Who would have thought that something that chases its tail all day for a living could be so incredibly important to the workings of a major metropolis? OK, so Tokyo's humble Yamanote Line, whose pea-green, 11-car trains link 29 stations over a looping route of ...
Endurance riding on the Yamanote Line soon gives you a numb bum. Your thoughts drift, leading to bursts of philosophical insight that disappear faster than the last train out of Shinjuku. Then comes hunger, drowsiness and calls of nature that no one on these ...
We would be the envy of every railway otaku in Japan: JR East had invited us to try out the company's driving simulator outside Tokyo, where real JR drivers hone their skills at the controls of a virtual train. Excited and feeling quietly confident we ...
These days, between blasts of hot air over disputed gas fields and outbursts condemning "revisionist" history books, it's rare to hear praise from China for its geopolitical rival to the east. So it was all the more surprising to learn that China's Ambassador to Japan, ...
It's not every day that you walk into a room to find yourself standing face-to-face with a skinned cadaver. It's the kind of thing that can change your whole day . . . or your whole life. "My, what lidless eyes you have," was one ...
Young Japanese lead the way in a cultural exchange set to erode their homeland's hidebound mentality Long gone are the days when overseas Japanese were mainly camera-toting tourists, company workers posted abroad or salesmen crisscrossing the world in search of the next deal. Today, Japan's expat ...
Try this for fun next time you're in New York City: Walk into any sushi bar, eat your fill and then ask for a fortune cookie. "Would that be a Chinese fortune cookie?" the waiter will likely respond a little loftily. "Sorry, but this is ...
You couldn't miss him if you tried: The guy in the skintight black vest and hotpants is popping up wherever you look in Japan these days, thrusting his pelvis on television, striking his signature "Y" pose on magazine covers and boasting about his beefy ...
This story is part of a package on women in Japan. The introduction is here. 1869: Granting of freedom of domestic passage for women 1872: Prohibition of bobbed hair; Prohibition of all slavery with the exception of legal prostitution 1873: Legalization of divorce suits initiated by wives 1885: ...
This story is part of a package on women in Japan. The introduction is here. Thirty years after the women's rights movement reached Japan, the nation's teenage girls might by now be expected to be besieging bastions of male dominance in their fight for an ...
