans in Kansas City, he defended his aim to "stay the course" in Iraq by...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 13, 2007

Memories of fortresses and clouds

Watching on television as the second plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001, Japanese sculptor Masayuki Nagare's thoughts were not with his most famous sculpture, "Cloud Fortress" (1975), which was located at the base of the towers. The then 78-year-old was recalling a time 58 years earlier when, as...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 11, 2007

Volunteering: How to start making a difference this fall

First in a two-part series
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 11, 2007

Toru Otsuka

Toru Otsuka, 67, is the president of Live Coffee, a coffee importer and roaster known for selling the best beans for the least dough. Otsuka is a treasure hunter: he handpicks only the highest quality from small growers around the globe, and considers his best finds the people who work with him. His...
EDITORIALS
Sep 9, 2007

Surviving in Net cafes

Over 5,000 people in Japan spend their nights at 24-hour Internet cafes every night, according to the first, but certainly not the last, survey on so-called Net cafe refugees by the labor and welfare ministry. On one hand, it seems that school refusers were first, then job refusers, now "home refusers,"...
COMMENTARY
Sep 9, 2007

Extreme events fire up the Greek fringe

LONDON — "How are our children going to survive in a land that is dead?" asked a survivor of the wildfires that seared much of southern Greece during the last week of August.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 7, 2007

The king of Kita Kyushu

Shinji Aoyama was in an up mood when The Japan Times met him at the office of his distributor, Style Jam. His new film, "Sad Vacation," opened the Horizons section at the Venice Film Festival last week, and though, when we met, he confessed himself nervous at the prospect of facing a foreign audience,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2007

Clock ticking as Councilor Kawada goes after what has long ailed Japan

Newly elected Upper House lawmaker Ryuhei Kawada was diagnosed with hemophilia soon after he was born.
Reader Mail
Sep 5, 2007

Beware the sponsors of education

Shinichi Terada's implication in his Aug. 17 article, "Rural universities feel pinch of lower enrollments," that the economic troubles of many Japanese universities might be alleviated by applying more market-friendly approaches to their institutional structures and courses of study indicates a frightening...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Sep 4, 2007

"The Devil's Breath," "Mr. Putter — Tabby Spin the Yarn"

"The Devil's Breath," David Gilman, Puffin Books; 2007; 377 pp. Close on the heels of Charlie Higson's highly successful Young Bond series comes another adrenalin-pumping adventure story that reads like a Robert Ludlum thriller tailor-made for teenagers.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 1, 2007

Manga magic from a girl who uses her melon

Worth a reported ¥500 billion every year, Japan's manga industry is a serious business. But not so for Saki Matsuzawa, a budding 12-year-old mangaka (comic book artist) who has created her own adorable interactive storybook, "Meron Pan no Ichi Nichi" (titled in English as "A Day of the Melon Bread"),...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 31, 2007

'Planet Terror'/'Death Proof'

With their double-feature project "Grindhouse," directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez seek to revive a bit of cinematic history, namely the grindhouse: the flea-pit inner-city theaters of the 1970s (think NYC's old Times Square), with dodgy clientele, that inevitably had a double-feature of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 30, 2007

Cities in the dust

The Fascist dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco wasn't everyone's cup of tea — but he did manage the unusual feat of transcending time.
BUSINESS
Aug 30, 2007

Hedge fund numbers, assets mushroom as stocks languish

Hiromichi Tsuyukubo ran the best-performing fund in Japan at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co., an arm of the nation's biggest lender. Then, after six years, he decided to join a hedge fund.
COMMENTARY
Aug 28, 2007

America's dirty little victory

NEW YORK — "Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, aka Jose Padilla, is a good thing," wrote rightwing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post.
COMMENTARY
Aug 27, 2007

Hope for peace in partition?

Why is the world so reluctant to accept partition as the answer to ethnic, religious or political conflicts? The Kosovo conflict may finally be moving in that direction, but only after all sides debased themselves by years of murderous conflict. In Iraq, too, the much-needed separation into three autonomous...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 24, 2007

Love you and you're green

It seems that when Amami-Oshima, an island in southern Kagoshima Prefecture, was created, there was just one color left on the palette: green.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Aug 21, 2007

Pocket tissues

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 21, 2007

'Hanko' fate sealed by test of time

A "hanko" personal seal is a necessary item for most adults in Japan, serving the same role as a signature in the West.

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