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Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
Aug 28, 2014

Learn about photography

We live in a digital age that has made photography evermore accessible to everyone. The knowledge and skills that once made it a specialist industry are now, to a certain extent, replaced by automated digital means — it only takes the click of a button. Some say digital will never replace analog, but...
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 28, 2014

Glaxo's Ebola vaccine may begin safety tests in humans next week

U.S. scientists will begin enrolling patients as soon as next week in clinical safety trials of GlaxoSmithKline PLC's experimental Ebola vaccine as the death toll from the disease rises in West Africa.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Aug 27, 2014

Tipping points: Japan, North America and the limits of performance pay

Many in Japan believe that performance pay equals the American way, full stop. But the U.S. custom of tipping even for mediocre service suggests things are not so clear-cut.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 27, 2014

Tokyo Ballet turns 50 with a glorious Gala of thanks

Ahead of The Tokyo Ballet's official 50th anniversary on Aug. 30, its website is already garlanded with tributes from international dancers and choreographers such as Sweden's Mats Ek and Britain's Akram Khan — and even from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 27, 2014

SGT's oldies take dance in stride

In 2006, when the world-renowned director Yukio Ninagawa announced open auditions for Saitama Gold Theatre — a project he launched with the slogan, "If you are over 55, let's create theater together and go on a foreign tour" — there were cynics eager to brand the applicants as dreamy wannabe Cinderellas...
EDITORIALS
Aug 25, 2014

The municipal survival cluster

Japanese ministries are floating the idea of creating regional clusters of financially strapped municipalities to support each other so that they can keep delivering a full range of services to residents and businesses.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 23, 2014

Cheap train to the north with Basho

On July 19, the Yamagata Shinkansen debuted a luxury ashiya (foot bath) service. A ticket from Tokyo to Yamagata City, in Tohoku Prefecture, costs around ¥11,000, but 15 minutes in the foot bath car is extra. If Matsuo Basho, Japan's most well-known poet, were to retrace his 156-day-long trek through...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 23, 2014

The well-off families who are feeling unwell

We're not living right. It's obvious, though whose fault it is may not be, and what to do about it is certainly not.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 22, 2014

Put Japan's casinos where they're most needed

Japan would do better to steer gargantuan casino projects to regions that really need them — like economically depressed Okinawa or Tohoku, the northeast region that still hasn't recovered from the March 2011 earthquake.
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 22, 2014

Researchers reverse autism symptoms in mice by paring extra synapses

Although many things have gone wrong in the autistic brain, scientists have recently been focusing on one of the most glaring: a surplus of connections, or synapses.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 22, 2014

National Guard to withdraw from riot-torn Ferguson as tensions ease

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the withdrawal on Thursday of National Guard troops from riot-torn Ferguson, where tensions have eased after sometimes violent protests were staged nightly since police killed an unarmed black teenager.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2014

'The Enchanted World of Jacques Demy'

French filmmaker Jacques Demy's New Wave interpretation of the musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) is perhaps his most famous film, but he made numerous other unusual musicals, including "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967) and "Lady Oscar" (1979), which was co-produced in Japan and France and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2014

'Playing with Sound: Yuri Suzuki'

All of designer-artist Yuri Suzuki's works involve an element of play and focus on our relationship with sound, noises, music and electronics. As his first major solo exhibition in Japan, "Playing with Sound" is an interactive show that offers visitors unusual aural experiences and introduces them to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2014

'Bologna Illustrators Exhibition'

Since 1978, the Otani Museum has held annual exhibitions of prize-winning books from the Bologna Book Fair's illustration competition. This year there were 75 competition winners from 23 different countries, including 15 artists from Japan. This exhibition showcases winning books and features as its...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 21, 2014

Liberian police shoot to disperse Ebola quarantine protest; virus deaths reach 1,350

Police in the Liberian capital Monrovia fired live rounds and teargas on Wednesday to disperse a stone-throwing crowd trying to break an Ebola quarantine imposed on their neighborhood, as the death toll from the epidemic in West Africa hit 1,350.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

In the ethnographic realm of the senses: An interview with Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

You may think you know what a documentary film is — "Life as it is," as Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov once put it — but you probably haven't seen any documentaries like the ones being produced by the filmmakers at Harvard University's experimental Sensory Ethnography Lab.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

No leader of the pack, but still a heartthrob

What is it with women and bad boys on motorcycles — including college boys with pretensions to being bad? A conundrum of my youth. Yes, I understood the appeal of a Marlon Brando or James Dean with a big thrumming machine between his legs, but why did the women I knew prefer riding on a Honda with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

Zulu (Cape Town)

Any movie with Orlando Bloom in it is getting an extra star this month because he recently did what so many of us have longed to do: He took a swing at Justin Bieber. Hell, I'd give him five stars if he had landed that punch, but the Beaver was saved by his entourage before "manning up" and taking the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

Leviathan

One reviewer jokingly suggested that the alternative title of "Leviathan" could be "David Lynch, Gone Fishin', " and there's some truth to that: While the film is a documentary of a New Bedford fishing trawler working the North Atlantic, the disorienting, woozy aesthetic and soundtrack of industrial...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Aug 20, 2014

A high price to pay for a little peace of mind

Sometimes it's hard to believe the American that emerged, naked and naive, from Narita International Airport back in 2004 and the person writing this column are one and the same. Life in Japan has made me, unmade me and remade me. I've unpacked and sorted through all sorts of koto (generally, things...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 20, 2014

Dreaming of shoveling snow in high summer

Yeah, I know. The thermometer is shooting for the moon and the humidity makes each stride forward seem more like a breaststroke.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 19, 2014

As Gaza war subsides, a battle over how it is investigated begins

Even before starting work as chairman of a U.N. human rights commission investigating the Gaza war, Canadian law professor William Schabas has been vilified as an apologist for Iran who is incapable of setting aside his perceived anti-Israel bias.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Aug 17, 2014

Could the lingua franca approach to learning break Japan's English curse?

Learning English as a lingua franca (ELF) involves approaching the language as a tongue shared by non-native speakers around the world rather than as a lingo that must be mastered to native-speaker level.
JAPAN / View from Osaka
Aug 16, 2014

Kepco: the monstrous 500-pound gorilla of Kansai

Last month, Chimori Naito, a 91-year-old former vice president at Kansai Electric Power Co., admitted what was hardly a secret but which put the utility under intense media scrutiny.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Aug 16, 2014

Gomez earning his stripes with Tigers

Mauro Gomez probably couldn't believe his luck when he saw the pitch Chris Seddon threw him.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2014

The bill for Putin's policy will be high

Virtually every retaliatory move against the West proposed by Vladimir Putin as a result of the Ukraine crisis has backfired on Russia and left it in a far weaker financial position.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2014

'Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces'

Japan first began producing porcelain during the early 17th century in Hizen Province, now the city of Arita in Saga Prefecture. Techniques from Korea were used with aesthetics influenced by Chinese Jingdezhen porcelain, a popular style at that time. Since many of the products were created for export...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear