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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 24, 2008

USJ turnaround artist has all the moves

If asked to name the foreign business executive who has most dramatically turned around a financially troubled Japanese corporation, Glenn Gumpel might top the list.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 23, 2008

Vivienne Sato

Vivienne Sato is a unique cultural concierge in Tokyo, full of the lowdown on both high art and mass culture. Vivi knows what and who's happening in the city 24/365, and if she's present, the party is on till the wee-wee hours. Always dressed to the nines — and often to the nine hundreds — with her...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 23, 2008

Readers get last word on 'gaijin' tag

The Community Page received another large batch of e-mails in response to Debito Arudou's followup Sept. 2 (Sept. 3 in some areas) Just Be Cause column on the use of the word "gaijin." Following is a selection of the responses.
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Sep 23, 2008

'The Prison Runner,' 'The Charlie and Lola Series'

"The Prison Runner," Deborah Ellis, OUP; 2008; 190 pp. A wobbly tooth, a favorite library book that has been lent out to someone else — these are the sorts of problems that children should be growing up with. But life isn't the same everywhere, and in developing countries such as Bolivia, children...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 18, 2008

Digital, rough and maybe deadly

Zaim is dirty. The floor is scuffed, the windows old, the building a strange maze of rooms with low ceilings. Compared to the slick show on a couple blocks away at this year's Yokohama Triennale, the exhibition space that used to be a government office building is beat-up and ready for trouble.
Reader Mail
Sep 18, 2008

Merits of archery-only hunting

I grew up on venison and have hunted deer all my adult life. I am 46. People are now discovering what hunters have known for ages: Eating wild game is healthy. While it may be difficult to promote hunting in Japan because of gun laws and fear of guns, I have never understood why Japan doesn't have an...
SOCCER
Sep 17, 2008

Engels worried about Reds making transition into ACL quarters

Urawa Reds manager Gert Engels is wary of culture shock as his side prepares to defend its Asian Champions League crown against Al Qadsia in Kuwait on Wednesday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 14, 2008

Tokyo's catwalks at last purr with pizazz

"Is Tokyo really the world's fifth fashion capital after Paris, New York, Milan and London?"
COMMENTARY
Sep 12, 2008

The future of mini-states

LONDON — Russian recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is a cynical ploy aimed at annoying Georgians and their supporters in the West. If these two enclaves within Georgia deserve to be independent, why has Russia not granted independence to Chechnya or Dagestan?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 12, 2008

Sonomi

Tell your average Tokyo hipster that there's a subarashi (cool) dance and hip-hop festival taking place in a beach paradise on the far-flung southern coast of Kochi in Shikoku and, before their jaw drops in excitement, you might be met by head-scratching confusion as they try to remember where exactly...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 9, 2008

Tackling the 'Zainichi' experience

Sitting across from best-selling New York author Min Jin Lee in a Tokyo expat cafe, I can't help thinking that the heroine of her debut novel "Free Food For Millionaires" is the one sipping ice tea and talking sex. Like Lee, protagonist Casey Han is unusually tall, refined in speech, and deeply interested...
JAPAN
Sep 8, 2008

'Manga' viewed as vibrant info conduit

KYOTO — In Japan and other parts of Asia, "manga" comic books are not only escapist entertainment but also a powerful and effective medium to educate a broad range of people on important topics like environmental conservation and food safety.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Sep 8, 2008

Japan's electronics giants acquire yen for European assets

While the just completed Beijing Olympics will have meant different things to different people, one thing is certain: A lot of TVs were tuned into the games. And now that the intense viewing of judo, swimming and softball is over, it is quite possible a number of Japanese TV owners are wishing they could...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 7, 2008

Japan is both a model and warning for today's rising world powers

The United States of America considers itself the world's democratic social prototype. At least most Americans seem to buy into that national self-image.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 6, 2008

Land of the Great Pumpkin

The last time I went to Naoshima was in June of 2001, when it was just an island with a museum, a hotel and some tents. It was called Bunkamura (culture village). The museum was Mr. Fukutake's own private art collection of mostly modern art. In 2004 came Claude, Walter and James (Monet, De Maria, and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / LETTERS FROM KOBE
Sep 5, 2008

Letter trove details Occupation life

More than 1,000 pages of handwritten letters from 1947 to 1948 by an American woman who witnessed and described in detail the Allied Occupation of Japan have been discovered in Nebraska and recently obtained by The Japan Times.
CULTURE / Music
Sep 5, 2008

Yukari Fresh — "grrrl, summer cape kid, etc." (Escalator); Aira Mitsuki — "COPY" (D-Topia)

Emerging from the dark days of the 1990s' "lost generation," the Shibuya-kei movement in Japanese music was a breath of fresh air, bringing together with impeccable style a variety of musical genres encompassing jazz, retro-futurist lounge pop, 1960s French pop and dance music. Its commercial heyday...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 5, 2008

Exhibit offers glimpse of postwar Japan life

An exhibition of photos from Japan's postwar era taken by two young men from Holland is being held in Tokyo until Sept. 30.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2008

German opera director Konwitschny stages 'Eugene Onegin' in Tokyo

With Tokyo Nikikai Opera Theatre, German director Peter Konwitschny will stage "Eugene Onegin" in Tokyo from Sept. 12 to 15.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 3, 2008

Brothers take on 101-task mission

Most people would welcome a couple of weeks of vacation and many may even have further daydreamed of taking a whole year off, possibly to backpack around the world or do volunteer work.
Japan Times
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 31, 2008

Beijing Games chock full of memorable moments

Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will focus on Japan's 2008 Olympic experience.
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

The language of discrimination

Regarding the Aug. 26 article "Japan defends steps to end discrimination": A country that makes it hard for foreigners to obtain permanent residence speaks its own language of discrimination, don't you think?
CULTURE / Books
Aug 31, 2008

Spain to China: Letters of a lasting friendship

AUSTIN COATES: Souvenirs and Letters, by Ramon Rodamilans. London: Athena Press, 2007, 140 pp, £5.99 (paper) The Spanish author of this memoir recognizes early on just how much his subject, the British writer and historian Austin Coates (1922-97), like Coates' Vietnamese companion, "came from south-east...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 29, 2008

More far-flung festival fun at Sado Island's Earth Celebration

Niigata grannies munching on bento lunch boxes, tattooed Tokyo roughnecks pounding beers, an ex-military man in from London with two Shanghaiese kung-fu sisters: taiko (Japanese drum) troupe Kodo's annual Earth Celebration on Sado Island this past weekend drew an eclectic crowd.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan