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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 7, 2004

Korean love story heats up Japan

As a milestone in Japan's ongoing love affair with Korean entertainment, which has been deepening over the past few years, "The Hotel Venus" is a big one.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 27, 2004

On splitting the cultural fairway

Out on the hometown golf links with an old high school chum, I soon ended up in trouble -- for our initial drives found me in ankle deep rough and him sitting pretty on a small rise in the center of the fairway. Before plunging into the weeds, I complimented my friend on his position, and he returned...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 25, 2004

Discovering the bright side of the 'dark continent'

When I was young, Africa and its people were represented to me through two distinct sets of images. The first, delivered by National Geographic and other anthropological sources, were the cliched photographs of tribesmen gripping spears in their hands and bare-breasted woman balancing baskets on their...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 7, 2004

Kazuko Asakura

"Bar pianists are like public bathhouses, or shoeshine boys in the street. There are no jobs any more. Situations have changed, and it is shocking how much has disappeared," said Kazuko Asakura.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language
Jan 29, 2004

Japan is learning to love (and loving to learn) Chinese

Every day, it seems, more and more Japanese want to communicate -- in Chinese. One million Japanese, says Web magazine ChinaGate, are learning Mandarin and other Chinese dialects. At Japanese universities and schools, Mandarin has overtaken French and German to become the most popular language after...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 25, 2004

Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui talk on TBS and more

Earlier this month, South Korea implemented the fourth phase of allowing Japanese popular culture into the country. In 1945, Korea imposed a ban on Japanese cultural products, but from the mid-'90s the country began to relax restrictions. Now, only Japanese animated films and Japanese TV variety shows...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 4, 2004

Informed feelings elicit the essence of Japan

There are many good books on Japan (as well as a number of bad ones), so how do you decide which ones are best? The decision is subjective but, objectively, I think that the best are informed with a certain peculiarity, and it is in this that I would find their pre-eminence. "There is but one way of...
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2003

Tokugawa symposium promotes idyllic view of life under shogunate

People should use the opportunity of the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Tokugawa Shogunate to consider the culture and social stability of the Edo Period, participants of a symposium in Tokyo said Friday.
COMMENTARY
Oct 20, 2003

Danger welcomes Americans abroad

JAKARTA -- "It's dangerous here for Americans," said my cab driver when I visited a few weeks ago. No question. A few blocks away sat the J.W. Marriott, its facade broken and blackened from the bombing in August. Scores of windows were blown out; mutilated blinds swayed in the wind. Wrecked autos sat...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Oct 18, 2003

Your fortune through name translation

Look at any list of foreign names written in "katakana" and you'll see that people's true names -- their identities -- are hidden behind unrecognizable clods of katakana. The name "Tim," for example, becomes "chee-moo." But by looking at the possible combined meanings of katakana spellings in Japanese...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2003

Teaching people how to manage change

WASHINGTON -- Ours is a world in transition. The current global debate centers on the state of knowledge that led to the Iraq war. Neglected is the much more important discussion of the knowledge needed to bringing peace and prosperity to the world. The education sector can play a major role in teaching...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 4, 2003

Little Myanmar in big Tokyo

The ongoing ethnic food boom in Tokyo has somehow bypassed some of the most interesting, savory and satisfying food in all of Southeast Asia -- the cuisine of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma before the accession of the current military government in 1989).
Events
Jun 29, 2003

KANSAI: Who & What

Guide offers illuminated tour of top Nara spots: English-speaking guide Harry Horii is offering an illuminated night tour of Nara every day from July 1 through Oct. 31.
COMMUNITY
Jun 29, 2003

Going it alone 'to lift the gloom'

Reiko Togo has been very dissatisfied with Japan's magazine industry for a very long time. "Magazines have become just vehicles for advertisements, and there are none I want to read," she says.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 22, 2003

Mapping out Japan

MAPPING EARLY MODERN JAPAN: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), by Marcia Yonemoto. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 234 pp., 86 illustrations, $49.95, (cloth). It was at the beginning of the 17th century that Japanese scholars first began to articulate the notion...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2003

Ainu teen's legacy reprinted to fete her 1903 birth

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Yukie Chiri, an Ainu who was instrumental in putting her people's oral history on paper, a new edition of her famous story collection has been published.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2003

Ainu teen's legacy reprinted to fete her 1903 birth

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Yukie Chiri, an Ainu who was instrumental in putting her people's oral history on paper, a new edition of her famous story collection has been published.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2003

Ainu teen's legacy reprinted to fete her 1903 birth

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Yukie Chiri, an Ainu who was instrumental in putting her people's oral history on paper, a new edition of her famous story collection has been published.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 22, 2003

Corporate values ignore the bottom line

With all the scandals swirling around U.S. corporations, public respect for CEOs has plunged and, as a lawyer, I can empathize. Stories about sleazy lawyers chasing after ambulances still bring color to my cheeks, so I understand what it's like to work in a profession that is equated with sharks and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2003

Who copped my hip-hop?

On a visit to Tokyo's trendy Shibuya Ward several years ago, I came across a Japanese teenager dressed from head to toe in baggy hip-hop wear, one of the first "B-Boys" I'd ever seen here. Still relatively new to Japan, I was curious about whether this young man represented some growing awareness of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 29, 2003

What's going on in our community, asks IMHPJ

Next weekend, IMHPJ (International Mental Health Professionals Japan) will stage its 7th Annual General Meeting and seminar in central Tokyo with the theme "What's Going on in Our Community?" On the Saturday, there will be two panel discussions: one on bullying, the other on attention deficit hyperactivity...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 23, 2003

Art on the fast track

OK, so manga are hugely popular -- but so are 500 yen umbrellas on a rainy day. Like those cheap plastic parapluies, though, manga seem little more than a temporary feature of daily commuting. Those young furiita and salarymen who thumb through the pages with barely a pause can't be getting much from...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Feb 24, 2003

Speak Japanese? You've got yourself a job

What kind of work will I find after leaving Japan? This is a question nearly all language teachers in Japan ask themselves at some point. And it's a question that's being asked more frequently, given the present state of the economy and its dwindling job prospects. There are, however, remarkable opportunities...
JAPAN / KANSAI BEAT
Feb 1, 2003

New course track takes aim at language barrier

KYOTO -- The term "internationalization" has come into everyday use in the last decade, but Japanese people still face language barriers when it comes to implementing the concept behind the word.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 7, 2003

Maker of stylus-free record player has got his groove back

SAITAMA -- His friends backed him up 15 years ago when he left his lofty position at one of the world's largest electronics makers and ended up at a small audio manufacturer. But when he decided to pursue a piece of analog equipment seemingly destined to die in an increasingly digital world, they wrote...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Dec 30, 2002

An Ainu 'homecoming' for journeying Navajo

When Marcus Mose, a Native American from the Navajo Nation and an assistant language teacher in Gonohe, Aomori Prefecture, visited the popular Ainu musician Kano Oki in Hokkaido this November, it was like a journey home.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Dec 11, 2002

In search of the real artist-potter Ogata Kenzan

"Sensational art finds are both desired and feared: desired because they become a form of pleasure and capital; feared because they displace something or somebody. Japan has had its share of such moments."

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear