Features - Tue 7 Oct 2008
What do you miss about Japan when you go abroad?
Yuki KannoEngineer, 23I miss Japanese alcohol, especially Asahi and Ebisu beer. Foreign beer doesn't taste like Japanese brands. I really don't like the flavor. It's very different. Rikako YagiTOEFL student, 19People eat too much junk food overseas. It's hard to get healthy food. Japanese food is delicious and good for you. It's difficult to find nice sushi, rice and tofu abroad.Views: 10
Great show of Chinese art in Japan, finally
You can safely assume the Beijing Olympic Committee had nothing to do with "Avant-garde China: 20 years of Chinese Contemporary Art," an earnest attempt to present a bite-size overview of contemporary Chinese art. Due to the nature of China's tightly managed "re-opening," most recent Chinese art has been personal statements about an ongoing process of social change that is complex and often traumatic. The curators of "Avant-garde China," showing at the National Art Center till Oct. 20, uses contemporary art's typical lack of decorum to recalibrate our image of China's recent past. The exhibition features 50-odd works by over a dozen artists and groups, presented as a 20-year overview that starts in the late 1980s. These are divided into sections, with brief explanations of the historical context of each period, punctuated with historical reference materials, such as artists' notes, manifestos and ephemera from the early years of Chinese contemporary art.Views: 12
A short trip to 'paradise'
Yokohama's close proximity to Tokyo - less than half an hour by express train on the various JR, Tokyu or Keihin Kyuko lines - makes it exceptionally easy to get to, and I'm always looking for an excuse to visit this friendly and cosmopolitan town. One spot in Yokohama I'd shot past countless times on my way to and from other places, but never taken the trouble to visit, is Hakkeijima, an island in the city's Kanazawa Ward.Views: 24
A little Cali in salaryman central
Wine quite literally takes center stage at Wine Kurasu (Wine Crow) in Shinbashi. Tables are spotlighted dramatically so that rich ruby colors spill out from your wine glass onto the white surface, while the customers sit back under softer lighting and get to the business of contemplating the subtle play of flavors at work. The hushed and almost reverent hum of conversation contributes to a nearly religious atmosphere. Specializing in Californian wines, the range available here is staggering: the bar has 1,200 different kinds for customers to sample, and all wines are kept at an optimum temperature in a custom-built wine cellar that adjoins the bar.Views: 20
'Nurk', 'A Beginning, A Muddle, and An End'
What makes "Nurk" such a readable little tale? There's nothing tingly and new about an adventure story in which the hero is a reluctant adventurer. A quiet homebody finds himself thrown into a situation where he must display his inner courage (if he has any) - we've all heard that one before.Views: 19
Girl Talk "Feed the Animals"
Unveiled digitally this summer using a Radiohead-style "pay-what-you-like" model, the CD release of mashup artist Gregg Gillis' fourth Girl Talk full-length, "Feed the Animals," has been issued just in time to be rightfully included on critics' end-of-year lists. Following a similar path to 2006's lauded "Night Ripper," Gillis has patched together another scorching set of way-too-fun club bangers. Whereas many mashups consist of two different tracks welded together as one, Girl Talk works upward of 20 samples into each track to make a highly danceable album. Gillis is an unabashed lover of all things pop, and more than 300 short snippets of well-known modern singles and golden oldies play out over 14 accessible, genre-hopping songs. "Hands in the Air" makes Tag Team's '90s sports anthem "Whoomp! (There it is)" much hipper by dropping it over tunes from Big Country and Kraftwerk before Gillis spins listeners in an entirely new direction with help from the likes of Hot Chip, Lou Reed and Justin Timberlake.Views: 22
Westin Tokyo celebrates new look
The Westin Hotel Tokyo in Ebisu Garden Place has completed renovations of its 22nd floor restaurants: Victor's, Compass Rose and Yebisu. At Victor's, chef Nicolas Chevrollier, who hails from the city of Bordeaux in southwest France, titillates diners with his creative French menus incorporating Japanese ingredients, many of which rarely appear outside of Japanese cuisine.Views: 14
"British Anthems"
The semiannual rock show "British Anthems" is a bargain: For the price of a major headliner you get to see four or five up-and-coming U.K. bands. Given the fickle nature of the British rock press, which declares some new band the greatest thing since The Smiths at least once a month, there's no reason to assume that any of these hopefuls are going to make it, but Maximo Park and Los Campesinos! were openers at past BA shows, and they're fairly successful, so who knows? You may see the greatest thing since The Smiths. Volume 6's headliner is that warhorse of the late Madchester scene, The Charlatans. Fairweather fans have found the band less compelling since the 1996 death of Rob Collins and the attendant loss of his monstrous Hammond organ, but the band still impress with that big psychedelic sound of theirs.Views: 8
El Colegio del Cuerpo to show their moves
The Colombian contemporary dance group El Colegio del Cuerpo will show off its prizewinning style in the troupe's first-ever Japan performances on Oct. 29 and 30 in Tokyo. The group, whose name means "school of body" in Spanish, is based in Cartagena, a city on the Caribbean coast known for its tourism but also for the economic and social disparity among its residents. El Colegio's trip to Japan is being supported by the Colombian Embassy to commemorate 100 years of friendly relations with Japan.Views: 27
Spicy food, sexy idols and now . . . fashion
SEOUL - I n the late 1990s, the Korean Wave - "Hallyu" as it's referred to in its native tongue - began as South Korea's television, film and music industries gained greater international followings, especially among its Asian neighbors. The increased popularity of the country's entertainment not only boosted tourism in Seoul, it generated interest in the city's burgeoning fashion industry too. Fans came to seek out the same styles of clothing that the casts of their favorite TV programs wore.Views: 19
Shinyuri Film Festival moves into new Kawasaki Art Center
Most Japan Times readers will know the frustration of hearing from friends overseas about some wonderful new film, and then waiting - ultimately in vain - for it to turn up in Japanese cinemas or video stores. Well, here is a chance to catch up on some of the films whose waves overseas barely make ripples here. The Shinyuri Film Festival, now in its 14th year, is shifting up a gear this time, moving its operations to the brand-new Kawasaki City-funded Kawasaki Art Center, a facility for film and performing arts.Views: 12
Black humor sets Hollywood alight
Jack Black is an unlikely movie star. He isn't classically handsome, nor is he slim. In the 2006 hit comedy "Nacho Libre," in his wrestler's tight-fitting outfit - and despite a capacious cape - his torso resembled a sausage stuffed into a too-small casing. Born in 1969, the actor-producer- composer-musician allows that with not too much effort he could shed enough weight to "look more normal, like the guys you see all over the place in California."Views: 19
Potts' luck: the rise of a superstar
It's a cliche to say "don't take things for granted" or "you never know what's going to happen in life." But it sounds more convincing from the mouths of certain people. Among those may be a former cell-phone salesman who climbed to stardom at an unimaginable speed and became a multimillion-selling singer.Views: 10
New Japanese makes inroads into Chinese vocabulary
In my last column, on Aug. 5, I discussed how Japanese people still find it practical to use kanji (Sino-Japanese ideographs) when adopting new foreign terms and modern concepts. Writing in the "Meikai, y?kai (????, A need for clear understanding)" column in the Sankei Shimbun (Aug. 20), Masaji Oshida explored the topic of how many new kanji terms coined in Japan have also taken root in China.Views: 11
Narcissism on the march for beauty
If there is any doubt that New York-based artist Terence Koh has perfected the art of winsome provocateurship, it was put to rest upon reaching the terrace of his Shibuya penthouse hotel room, where a plastic, spermatoza-shaped chalice, filled with milky white liquid, lay innocuously on the artist's deck table. Metal wiring threaded through the white, smiley-face cap of the chalice connected the object to a string of pearl beads. Koh barely gave it a second glance as he busied himself with preparations to leave for Yokohama, where he is included in the Yokohama Triennale 2008, "Time Crevasse." In only five years since his debut exhibition in Los Angeles with his exclusive dealer, Javier Peres, Koh has rocketed to art world fame. He is known for combining bling decadence with a monochrome, minimalist touch. He sent ripples of admiration through the New York art establishment with his untitled solo presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in early 2007 in which he installed a 4,000-watt floodlight in the ground floor gallery, blinding passersby.Views: 15
Pappa Tarahumara stages quirky take on 'Gulliver' tale
Hiroshi Koike, founder of the internationally renowned Pappa Tarahumara performing- arts company, says on its Web site that he has been interested in Irish satirist and cleric Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) for more than 20 years. Swift is mainly known as the author of "Gulliver's Travels," which is usually published in Japan as a children's book with plenty of illustrations.Views: 30
Tasty performances spice up a tired genre
Here's an obvious but often neglected rule: Never see foodie movies - films that revolve around the preparation and consumption of scrumptious-looking food - on an empty stomach. Watching Gabriel Axel's Oscar-winning Danish movie "Babette's Feast" (1987) - the "Citizen Kane" of foodie movies - long after a skimpy breakfast, I was in agony, though somehow able to restrain myself from bolting the screening room. Soon after the credits rolled, though, I had one of the most heavenly bowls of ramen I ever tasted. (In my starved condition, I would have said the same thing about a Big Mac.) Mitsuhiro Mihara's "Shiawase no Kaori (Flavor of Happiness)" does not rank as high as "Babette's Feast" in my foodie movie list. Perhaps I've been jaded by the endless procession of Japanese TV shows, dramas and films devoted to food and its preparers, which are part of a three-decade "gourmet boom" that shows no sign of ending.Views: 27
Morning Musume: Japan's TV talents
Hearing the buzz surrounding TV programs such as "American Idol," "The X Factor" and "Britain's Got Talent" (all originating in the U.K. but franchised internationally), it is clear that TV talent shows are booming. Although there is no "Japanese Idol" or "Japan's Got Talent," this country has an obsession with TV talent shows. One of the most memorable was "Asayan."Views: 19
Queen + Paul Rodgers "The Cosmos Rocks"
Ever since Freddie Mercury left us for a better place, guitarist-come- scientist Brian May has taken it upon himself to throw his weight around as the new demigod leader of Queen in all its myriad bastardized forms. And who can blame him - if the real Queen let you play the National Anthem on the top of her house (as he did in 2002), it would probably go to your head, too. On the band's latest offering, recorded with Free's Paul Rodgers on vocals, it's not hard to imagine May storming confidently into its recording, still wearing his mortarboard from his Astrophysics Ph.D. graduation and proclaiming, "OK, this is it, we're gonna make the space-rock monolith the world's been waiting for. We're gonna call it Cosmos Rocks - GEDDIT!?" Sure, it kicks off with sci-fi fanfare; all pitch-bent vocals, whining guitars and asteroid-belt drumming while Rodgers wails like a Martian. But from here on, mercifully, this isn't the sound of Rodgers stuffed into one of Freddie's old cat-suits, but of Queen reworking their dynamic to create something new, which you have to give them some credit for, at the very least.Views: 23
Documenting punk's short life
Back in the spring of 1977, Don Letts was the DJ at the Roxy, the legendary punk club located in London's Covent Garden. The Roxy was the one club where punk rock hadn't been banned, but the club's life span was a mere 100 days, as it faced a maelstrom of violence, noise complaints and police raids. In that time, Letts bought a Super-8 camera and recorded the bands that played there, up-and-coming groups such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Slits and Siouxsie and the Banshees. "The Punk Rock Movie" is the documentary that Letts assembled from his footage. It's almost entirely live performances, enlivened by a few inaudible interviews and random chaos. Unlike "Tonite Let's All Make Love In London" (which documented '60s psychedelia), there are no celebrity interviews or talking heads. In fact, there's no context whatsoever - Letts just drops us into the club and lets us soak up the vibe.Views: 13
'Gaijin' mind-set is killing rural Japan
Allow me to conclude my trilogy of columns regarding the word "gaijin" this month by talking about the damage the concept does to Japanese society. That's right - damage to Japanese society. I previously mentioned the historical fact that "gaijin" once also applied to Japanese - to "outsiders" not from one's neighborhood. But as Japan unified and built a nation-state, it made its "volk" all one "community," for political and jingoistic reasons. Anyone considered to be Japanese became an "insider," while the rest of the world became "outsiders," neatly pigeonholed by that contentious term "gaijin."Views: 17
Every girl's a spy
After viewing "Get Smart," I understand why 80 percent of women in the developed world cite the following as the top problem in their personal lives: they'd like to change their jobs and start over, but they don't exactly know what to do. Call off the dogs: What most of us want to do, in the innermost recesses of our souls, is to become a secret agent. To those who dismiss such dreams with a derisive snort, I beg you to watch "Get Smart" - even if you do not continue reading this review. Forget slaving away for a law degree or an MBA. Ditch the idea of becoming an executive vice president at some dot-com operation. Oh, to be someone like Agent 99 (played by the extremely likable Anne Hathaway), the sizzling-hot espionage babe who can sport white-rimmed Chanel sunglasses as if she was born wearing them; who trots the globe toting one tiny hold-all but appears for parties decked out like a Bond Girl in sequined evening dresses and bobbed wigs; who can kick ass without batting either of her wondrously madeup eyelids, in said wig and dress. And before I forget, she can run a mile in four minutes and 30 seconds, and that's on a bad day.Views: 6
Tuna's just too cheap
A prime slice of fatty, creamy otoro - belly-meat of Bluefin tuna - isn't cheap. These days in Tokyo, you can expect to pay at leastViews: 26
A sensitive grape for a superb wine
A elicate, thin skin, in constant need of attention, sensitive to extremes of climate: The Pinot Noir is the pampered princess of grape varieties. Until recently, she only truly blossomed in the gentle cool climate of Burgundy and most especially on the Cote d'Or. Back in the 12th century, Cistercian and Benedictine monks quite literally ate dirt in an attempt to discover why she chose to confer her favors so liberally on such a slight ridge of land. They were attempting to classify the different cru (dividing the area into different plots of land, each of which gave the wine grown there its distinctive character) by tasting the soil.Views: 11
Venice Biennale's theme won't stop the rain
'Architecture is not building." That's the mildly provocative premise of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, "Out There: Architecture Beyond Building," which runs till Nov. 23. Although outspent by the Venice Art Biennale and outshone by the Venice Film Festival, the architecture event in Venice is nonetheless the most important cultural event on the architectural calendar. The heart of the event is divided across two venues: the vast medieval warehouse known as the Corderie in the Arsenale, home to the thematic core of the show; and the leafy grounds of the Giardini, where permanent national pavilions are situated. Here architectural ambition and national pride combine in the quest for the coveted Golden Lion award.Views: 8
