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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 20, 2007

It is in the places in between that cultures truly merge

THE PLACES IN BETWEEN by Rory Stewart. New York: Harcourt Books. 300 pp., with 26 photos and numerous drawings, 2006, $14.00 (paper) In 2002 Rory Stewart, author and former British diplomat, walked across Afghanistan. The country had been at war for 25 years, its government in place for just two weeks,...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
May 13, 2007

Celebrity gravel show, restaurant eating-out game show and the lasts days of a dying director

Kiyotaka Nanbara, half of the comedy duo Utchan- Nanchan, is this week's guest on the travel show "Tsurube no Kazoku ni Kampai (Tsurube Toasts Families)" (NHK-G, Mon., 8 p.m.). In this second installment of a special two-part visit to Toshijima, an island off the coast of Mie Prefecture, rakugo storyteller...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 11, 2007

Peace is found in a historic town

Not since my Adidas-donning days in my hometown Croydon (famous as the breeding ground of chavs) in southeast London, have I ridden trams around town, and even then it was only to pick up a Chinese take-away and buy the odd large hoop earring. So, when I visited Nagasaki with a couple of friends, touring...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 10, 2007

Looking at the garish and the free

Let's face it, there really is nothing like the face. Lovers dream of faces, poets stretch and struggle to juggle the words so that they might capture and communicate a countenance. Even businesspeople, the ultimate pragmatists, will travel across towns or oceans — when a telephone or e-mail could...
EDITORIALS
Apr 23, 2007

Progress in abduction probes

The National Police Agency, investigating the 1973 disappearances of a mother and her two children, has concluded that the two children were abducted by North Korean agents. The NPA will obtain a warrant for the arrest of a woman suspected of having masterminded the abduction and put her on an international...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2007

'2:37'

A moment of stillness -- that's what "2:37" chooses for its opening shot, the camera pointed skyward, a canopy of green leaves framed against the gray sky beyond. It doesn't last long. Soon the camera moves earthward, and we enter an Australian high school where the calm is soon shattered when a student...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 15, 2007

A great naturalist, and a pretty good shot

BORNEO, CELEBES, ARU, by Alfred Russel Wallace. London: Penguin Books, 2007, 112 pp., with maps, £4.99 (paper) The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) traveled widely in what was then called the East Indies and which we now know as Malaysia and Indonesia. Between 1854 and 1862 he wandered...
BASEBALL / MLB'S EFFECT ON JAPAN
Apr 11, 2007

Is the MLB destroying Japan's national pastime?

Best-selling author Robert Whiting, who has penned such classics as "You Gotta Have Wa," "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" and "The Meaning of Ichiro," has written an exclusive four-part series for The Japan Times on the effect Major League Baseball is having on the Japanese pro game, and how the poor...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2007

Ruing the death of Russian womanhood

SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- Valentina Tereshkova, the first female Soviet cosmonaut -- indeed, the first woman to go into space -- recently celebrated her 70th birthday. In an interview, she stated her only wish: to fly to Mars, even with a one-way ticket. It was an implicit wish for a spectacular form of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 7, 2007

Pamela Bodle

The Yokohama International Women's Club is holding its 52nd Azalea Tea from 10:30 a.m. on April 19 at the Hotel New Grand Yokohama.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2007

Saudi Arabia hosts a theater of reform

PRAGUE -- Having raised expectations for real political reform in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has announced that the time for change has not yet arrived. After reshuffling the Cabinet, everything remains the same.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 6, 2007

Multicultural psychosis

Eugene Hutz is a difficult man to pin down. He is rarely in the same country, let alone the same city, for more than a few weeks at a time, touring with his band Gogol Bordello across time-zones and cultures on four different continents for most of the year.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2007

Urban Kyoto tries on an old look

KYOTO -- First-time visitors to the ancient capital of Kyoto usually arrive expecting to see quiet temples and rock gardens or an abundance of old wooden buildings set against the backdrop of the surrounding mountains.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 30, 2007

Up, up and away

For the length of the Occupation of Japan, from defeat in 1945 to the return of sovereignty in 1952, the skies belonged to the Allies.
EDITORIALS
Mar 27, 2007

U.N. steps up pressure on Iran

The United Nations Security Council agreed last weekend to sanction Iran for refusing to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The unanimous vote is designed to encourage Tehran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and eliminate suspicions about its nuclear intentions. The...
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2007

A Japanese sense of humor?

Japanese and Germans are thought by some "Anglo-Saxons" to have many similar qualities, including a lack of a sense of humor and a tendency to take themselves too seriously. I don't think the former is fair; the latter is closer to the mark.
SOCCER
Mar 24, 2007

Naka gets behind coach Osim

Shunsuke Nakamura has sprung to the defense of Ivica Osim and his selection methods ahead of Japan's first national team game of the year against Peru on Saturday evening.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Mar 21, 2007

Viewing nature in the best possible way

Ibegan writing natural history notes back in 1968; the immature handwriting in my first dogeared notebook is a reminder that then I was just a lad of 13. I was growing up in semi-rural Worcestershire in central England, and that was the year when, asked by my parents what I would like for my birthday,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 20, 2007

Tragedy swirls around Tamiflu

On Feb. 4, 2004, on a cold, snowy day in Gero, Gifu Prefecture, Haruhiko Nokiba's 17-year-old son fell sick. The fevered teen visited a local doctor, tested negative for a flu virus but was prescribed an antiviral drug called Symmetrel. He took a capsule that evening and another the following morning,...
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2007

Horie handed 2 1/2 years

The Tokyo District Court sentenced Livedoor Co. founder Takafumi Horie to 2 1/2 years in prison Friday for falsifying financial statements and violating the Securities and Exchange Law in a harsh ruling sure to raise questions about double standards in the justice system.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 13, 2007

Japan is obliged to accept refugees, so why so few?

In 1981, Japan signed the U.N. 1951 Conventions Relating to the Status of Refugees and in 1982, it inked the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and enacted the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law. Signatories are obliged to give refugees due recognition and protect their basic...

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