Search - special

 
 
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 11, 2010

For Japan's own good, it's high time to get into that holiday thing

It may surprise you, but one of the trickiest words to translate from Japanese into English is isogashii. Every dictionary will tell you that its closest equivalent is "busy," and you'd be hard pressed to find a native Japanese speaker who disagreed with this.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 11, 2010

Comedy on difficult Japanese; a doctor who dances; CM of the week: Kappa Sushi

The new drama series, "Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo" (Japanese Language Japanese People Don't Know; NTV, Thurs., 11:58 p.m.), is based on a popular comic inspired by a real Japanese language teacher.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 10, 2010

An odor by any other name

Draw a big breath and admit it. Japan smells.
JAPAN / DECISION 2010
Jul 9, 2010

Playing both sides of the fence

NAGANO — Last summer's historic victory by the Democratic Party of Japan in the Lower House election shook the national political structure to the core, including voting patterns.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 9, 2010

Music workshops to teach amateurs about instruments

A fun workshop for 100 music lovers will take place at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, in the Expo Park in Suita City, Osaka, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on July 11.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2010

'Surely Someday'

The seishun eiga (youth movie) is an important, long-established genre in Japanese films with no exact parallel in the West. The difference is not the theme as such — films about teenagers are hardly rare in Hollywood — but rather their numbers and angle of approach. The Japanese industry produces...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 9, 2010

Komura Settai finds a new modern audience

It is often difficult to fathom how an artist so popular in his own time slides into oblivion in subsequent generations. 2010 has been a good year for one such artist, Komura Settai (1887-1940), who in his time was a prolific creator, producing illustrations, woodblock prints and stage designs. His recent...
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 8, 2010

Toilet humor to celebrate 30th anniversary of Toto's washlet

Let us give thanks, praise and verse to celebrate Toto's glorious washlet.
JAPAN / DECISION 2010
Jul 8, 2010

Miyazaki race hinges on beef crisis

MIYAZAKI — When So Watanabe, a 32-year-old former Mainichi Shimbun reporter, indicated late last year he would represent the Democratic Party of Japan and take on Liberal Democratic Party incumbent Shinpei Matsushita, 43, for the Miyazaki Prefecture seat in Sunday's Upper House election, the issues...
EDITORIALS
Jul 7, 2010

Getting serious on debt reduction

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's call for supra-partisan discussions on a consumption tax raise and the government's long-term fiscal management plan announced shortly before the G20 summit show that the Kan administration has become serious about reducing the national debt. As a deflationary trend continues,...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 5, 2010

Debtors left in the dark after new law goes into effect

Poorly publicized restrictions on personal loans could end up blindsiding a huge number of cash-strapped households.
EDITORIALS
Jul 4, 2010

Quiet change in Japan

Anyone reading about the failure in letting married women use their maiden names in their family registers, or watching the latest to-do over whaling, could be forgiven for concluding that nothing ever changes in Japan. Quiet currents of change, however, are running under the surface.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jul 4, 2010

Timely hits carry Tigers

When you're hot, you're hot. Pretty much sums up Craig Brazell's week.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 4, 2010

Only connect: Japan struggles to bond

When the novelist Chiyo Uno died in 1996 at age 98, she was as extravagantly eulogized for her love life as for her literary work. Four marriages, four divorces, several high-profile love affairs, one attempted love suicide — now that was living! Society disapproved? That should have been her biggest...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 4, 2010

A meeting of minds

In 1958, just before my 18th birthday, I went along on an Inuit hunt for seals in the Canadian Arctic. That was the first time I tasted that rich, dark red — almost black — meat, and it was like nothing else I had eaten before. I loved it.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 4, 2010

Japanese betray some blinkered views of their foreign coworkers

On June 6, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper ran a feature on Japanese people's attitudes to non-Japanese colleagues at their places of work. The article included the results of a survey that explored those attitudes.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 3, 2010

Witnessing over a century of history

When alone, Hedwig Koh's eyes gaze perpetually into the past. Even as a child, she looked off into the distance: "I spent most of my childhood upstairs at the attic window, looking out at the view, imagining far away places."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2010

'Let the Right One In'

With the cinematic love story on the endangered species list (SATC has a lot to answer for), it's truly gratifying when something as romantic, lovely and sweetly satisfying as "Let the Right One In" appears on the horizon. It restores your faith in men. In dating. In the whole myth that someone special...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Jul 2, 2010

Take a gala culinary trip in Roppongi

The Grand Hyatt Tokyo will hold a Gourmet Journey gala dinner, bidding farewell to Executive Chef Josef Budde and celebrating his time at the hotel since its opening seven years ago.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 2, 2010

Matsuyoshi: Old-style eel with a neighborhood feel

Throughout Tokyo and the rest of the country, eel restaurants are gearing up for the annual "Unagi Day" feeding frenzy. The exact dates are determined according to the old almanac on the midsummer Day (or Days) of the Ox, which this year falls on July 26. And the longest lines will be outside some of...
EDITORIALS
Jun 30, 2010

Shadow over sumo world grows

The Japan Sumo Association has accepted recommendations made by a third-party special oversight panel investigating some JSA members' illegal gambling on professional baseball games. Acting on the recommendations, JSA is expected to expel ozeki Kotomitsuki and stablemaster Otake and to take strong disciplinary...

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan