Search - things-to-do

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 23, 2006

U.S. should heed Suez lesson

LONDON -- If you're an imperial power, your troops often end up in places that most of your citizens cannot even find on the map: Mesopotamia for Roman soldiers, for example, or Afghanistan for the British. It looks foolish, viewed with the long perspective of history, and yet lots of people fall for...
SOCCER / J. League
Oct 22, 2006

Frontale holds Reds

SAITAMA -- Boss Guido Buchwald called for his league-leading Urawa Reds side to snuff out Kawasaki Frontale's title challenge before Saturday's home game, but the third-place team refused to bow down in an entertaining 2-2 draw.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 22, 2006

Top scout Poitevint gives Matsuzaka's game a once over

The sweat on the uniform from his final game had hardly dried and already speculation was running rampant about whom he would be pitching for in the major leagues next season.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 22, 2006

Plea to a TV comic: Take on the big boys and take on politics

To Hikari Ota, c/o Titan Talent Agency.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 21, 2006

Mourinho showing signs of double vision in Cech incident

LONDON -- The problem with Jose Mourinho is that as a manager the Chelsea boss makes a lousy witness.
EDITORIALS
Oct 20, 2006

Afghanistan at the tipping point

The top NATO military commander in Afghanistan, British Gen. David Richards, has warned that Afghanistan is at a crucial juncture. If the lives of ordinary Afghans do not improve soon, there is the very real danger that they will switch their allegiance back to the Taliban. Loss of the support of the...
CULTURE / Music
Oct 20, 2006

GO!GO!7188 "Parade"

Like many of the best things in life -- love, drunkenness, ice cream, fireworks -- GO!GO!7188 are tricky to explain but a joy to experience. Formed in 1998, the band blend rockabilly rhythms, surf guitar and J-pop hooks, and the end result is enough to elicit giddiness, goose bumps and gasps from just...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 19, 2006

Shibuya-kei leaves a warm afterglow

Although the artists once grouped under the Shibuya-kei umbrella -- Cornelius, Kahimi Karie and Fantastic Plastic Machine, to name a few -- have moved away from their old musical styles and want distance from the genre, Shibuya-kei remains a convenient expression to identify that loose assembly of 1990s...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 15, 2006

Things a lot different for 2006 Fighters heading into Japan Series

Congratulations to manager Trey Hillman and everyone connected with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters on winning the franchise's first Pacific League pennant in a quarter century. The organization has come a long way since the last championship 25 years ago and should make a much better showing than last...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 15, 2006

Last rites for the memories as beloved dolls pass away

An opulent pair of Hime daruma prince and princess dolls from Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku has graced the living room of Tamiko Okamoto's home in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, since 1964. A wedding gift from a close friend, the dolls, side by side in a glass case, had been part of the family for all those...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 15, 2006

Intimacy crusader strives to rekindle Japan's fires of marital passion

At first glance, 46-year-old Mayumi Futamatsu looks like a regular housewife. But as someone who's "seen both heaven and hell" in her two marriages, she's a woman with a mission to help all women to be happy -- through having better sex lives.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 14, 2006

McClaren, Venables must regroup after fiasco in Zagreb

LONDON -- To the surprise, it seems, of nobody except the England coaching team the switch from 4-4-2 to 3-5-2 in Croatia was a shambles.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Oct 14, 2006

Baseball scribe breaks down exciting Pa League second stage

SAPPORO -- Here is a look back at the second-stage Pacific League playoffs, in which the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters swept the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in two games, winning the series 3-0 under the PL postseason's new format, which gives the No. 1 seed a one-game advantage before the series begins.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 13, 2006

'New York freaks me out!'

With the development of the Internet, indie musicians could finally make do without the benefit of a large organization behind them. Even so, it wasn't until the Philadelphia/Brooklyn-based quintet Clap Your Hands Say Yeah released their self-titled debut album in the summer of 2005 that the Net's full...
SOCCER / World cup
Oct 12, 2006

Bando bags two on full debut as Japan beats India in Asian Cup qualifier

Ivica Osim might just have found a solution to Japan's goal-scoring problems.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2006

Telling another side of the story

James Bradley wrote the book "Flags of Our Fathers," on which one of Clint Eastwood's new films is based. "Flags" tells the true story of what is arguably the most famous photo in warfare, taken as his father and five other marines raised the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima in 1945.
SOCCER
Oct 11, 2006

England boss McClaren too quick to dump 'captain fantastic' Becks

LONDON (AP) Bring back Beckham!
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 9, 2006

Wounded Hawks lash out at Lions to level series

TOKOROZAWA, Saitama Pref. -- What a response.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2006

Mustering the will to prevent calamity

LONDON -- It's a law of physics that translates well into the behavior of human beings: The greater the mass involved, the more effort is needed to overcome its inertia. But it doesn't read very well as an epitaph for civilization.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 8, 2006

Beware a 'beauty' that would deceive the nation

'Japan lost the war, and Bushido [the samurai spirit] perished. But then the human being was born for the first time in the womb of truth called decadence."
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 7, 2006

Super start: Pitching stars square off in Pacific League series opener

TOKOROZAWA, Saitama Pref. -- The Seibu Lions are right where they want to be.
SOCCER / J. League
Oct 6, 2006

Osim: Give players more time

Three months seems like a decent amount of time for Japan's players to work out the tactics and strategies demanded by Ivica Osim, but Mrs. Osim might beg to differ.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 6, 2006

Old school rappers look to new schools

Since hip-hop emerged in the late 1970s, it's been closely linked with basketball. But just as the United States is no longer the dominant force in international hoops, its dominance in the world of beats and rhymes is also waning.
CULTURE / Music
Oct 6, 2006

Eddie Roberts "Roughneck Live in Paris"

The term "nu-jazz" shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. "Roughneck Live in Paris" might be nu-jazz, but it still has plenty of the old, with its blend of 1990s-style jamming and sleek '60s soul jazz.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 5, 2006

Departing director created a new platform for contemporary art in Tokyo

It would have been difficult to find a more dramatic backdrop for last week's press conference announcing that Mori Art Museum's British-born director David Elliott will be leaving after October, and that his second-in-command, Fumio Nanjo, will take over the helm of Japan's largest privately endowed...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 2, 2006

China losing its battle with corruption

SINGAPORE -- China's rulers rarely wash their dirty linen in public. So the arrest of Politburo member and Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu on corruption charges has sent shock waves across the country. Some speculate that the arrest is really part of a power struggle, with President Hu Jingtao...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 1, 2006

Age-old 'naked friendships' lay bare new bathhouse concerns

I do it about three times a week, but I tell you I would double that frequency if I could. It is surely one of life's great pleasures, and it takes on average (for me) 45 to 50 minutes. Some people smoke afterward, but I just like to cool down and think about things -- you know, life, the human body,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 30, 2006

Look what they've done to my food, Ma

It is a marriage made in hell's kitchen.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 30, 2006

Stayin' alive in health check 'stamprary'

I was recently asked to get a health check by one of my places of employment. On my planet, the United States, one doctor does the health check in 30 minutes. How boring.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?