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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005

Pupy y Los Que Son Son: "Mi Timba 'Cerra' "

Cesar "Pupy" Pedroso's fiery style of Cuban music blends dance-floor energy and musical intelligence. Taking off from where the popular Los Van Van (with whom Pedroso played keyboards for years) left off, Pedroso has started out on his own, if you can call a man accompanied by a wild 15-piece band as...
SOCCER / World cup
May 28, 2005

Japan blows it again

Japan suffered another setback ahead of its upcoming World Cup qualifiers after going down 1-0 to the United Arab Emirates in the final game of the annual Kirin Cup tournament on Friday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 28, 2005

Learn Japanese through the Conditioned Response Method

After the success of my first published book, "Guidebook to Japan: What the other guidebooks won't tell you," I am now ready to start my second book, "Learning Japanese: What the textbooks won't tell you." Allow me to share with you the Conditioned Response Method (CRM). With this method, you will be...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 25, 2005

Stage plays restore your faith in comedy

"Comedy is an escape, not from the truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith," wrote the English playwright Christopher Fry in Time magazine in 1950. These days the moment you switch on television in Japan, you are likely to be assailed by gales of laughter as young comedians talk frantically,...
BASKETBALL
May 24, 2005

Basketball nomad Bryant's latest stop in Tokyo

Joe Bryant's career as a basketball player and coach has taken him all over the world. Now the father of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant will add Japan to his list of far-flung destinations.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 24, 2005

Here comes the fear

Japan is following other developed countries in drafting antiterrorism laws.
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2005

Don't rely solely on America

NAGOYA -- For more than 400 years, Great Britain played the role of global offshore balancer. Believing that it had neither permanent allies nor permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, Britain avoided entanglement on the Continent. Shifting its weight as required to prevent any potentially hostile...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 22, 2005

Seeds of employment

There, in the heart of the concrete jungle that is Tokyo's Otemachi financial district, in the second-floor basement abyss of a 27-story building, is nothing less than . . . a farm.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 22, 2005

Clifton Karhu's years in print

KARHU @ 77: A Personal Tribute, by Mary and Norman Tolman, bilingual text: English & Japanese. Tokyo: Abe Publishing, Ltd., 2004, 124 pp., 77 full-page color prints, 6,500 yen (cloth). Last November Clifton Karhu, Japan's most famous foreign resident artist, turned 77 years of age, and his dealer, Norman...
COMMENTARY
May 20, 2005

The right leader for Britain

LONDON -- British politics is now in a fluid state. The May 5 general election, which should have settled things, at least for four or five years, has unsettled everything in a very puzzling way.
Rugby
May 19, 2005

Celebrities line up to support Japan's bid to host RWC

The Japan Rugby Football Union rolled out the celebrities on Tuesday in support for its bid to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2005

The 'Lebanonization' of Iraq

The situation in Iraq is looking increasingly like the one that prevailed in Lebanon during its prolonged civil war. Insurgent violence -- which subsided temporarily after the birth of a transitional government in late April -- has again increased in recent days. As fighting has intensified between U.S.-British...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 18, 2005

Roppongi's art gallery boom

Roppongi, which used to be chiefly known as a pick-up party pit for Tokyo's ex-pat population, has recently begun to emerge as a contemporary art center. Spurred by the Mori Art Museum's opening in 2003, the neighborhood now presents the possibility of a short walking tour of new and interesting art...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
May 17, 2005

Valentine living it up in Japan as Marine faithful think pennant

Bobby Valentine isn't interested in talking about when or if he'll make a return to the major leagues. The former New York Mets manager is perfectly happy here in Japan.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2005

Relax, breathe, leave the smokers alone

WASHINGTON -- One of the most persecuted minorities in America, and increasingly in other countries, is smokers. U.S. cities and states have imposed ever more Draconian restrictions on lighting up a cigarette, and a bipartisan coalition of paternalistic legislators on Capitol Hill now is pushing for...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 15, 2005

When law and justice won't mix

JAPAN'S COLONIZATION OF KOREA: Discourse and Power, by Alexis Dudden. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 215 pp. $45 (cloth). Lawful and just are two separate things that may be irreconcilable. A good example that offers plenty of material to fathom this out was the annexation of Korea by Japan....
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
May 15, 2005

No laughing matter

O n the stage, Charlie Chaplin was known as the tramp who made millions laugh without saying a word. But in his heart of hearts, it seems the great comic wanted to be a statesman whose words could change history.
COMMUNITY
May 15, 2005

Spaghetti with chopsticks makes a mess of Mishima image

Many years ago, while teaching Japanese language and literature at the Australian National University in Canberra, I asked students in a seminar to conduct an experiment on campus. That was in the 1970s, when Australia and much of the rest of the world were rediscovering Japan as an economic and cultural...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 15, 2005

The great corporate escape: Blame it on the factotums and avoid responsibility

The news media's breathless coverage of the train derailment in Amagasaki that claimed 107 lives last month operated on several levels. On one level was an investigation into the details of the accident itself. On another was the coverage of victims and their families. And on a third was the gradual...
EDITORIALS
May 14, 2005

A Holocaust memorial

A monument 17 years in the making officially opened Tuesday in the heart of Berlin. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe -- a city block of blank gray concrete slabs or pillars erected near the German Parliament building -- drew predictably mixed responses. Yet, by all accounts, its American architect,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 14, 2005

'Double standard' beef plan may fuel consumer anxiety

Although the Japanese government is poised to exempt cattle 20 months or younger slaughtered in the United States from screening for mad cow disease, local governments here plan to continue checking all slaughtered cattle.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 14, 2005

Japan's wildlife: domesticated and lazy

When I first came to Japan, I thought, "Where are all the animals?" Japan doesn't seem to have the small urban-adapted wildlife like we have in the United States, such as squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks or even very many birds. Other than the City Mouse, animals just don't seem to move to the cities here....
COMMUNITY
May 14, 2005

Extraordinary Ainu strut their stuff in Scotland

Val Aldridge is the researcher of the exhibition "The Extraordinary: A People Called Ainu," which opened at Scotland's Perth Museum and Art Gallery in April and will run through to the end of the year. It is hoped that it will generate some interest in July when the Group of Eight summit takes place...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
May 13, 2005

To cut a long bottle short . . . Champagne gets it, samurai style

There is no sound more synonymous with celebration than the sharp pop of a Champagne cork. Professionals, of course, recommend easing the cork out slowly enough so that only a slight gasp is heard, which one waggish sommelier likened to "the sound of a contented woman."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 13, 2005

A Tokyo hotline to Bangkok

Hyakunincho, Tokyo's most polyglot district, is only a two-minute train ride from the heart of Shinjuku, but it almost feels like leaving the country. In the 1980s, when Southeast Asian food was still a novelty in other parts of town, this was where we came to forage, lured by the exotic perfume of lemongrass,...
COMMENTARY
May 11, 2005

The failures to counteract inhumanity

LONDON -- Sadako Ogata was at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs in April for the release of the book she has written about her experiences as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) between 1991 and 2000.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 11, 2005

Ojos de Brujo fueled by flamenco and much more

Monday is not the best night for going wild and dancing till your legs are about to fall off, but as they say here, "sho ga nai," for that's exactly what you'll have to do on May 30, when Barcelona's Ojos de Brujo hit Shibuya's Duo Music Exchange for their first-ever Japan show.
COMMENTARY
May 8, 2005

Bush just can't get the hang of diplomacy

YANGPYUNG, South Korea -- "It makes sense to put somebody who's skilled and who is not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations." So said U.S. President George W. Bush during his spirited defense of his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. With all due respect, Mr. President,...
COMMUNITY
May 8, 2005

Serial stereotyping only serves others' brazen hubris

Ever since the reopening of Japan to the outside world in the mid-19th century, people from the West have categorized Japanese life in terms of one or another social model. Whatever the category chosen, though, the inference has always been that Japan is "different." How else would you account for something...
SUMO
May 8, 2005

Can anybody beat Asashoryu?

The big question heading into the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament is not if grand champion Asashoryu will win yet another title, but whether the Mongolian grappler will be handed a single loss during the 15-day meet.

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