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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 9, 2011

Video-sharing website sparks Net revolution

When you get down to it, the Nico Nico Douga website is just a combination of videos and text comments about them.
BUSINESS
Jun 8, 2011

Sony probes two new attacks

Sony Corp., targeted since April by hacker attacks that have compromised more than 100 million customer accounts, is investigating two new possible intrusions.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 5, 2011

Amon Miyamoto: Globe-trotting dramatist seeks new horizons

Fifty-three years ago, Amon Miyamoto was born into a world in which he grew up listening to spirited exchanges between leading lights from the stage and showbiz in his father's coffee shop across from the modern-leaning Shinbashi Enbujo outpost of the venerable Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo's smart Ginza...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jun 1, 2011

Sony's horrible year is not over yet

This was supposed to be Sony's year. PlayStation 3 sales were on the uptick and, back in January, the Tokyo-based electronics giant introduced its upcoming game handheld, currently codenamed Next Generation Portable or NGP. Then disaster struck, not once but several times. For Sony, 2011 is really starting...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 21, 2011

Five teams battle to avoid relegation

It is billed as Survival Sunday and as the most exciting season many fans can remember reaches a climax Wigan, Blackpool, Birmingham, Wolves and Blackburn will be fighting for their Premier League lives and a television contract next season worth a minimum of £40 million.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2011

Japan's film industry faces quake fallout

The Japanese entertainment industry is reacting to the massive disaster caused by the March 11 earthquake much the way it reacts to any major national tragedy — by observing jishuku (self-restraint).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 11, 2011

Jett, Currie return to Runaways era

Back in the late 1970s, they changed everything. And then they disappeared.
BUSINESS
Mar 11, 2011

Sony revamp to place Hirai in crucial role

Sony Corp. said Thursday it will reorganize its main electronics businesses and promote the star of its gaming operations to lead a new consumer products division.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Feb 20, 2011

Aspiring animator comes to Japan to chase her dreams

It's fun to walk down the street or get aboard a train with Tracey Seals and watch how Japanese people react. Once they notice the blue-eyed, bespectacled 21-year-old redhead from Mississippi in their midst, some break out in smiles. And others do double-takes, as if they've just seen an anime character...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 19, 2011

Home of pachinko opens arms to China

A Chinese signboard for a pachinko parlor in Nagoya reads: "Pachinko is a popular form of Japanese entertainment that originated in Nagoya. Only ¥100 will get you 100 balls to enjoy pachinko with."
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 13, 2011

Etsuko Komiya's leisurely walk; Kanpei Hazama's grueling journey; CM of the week: Daihatsu

Announcer Etsuko Komiya occupies a hallowed place in the annals of Japanese broadcasting. In 1985, she became the female sidekick to anchorman Hiroshi Kume when TV Asahi's groundbreaking nightly news program "News Station" premiered. She was considered as important to the show's popularity as the colorful...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jan 29, 2011

Nagoya 'Tokyo Girls Collection' set to target cash-flush women

Young Japanese males may no longer be interested in buying new cars, brand-name clothes or other expensive items, but their female counterparts appear less reluctant to part with their money, and retailers are tuned in.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 28, 2011

Greed is good again in 'Wall Street' sequel

BEVERLY HILLS, California — After having announced a week earlier that he had beaten cancer, Michael Douglas took the stage at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 16 and was greeted with a warm round of applause.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 26, 2011

Sony starts up fee-based music

Sony Corp. and the world's major record labels are starting their own music streaming service in the U.S. this quarter to challenge Apple Inc.'s iTunes, after years of letting startups license their artists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2011

Universal meanings of a poet's personal grief

Apart from glitzy musicals and kabuki, most theatrical stagings in Japan finish their run after a couple of weeks or even a few days. With no long-run system as the norm, unlike Broadway or the West End, by the time a buzz has got around that something is good, it will almost always have closed or be...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2010

Piyasvasti battles Thai Airways' beasts

Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 28, 2010

Kabuki going strong, 400 years on

The media frenzy over kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo's drunken midnight brawl in Tokyo last month may be a testament to how, 400 years after its birth, the genre remains a highly popular form of entertainment integral to Japanese culture.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 12, 2010

Kabuki's golden boy knocked off his pedestal — for now

TBS's Dec. 4 edition of "Newscaster" aired a long report on the run-in that kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo had with a man at a Tokyo bar in the wee hours of Nov. 25, a dustup that resulted in Ebizo's hospitalization with a fractured cheekbone and broken teeth. Elaborating on the principle of "it takes one...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Nov 12, 2010

'Llove'

Daikanyama i Studio
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 29, 2010

Anyone for tennis?

If you've ever had a tennis lesson, your coach likely told you to block, rather than swing at your volleys. That knowledge makes it all the more thrilling to watch someone like the athletic 16-year-old Sanae Ota rush in from the back of the court, leap up to a high, floating ball — before it bounces...
COMMENTARY
Aug 18, 2010

Sometimes TV dramas can be good for you

TIRANA, Albania — A friend of mine, a prestigious physician who works the longest hours of anybody I know, makes only one exception from her demanding schedule in New York. Once a week, she returns home early to watch a new episode of her favorite television drama. I cannot think of a more unlikely...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 16, 2010

Audio Tokyo

The foreign-run Eggworm has pulled off a real coup in Tokyo by organizing the first all-day/all-night dance-music festival in the capital.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 14, 2010

Summer: the season of 'fire flowers'

Summer is fireworks season. For centuries, Japanese have been fascinated by this spectacle of lights called "hanabi," which literally means "fire flowers."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 4, 2010

Manga's Cinderella story

"I want to tell you a real love story," whispers a pen-wielding Misako, a graphic-novel version of comic artist Misako Takashima, on the first page of the 2007 book, "Rock and Roll Love."

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell