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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 5, 2011

Refusal, disposal, separation . . . exasperation

Japan is fond of buzzwords and perhaps one of the buzziest of the last two years has been the term "danshari."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 4, 2011

'Suteki na Kanashibari (Once In a Blue Moon/A Ghost of a Chance)'

Koki Mitani is Japan's most successful comedy writer and director, with a long string of hit plays, TV dramas and films to his credit, most recently "The Uchoten Hoteru (Suite Dreams)" and "The Magic Hour."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 4, 2011

'Free Wheels East'

If you were a strapping, handsome, able-bodied youth just out of university, what would be your next step? Back in the late 20th century, young men chose professions such as investment banking or financial consultation, and diligently went about getting their MBAs. Remember those days of multiple degrees...
CULTURE / Film
Nov 4, 2011

Tokyo film fest shuns controversy

The 24th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival ended on Sunday, after nine days and 128 films, without any major mishaps or controversies. This was a disappointment to one journalist friend: "A good film festival invites controversy," she told me at the closing party. "TIFF hates it."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 1, 2011

Schizophrenic Constitution leaves foreigners' rights mired in confusion

Pop quiz: Who live in palatial homes in fashionable Tokyo neighborhoods but are subject to various forms of discrimination, have no family registry, can't vote and have limited constitutional rights?
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 30, 2011

PS: 'I love Japan.' And Japan loves Paul Smith, it seems

"Hold on," says the British designer who launched a thousand stripes, reaching awkwardly into the back of the crisp white shirt he is wearing.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Oct 25, 2011

Hiroshima-area family roots inspire Canadian film director

When Linda Ohama, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian, heard the news about the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region on March 11, she says she was "very shocked" and felt a strong urge to do something for the people there — especially the children.
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2011

Save now, pay later

In response to the Oct. 19 article "Our children's future no longer looks so bright," surely, the young people whom the burden should be placed on are those very people who become the elderly. At least, that's how I've been structuring my life for the last 30 years.
JAPAN / Media
Oct 23, 2011

Pele's message of solidarity in Tohoku

In world sports, there are few names more iconic than that of Brazilian soccer legend Pele.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2011

'Heartbreaker'

You can take a French boy out of France, but you can't take France out of the French boy. Usually — but this time, the formula doesn't apply, because nifty French romance "Heartbreaker" has all the trappings à la Française but ends up being a glossily plasticized Hollywood-style product.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Oct 18, 2011

Greenthumb plants 'kolonihave' seed

Jens Jensen makes almost anything he needs for his weekend life from scratch, from a doorknob to a window frame to a small wooden hut.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 16, 2011

Irabu's impact on MLB-NPB relations profound

Hideki Irabu, once considered to be one of the best pitchers in the world, is dead, in what has been adjudged to be a suicide in late July.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 16, 2011

Break on through (to the puppet side)

It is often said that truly gifted teachers make their subject matter come to life. Jesse Glass has taken that concept to a new level by asking his students to take literary characters off the page and dance them about the room.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 16, 2011

Laid-back celebration of the empty and ordinary

PLAINSONG, by Kazushi Hosaka, translated by Paul Warham, Dalkey Archive Press, 2011, 176 pp., $18 (paper) After being dumped by his girlfriend and moving to a new apartment, the anonymous anti-hero of this plaintive novel finds himself drawn to the life of a recluse, shunning drinking friends, and spending...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2011

Jobs leaves questions behind

Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. deserves praise as a remarkable radical thinker and businessman who made path-breaking innovations to transform modern life, from the Mac computer to the smart — both in looks and in performance — iPhone, iPod and iPad. But I would like to raise some deliberately jarring...
EDITORIALS
Oct 10, 2011

Beating noncommunicable disease

Why do most people die? That was the question addressed by a special summit meeting of the United Nations in New York City in mid-September. The final report from the first-time summit identified noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) as the leading cause of death worldwide.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 9, 2011

Nonprofits in Japan help 'shut-ins' get out into the open

Not everyone fits into society. Dropping out, or falling by the wayside, has numerous causes and many manifestations.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 9, 2011

Early days of Ayako Koshino; miracle-worker maid; CM of the week: Japan Tobacco

Last Monday, NHK's latest six-month asa-dora (morning drama series) started. "Carnation" (NHK-G, Mon.-Sat., 8:45 a.m.) is a fictionalized version of the early life of Ayako Koshino, one of Japan's first Western-style fashion designers, who emerged during the Taisho Era (1912-26) and gave birth to three...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 9, 2011

Television's skewed version of poverty

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations currently taking place in New York continue to garner more and more attention from the American media, which mostly ignored the movement when it began several weeks ago. Now everybody in America who reads a newspaper or watches TV news understands that the protesters...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Oct 7, 2011

Pretty in pink at The Peninsula Tokyo

As part of The Peninsula Tokyo's ongoing Enriching Your Life and Community campaign, the hotel is showing its support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month throughout October with Peninsula in Pink — a new Peninsula Hotels groupwide campaign to raise awareness and funds through signature pink-themed promotions....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 7, 2011

Helping Japan with a dance

Take any teenager nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles) from home on their first-ever overseas trip and you are bound to reap wonder. For 16-year-old French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, who came to Tokyo with the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1981, that wonder grew into 30 years of mutual admiration.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Oct 7, 2011

Selfless Shimura relishing basketball's return to Sendai

In the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, Sendai 89ers guard Takehiko Shimura emerged as an encouraging voice and a brave, positive symbol of hope for the Tohoku region. And his tireless efforts involved traditional and contemporary methods.
Reader Mail
Oct 6, 2011

Conforming to a culture of denial

Almost no Japanese today would believe the incident (Shinjuku Riot of Oct. 21, 1968) mentioned at the beginning of Roger Pulvers' Oct. 2 Counterpoint article, "Japan's leaders still don't get it — but whither that 'heretical' 1960s spirit?" This is more evidence of the utopia-denial syndrome that afflicts...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Oct 2, 2011

Working horses make for even happier woodlands

Our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust has recently acquired more parcels of land to add to the 30 hectares we have long and lovingly tended up here outside Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture hills.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 2, 2011

Satoshi Kamata: Rebel spirit writ large

Monday, Sept. 19, was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. But on that sweltering national holiday, it wasn't the heat that that drew tens of thousands of people to Meiji Park in central Tokyo, but their concerns for all the nation's citizens, and others, who may face a threat from nuclear power.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 30, 2011

'Hayabusa'

When Hayabusa, a Japanese satellite sent to collect soil samples from a distant asteroid, returned safely to Earth in June 2010, many Japanese felt an excitement and pride more akin to a World Cup win than an event that, abroad, was a one-day news story to all but space geeks.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 30, 2011

'No Impact Man'

An important factor in "No Impact Man" the book is that the author reveals himself as having Zen Buddhist beliefs. What's missing from "No Impact Man" the documentary is this bit of personal information. Charting a year in the lives of the book's author, Colin Beavan, and his family — who decided to...
Japan Times
CULTURE
Sep 30, 2011

Average Joes become champions on 'Sasuke'

"Pole dancer! Pole dancer!! Pole dancer!!!" From the bellowing announcement thumping through the speakers, you might think we're in a night club. We're not. But, without doubt, the location is just as fabled as many nocturnal haunts, and the atmosphere is just as electric.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Sep 27, 2011

No-nos for Noda: Japan's top 10 most useless PMs

On Sept. 2, Yoshihiko Noda was appointed the 95th prime minister of Japan, the sixth man (and they have all been men) to hold the job in five years. To mark this occasion and offer lessons to the new Democratic Party of Japan chief on how not to lead the country, the Community Page asked 10 writers to...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Sep 27, 2011

Words of wisdom from JFK to Japan's new chief

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic