Every four years just before the Olympic Games begin, the Japanese broadcast, online and print media announce with the confidence bordering on arrogance just how many gold medals the nation's athletes are "expected" to win. The figure is always given as the "minimum expected." Rarely ...
Japanese and foreign nationals share their favorite embarrassing missteps on the long journey to second-language fluency.
If, on Jan. 10, the first day of the 2016 Hatsu Basho, the 11,000 sell-out crowd at the Ryogoku Kokugikan had been asked who they thought would be standing atop the dohyo two weeks later to collect the Emperor’s Cup, few, if any, would ...
People in the Taiwanese capital speak their minds about whether the island should consider declaring full independence from China in the event of a victory by the Beijing-wary opposition in upcoming elections.
Japanese and Chinese students at Musashino Gakuin University in Saitama Prefecture speak about what they hope to do in the big wide world.
When former ozeki Tochiazuma was presented with the Emperor's Cup on Jan. 22, 2006, few in the sport could have predicted that Tochiazuma's third and final championship victory would be the last to be awarded to a Japan-born rikishi for the next decade. And Sumo ...
How do people out and about in Tokyo feel about living out their twilight years on this archipelago?
On Sunday, when yokozuna Harumafuji was presented with the Emperor's Cup for the seventh time, the world of sumo was still reeling from the news that Sumo Association Chairman Kitanoumi had died 48 hours earlier from complications related to rectal cancer aged only 62. As ...
If for nothing else, the upcoming Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament in Fukuoka's Kokusai Center may well be remembered as the tourney in which Mongolian yokozuna Kakuryu was finally able to call himself the "best of the best" — at least for one basho. Having taken ...
With the media reporting breathlessly that Japan is lurching to the right under the Shinzo Abe government, have people out and about in Tokyo sensed a rightward tilt?
