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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Mar 20, 2003

Walking on waters that were

Tsukiji, now famous as home to the world's biggest fish market, was reclaimed from the sea in the 17th century. Its transformation from seabed to seashore came after the magnificent first city of Edo, designed by Shogun Ieyasu in 1603 and completed around 1650, was destroyed by a fire in 1657. Then,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Mar 19, 2003

Kenny Brown: "Stingray"

Some blues come smooth-planed and varnished. Other blues leave splinters. Kenny Brown's "Stingray" is the latter. Accompanied only by bass and drums, Brown eschews all slickness and gets to the core of hardworking blues.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 23, 2003

Taisho treasure

Tokyo is in the throes of a particularly bold face-lift. In the cause of urban regeneration, massive high-rises are shooting up in Shinagawa, Shinbashi, Roppongi and Shinjuku, transforming the skyline of metropolitan Tokyo. On the ground, wrecking trucks clear more land, demolishing old homes and felling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Feb 16, 2003

Lowdown on rising stars

They sing low and they're aiming high.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Feb 9, 2003

Female vocalists singing a new tune

In the past, female jazz singers in Japan were often just pretty faces up front. They had to sing, of course, but their main role was often to provide a contrast to the usually all-male band.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 9, 2003

Role models for a changing nation

One welcome exception to the gloomy news in Japan last year was the unexpected awarding of a Nobel Prize in chemistry to an apparently ordinary company worker. Koichi Tanaka's steadfastness, lack of personal ambition and open, nice-guy persona were a refreshing throwback to a less cynical age, and his...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2003

Shinsei experience: lattes in the lobby, free ATM transactions

A typical Japanese bank looks a bit like the dowdy, paper-shuffling office of a shoddily run company. There are plenty of bowing clerks. But don't count on conveniences like 24-hour ATMs.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 24, 2003

Shilingol: From the Mongol steppes to Sugamo

A chill gale of change is gusting through the sumo world, all the way from Central Asia. The demise of the Takanohana era does not, of course, mean we will stop eating chanko nabe. However, in honor of the incipient arrival of the Asashoryu dynasty, we felt impelled to set off in search of Shilingol,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 17, 2003

Izayoi: Fine fowl deeds in Azabu-Juban

The idea of upmarket yakitori -- presenting premium-quality charcoal-broiled chicken in suave settings, often with fine wine and other foreign influences -- is taken for granted in Tokyo these days. But nowhere else in the city is this venerable concept -- the skewering and grilling of fowl -- translated...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 15, 2003

Talent-laden 'festival' to bring back a pinch of that old magic

Once upon a time, rock shows were long, drawn-out affairs, with two or three opening acts who could be counted on to play as if they were headliners. Magic Rock Out, an event that will be held in Kobe and Tokyo in early February, is too limited in scope to be called a "festival" (only one stage), and...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 4, 2003

How to turn your house into a mosh pit

Already broken your New Year's resolution? Let me guess. You have yet to start dieting, and saving money is impossible during this season of "o-toshidama" and company parties to start the new year.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Dec 26, 2002

Arcade gem returns to glory

This is the time for bringing games back from retirement. Sega came out with new a new "Shinobi." Konami has a new "Contra." And Tecmo has brought back two great blasts from the past: "Ninja Gaiden" and "Rygar."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 15, 2002

Chushingura Chushingura

Snow has been the backdrop to some of Tokyo's most colorful and epoch-making events.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 15, 2002

On the trail of a killer in ancient Kyoto

RASHOMON GATE, by I.J. Parker. St. Martin's Minotaur: New York, 2002, 336 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Scholars who pen historical mystery fiction must tread a fine line between being faithful to the materials they research and creating stories and characters that will appeal to contemporary readers. It's by...
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Dec 15, 2002

What's Uwajima so bullish about?

Long before you step into the firszt gift shop peddling the usual range of touristic fripperies, you are in no doubt about how serious Uwajima is on the subject of bulls. In fact, the first thing you see as you get out of the station is a great bronze statue of a bull, standing implacably before the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 8, 2002

Expat writers shoot from the lip

FACES IN THE CROWDS: A Tokyo International Anthology, edited by Hillel Wright. Printed Matter Press: Tokyo, 2002, 254 pp., 2 yen,500/$25 (cloth) "Faces in the Crowds" is a hyperkinetic grab bag that brings work by a cross section of Tokyo's expat writers, and Japanese writers working in English, together...
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Dec 5, 2002

Carping over muddy ponds

Me and Mr. Matsuki, we're developers. There -- I've said it. We actually alter habitat. We haven't got around to making golf courses yet, but about 10 years ago, when I bought another section of land to add to what is now the Nagano prefectural Afan Woodland Trust, there was a large section of it that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 4, 2002

The world out there

It is a few minutes before rehearsal.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 13, 2002

Dishonor avenged, love avowed

This month, following the lead of the Kabukiza, the National Theater in Tokyo also presents "Kanadehon Chushingura (The 47 Loyal Retainers)" to mark the upcoming 300th anniversary of the famous act of revenge carried out by the 47 ronin (masterless samurai) on the night of Dec. 14, 1702 (on the old calendar)....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Nov 10, 2002

Balladeer does it in his own good time

If there are no second acts in American lives, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, for some musicians at least, there's a second take. After famed recording sessions in the late 1950s that made him popular, Jimmy Scott's unique vocal style was not heard again on a new recording for some 30 years. Then, in the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Nov 3, 2002

Writer draws on own experiences to overcome adversity

Up to his ears in debt and with absolutely no money, Ichiriki Yamamoto made a bold prediction to his wife.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Oct 30, 2002

Patricia Barber: "Verse"

Patricia Barber's singing, piano playing and songwriting have an intimacy that is veiled in intimation. She feels close, but elusive, as if she's constantly singing from the shadows. They are beautiful shadows, though, with an alluring stylishness. Over the course of seven releases, Barber has steadily...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 23, 2002

A musical that rewrites history

"Pacific Overtures" isn't one of Stephen Sondheim's most famous musicals, but the story it tells -- of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's Black Ships in July 1853 and the opening of Japan to the West -- has been updated and given a new twist by a Japanese director and cast.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Sep 21, 2002

Traditional house preserves dream of pioneering writer

Surrounded by trees, the old house sits preserved in tranquility, exuding the beauty of traditional Japan and reviving the taste of the Edo Period two centuries ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 18, 2002

Winner loses all in the games people play

Two eagerly anticipated German-directed productions of Shakespeare arrived in Tokyo last week, each the product of its director's extensive experience and deep deliberation on the play's contemporary relevance, and each given a polished reinterpretation as a result.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2002

Where are they now?

Not all stories end when the curtain drops. For a dynasty fallen from power, as with a celebrity out of the spotlight, life goes on away from the public eye.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2002

Janet Klein: past perfect

Janet Klein's ukulele is no gimmick. Nor are her "obscure, lovely and naughty songs from the '10s, '20s and '30s." Klein and her L.A.-based band, The Parlor Boys, are about as real a deal as it gets. More than just fans of phonographs and sepia tone, Klein and company are musical archaeologists, taking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2002

Beautiful people

Men, does your weedy physique or receding hair line make you feel inadequate? Women, do you worry about wrinkles or whether to brave the pain of a bikini-line Brazilian wax? Ever feel that all of us, every day, are bombarded with images of physical perfection that are impossible to live up to?
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 7, 2002

The lord of the dance

To Tokyo clubbers, the name Pylon conjures images of overly tanned and underdressed young women teetering precariously on high clogs as they dance para-para style -- glow sticks in hand -- atop a bar (or other elevated surface). And at their center will be a handsome young man, shirt slipping off his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Jul 3, 2002

Make way for the gloom

Mr. Hyde is waiting to be interviewed in the chicly decrepit confines of Casa del Japon, a Western-style house in Azabu that was the residence of China's ambassador to Japan before World War II and is now a bar and restaurant.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji