日本「金」への前線In a recent article in the Asahi Shinbun, perhaps the leading daily in Japan, there was a listing of 25 countries that will do their final training and acclimating for the Beijing Olympics in Japan.The main reasons for this are: proximity to Beijing, good facilities in Japan, similar climate, clean air, and a high degree of hygiene. In particular, the final two were cited...

豆腐屋 I was wandering through the streets of Tokyo's beautiful Minami Azabu district yesterday afternoon, a part of the city's Minato ward with perhaps the biggest concentration of foreign embassies.All at once I heard the two unmistakable notes of the tofu vendor's pipe, and, sure enough, there he was pulling his cart of cool, white tofu through the sweltering summer streets.Street vendors are...

海の日Today is the public holiday "Umi-no-hi" (Marine Day or Ocean Day), which came in to being in 1996.With temperatures usually high at this time of year, many people may spend this holiday weekend on the coast.The last time I was at the beach in Utsumi on the Chita Peninsula, south of Nagoya, I saw someone nearly drown. His friends were desperately trying to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation...

今週の日本No longer a reporter, but a muckraker within Parliament.NY TimesIs Buddhism dying out in Japan?NY TimesSeoul bars Japanese condom ad.GuardianElephant steps into art world.BBCCancer survival depends on where you live.Washington PostProposal to send SDF to Afghanistan dropped.Japan TimesOsaka court recognizes 4 as A-bomb sufferers.Daily YomiuriHideo Nomo retires.Yahoo! SportsLast week'...

高山彦九郎On Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto there is a large statue of a grim-faced, bearded man, sword in hand, kneeling in reverance towards the Imperial Palace to the north-west.That man is Takayama Hikokuro (1747-1793), aka Takayama Masayuke, an eccentric, lower-class samurai originally from Ota in Gunma Prefecture.Takayama came to Kyoto as a young man to study and was shocked by the way the Imperi...