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Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 4, 2013

The latest gyaru-go: The top 10 words for gals on the go

The other day, I overheard two gyaru (ギャル, gals, i.e., fashion-conscious girls) talking, but I had no idea what they were saying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 20, 2013

Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?

Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn't work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that carries with it the curiosity of a detective who...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 25, 2013

Secrets deciphered as ancient Maya script meets the modern Internet

Researchers began decoding the glyphic language of the ancient Maya long ago, but the Internet is helping them finish the job and write the history of the enigmatic Mesoamerican civilization.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 8, 2013

Android 'fragmentation' leaves smartphones vulnerable

In late October, researchers at North Carolina State University alerted Google to a security flaw that could let scam artists send phony text messages to Android phones — a practice called "smishing" that can ensnare consumers in fraud.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 25, 2013

I still haven't found what I'm looking for ...

Thinking about Google over the last week, I have fallen into the typically procrastinatory habit of every so often typing the words "what is" or "what" or "wha" into the Google search box at the top right of my computer screen. Those prompts are all the omnipotent engine needs to inform me of the current...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 6, 2013

Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan

THE ART OF CENSORSHIP IN POSTWAR JAPAN, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 342 pp., $45.00 (hardcover) REDACTED: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University of California Press, 2012, 376 pp., $44.95 (hardcover) Censorship in Japan has long been hot-button...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 15, 2012

Despite flaws, Rakuten is 1-0 against Amazon in Japan's e-book wars

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall — and a head-to-head rival of Amazon Japan that also hopes to expand its business globally — launched its first e-book reader, the Rakuten Kobo Touch, on July 19, getting the jump on the long anticipated Japanese release of Amazon's Kindle.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jul 18, 2012

Japan's LINE social network could challenge global competitors

LINE is a cross-platform communication service and app, offered for free by Naver, from NHN Japan. The basic functionality allows users to send text messages and to make free calls with other users who have the app installed on their smartphones. The service launched just 13 months ago, on June 27, 2011,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
Reader Mail
Apr 12, 2012

Texting piece leaves bad taste

Even though the When East Marries West column for April 7, titled "Texting in the proper context," was short, I felt incredulous after reading it. I would have read it again, but the text-speak writing was atrocious and difficult to read. People don't actually text like that in English; it surely defeats...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 7, 2012

Texting in the proper context

What's wrong with this picture?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 24, 2012

Emmert shares beauty, power of noh dramas with a wider audience

Richard Emmert has endeavored for decades to share the beauty and power of noh with English-speaking audiences and performers through "English noh."
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2011

Three admit to throwing sumo bouts

Sports minister Yoshiaki Takaki told the Diet on Thursday that three people in the sumo world have admitted bout-fixing, further disgracing the Japan Sumo Association and jeopardizing its status as a certified public interest corporation.
EDITORIALS
Jan 3, 2011

Problematic prosecution report

The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office on Dec. 24 made public a report of an internal probe of how the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office's special investigation squad handled the case in which a former welfare ministry bureau chief allegedly fabricated an official document to help an organization...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 11, 2009

Developing countries' differences briefly suspend summit

COPENHAGEN — A document suggesting that developing countries should do more to combat global warming continued to dominate discussions Wednesday at the U.N. climate conference, where talks were briefly suspended after a controversy erupted among developing countries over what level of greenhouse gas...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Nov 23, 2009

Japanese now a little less lost in translation

Yeah, some things still get lost in machine translation, but language barriers did grow a lot smaller in 2009.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 8, 2009

Definitive 'Record of Linji' well worth a wait of 40 years

The Linji-lu is one of the most influential of all Zen texts. Presumably a collection of the lectures and sermons of Linji Yixuan (died 866), founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism, it helped form the Rinzai sect of Zen in Japan.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 30, 2009

Drama outsider takes a step into the theater

Kuro Tanino leaped into the spotlight in November 2007 with a production of Henrik Ibsen's tragicomedy "The Wild Duck" that was almost sold out for a month at Theater 1010 in Tokyo's Kitasenju.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 19, 2008

Putting faces on the subculture crowd

Sitting in a watering hole in Shinjuku's Golden Gai, meeting new people, exchanging name cards, one is likely to come across a tiny square name card with color caricatures on its front and back.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Oct 16, 2007

Self-study sites welcome you to the world of kanji

When I first suggested in this column using Internet resources for learning kanji in 2001, a Yahoo search yielded 12,700 hits for "kanji learning." That number has now reached a staggering 1.4 million. New, sophisticated online kanji self-study resources are increasingly enabling foreign kanji learners...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 26, 2007

New cell phone services tap image-recognition technologies

Normally used for security purposes, face and image recognition technologies are making their way into other, more entertaining, fields. One service, kaocheki, lets people send a digital photo of themselves via cell phone to find out which celebrity they most resemble.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 24, 2006

Monkey business can be serious literature

MONKEY by Wu Cheng-en, translated by Arthur Waley. London: Penguin Books, 2006, 352 pp., £9.99 (paper). After many years out of print, this famous translation, originally published in 1942, is this autumn back in the bookstores. It is a partial rendering of a 16th-century Chinese classic text, otherwise...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Sep 21, 2006

Tokyo Art Beat makes audience artists

After two years as the city's best source for museum and gallery listings, Tokyo Art Beat (TAB, www.tokyoartbeat.com) is now getting involved in the production of exhibitions. In conjunction with Mozilla, creators of the popular Firefox browser, TAB and their associate entity Gadago are organizing a...

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