Search - places

 
 
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Apr 21, 2013

New moves to save Japan's sacred trees from a fiery end

Spend a while walking the streets of any Japanese city and you are bound to notice it: Here and there among the concrete towers, shops and bustling streets, you'll find clusters of trees. In some places, five or 10 stately Japanese cedars provide a patch of welcome shade. In others a full-fledged urban...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Mar 9, 2013

'Kony2012' and the fight for truth in the Internet age

A year ago, Jason Russell was a nobody. Not a nobody, precisely, but just ordinary. Normal. He was a healthy father of two, living in San Diego, and was happy in his work as a director for Invisible Children, a nonprofit organization he'd helped found.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 3, 2013

A visit to Usa, the Japanese city that knows how to win

It is the time of the year when many people get nervous about winning and losing. Students are cramming hard to pass entrance exams to get into the high schools and colleges of their dreams.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 3, 2013

A native son's grim account of hard-luck lives

DETROIT: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. Penguin Press, 2013, 286 pp., $27.95 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2013

Tokyo literary festival writes its opening chapter

Every time David Karashima took a Japanese author to New York or London to do a reading, the local audiences would ask two questions: "Who's the next Haruki Murakami?" and "Why isn't there an international literary festival in Tokyo?"
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 20, 2013

China's Tibet dam proposals raise eyebrows in India

Plans by China to build three dams in Tibet have rung alarm bells in next-door India, where fears are rising that the northern nation's thirst for power and water will one day affect the flow of the mighty Brahmaputra River, a lifeline for tens of millions of people.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 4, 2013

Composting food waste growing trend in America

Roy Derrick maneuvered his forklift with a pallet of neatly boxed expired produce and flowers and dropped it into an industrial compactor at Safeway's cavernous return center in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. As the compactor hummed, compressed food and floral scraps spilled through a chute into a 12-meter...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 1, 2013

Canadian uses sports as bridge to teaching, writing, understanding

Writer, teacher and sports fan Trevor Kew, 32, pedals and kicks his way through culture shock. He uses sports to help him adapt to unfamiliar cultures or new places when traveling, trusting his bike or a soccer ball to bridge the gap with locals.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2013

How the Vietnam war will shape Obama's second term

The men who fought in Vietnam, a war that symbolizes America's overreach and failures abroad, haven't ascended to the presidency in the way that the World War II generation did. But now, under President Barack Obama, Vietnam veterans Chuck Hagel and John Kerry could get a chance to pull America back...
EDITORIALS
Jan 22, 2013

Bloody outcome in Algeria

Algerian special forces on Saturday stormed a natural gas complex in Ain Amenas in the Sahara desert to end the four-day seizure of the facility by Islamic militants who took many workers of various nationalities hostages. Among those taken hostages were employees of JGC Corp., a Yokohama-based major...
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jan 14, 2013

Our menacing infrastructure

"Expressway tunnels as well as other infrastructure throughout Japan are nearing the crisis stage," warns a university professor who is a member of an advisory body for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 7, 2013

Christianity vs. secularism

Pope Benedict XVI had a busy holiday season, as you might expect, since it is a sacred time for Catholics and other Christians. He set himself the difficult-to- impossible task of trying to put Christ back into Christmas.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 30, 2012

Testing out tourism in Tohoku

Some, though not all, of our travels change our lives; they cultivate sensibilities, shape values and alter our outlook on things. One such trip I experienced was a sixth-grade school excursion to Hiroshima when, at the Peace Memorial Museum, I saw photographs of people who had suffered massive burns...
EDITORIALS
Dec 29, 2012

Probation system needs a boost

Volunteer probation officers (VPOs), known as hogo-shi, are playing an important role in helping rehabilitate convicts and minors released from prison or juvenile reformatories on probation, and adults and minors who have been placed on probation without going to prison or reformatories.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 28, 2012

2012: Another year of good Tokyo eating

Before we usher out the Dragon and ring in the Snake, it's time to pause, look back and appreciate all the fine eating that Tokyo has provided this year. Gongs and rankings are meaningless in a city the size of Tokyo: How can anyone visit and compare more than a fraction of even the best restaurants?...
LIFE / Travel / TRAVEL INSIDER
Dec 5, 2012

Share a secret, win Virgin tickets; SAS winter sale; Singapore and Virgin Australia code share

Secret ticket giveaway Virgin Atlantic Airways will give away a pair of round-trip economy-class tickets between Tokyo and London to the person who submits the "best secret spot in the U.K." as a contribution to the company's "Secret U.K. Guide."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Nov 30, 2012

Where Tokyo's top chefs wine and dine

Chef Shinobu Namae rarely eats at the same restaurant twice. Like a lot of chefs, he spends most of his time in his own kitchen, overseeing lunch and dinner service at L'Effervescence, his Michelin-starred French restaurant in Tokyo's Aoyama. When he does venture out, he chooses his destinations carefully....
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 27, 2012

What role will 'walking NGO' Clinton choose next?

On a recent Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walked with her husband onto a stage at the New York Sheraton to cheers and whoops and a standing ovation that only got louder as she tried to quiet things down.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 25, 2012

The Fish Tree

Once upon a time there was a child who, being a child, simply didn't know what to make of himself. "Look," said his mother. "I brought the sun out for you. Go out and play."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 24, 2012

Scholar tries to ease Okinawa's U.S. pains

Three years ago, Robert Eldridge gave up his associate professorship at Osaka University to work on behalf of the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa. He said he thought he could make bigger contributions to U.S.-Japan relations in the prefecture than by teaching about the U.S.-Japan alliance to students at...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 23, 2012

Student jazz event shows importance of culture

Tokyo's Aoyama district will ratchet up its hip quotient this weekend when it hosts the Aoyama Jazz Initiative, a student-run celebration of jazz.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES
Oct 28, 2012

Seeking out what's in store for Kuramae

Back when Tokyo was Edo and Tokugawa shoguns ruled the land (1603-1867), the burgeoning city's most vital staple, rice, was protected in kura (storage houses) along the right bank of the Sumida River. Then, by the simple expedient of adding mae (in front of) to "kura," the area facing the white-washed,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Oct 20, 2012

American artist takes personal approach to traditional painting

Finding places in Tokyo can be complicated. All too often a simple address is not enough. That's why many people here look like treasure hunters roaming the streets armed with a map or its modern equivalent, the smartphone.
Reader Mail
Oct 18, 2012

Syria needs negotiations for peace

I was astonished by the belligerent tone of the Oct. 8 opinion piece by Aryeh Neier, "Ground the killers in Syria with a no-fly zone." The author seems totally unaware that the rebels have killed thousands of citizens, too — usually for some kind of link with the Assad government. Syria is not the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Oct 16, 2012

Well-traveled Brit wins woman with 'cheeky smile'

Dave Greatbanks of England met his future wife, Mimari, in 2000 when he was teaching English at a language school in Niigata that she attended once a week after work.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Oct 16, 2012

Tokyo: What's the most overrated place in Japan?

Sho Hara
JAPAN / IMF-WORLD BANK IN TOKYO
Oct 12, 2012

KKE starts consultations for evacuation planning

One lesson learned from the tragic Great East Japan Earthquake disaster on March 11, 2011, is that hardware alone does not suffice to save the lives of so many people in affected areas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 11, 2012

Magical Mistakes goes all natural on new album, 'Everything Uncertain'

Shiga Prefecture-based musician Erik Luebs, who works under the moniker Magical Mistakes, wanted to record the majority of sounds on his new album, "Everything Uncertain," by himself. Save for a few vocal snippets and 808 bass drums, his newest full-length leans heavily on natural sounds from the world...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Oct 6, 2012

Video journalist's work takes him to centers of the world's conflicts

Takeharu Watai has spent all of his two-decade career in video journalism as an independent. But he is conscious that public distrust of the mass media, particularly over its coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the nation's nuclear energy policy, has grown so strong that, by default, it extends...

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