Got up this morning and was struck by a headline in the paper: 'Diet Adopts Resolution Calling for US Apology for Enslavement of Blacks.' I nearly spilled my coffee. Nevertheless, I plunged into the article: 'On February 20 the Diet adopted a resolution calling for the US President to make an official apology to America's 35 million blacks for violation of their ancestors' human rights by the system of slavery.'...

On a recent trip to Hakone we got off the bus at the graves of the Soga brothers, Juro and Goro. Their father was killed by one Ito Sukechika over an inheritance dispute. Eighteen years later the brothers avenged their father by killing Sukechika during a hunt near Mt. Fuji in 1193...

Ever since the first ringtone sites began appearing on NTT DoCoMo's i-mode menu back in 1999, most mobile music content providers in Japan have pushed to have their services appear on the 'main menu' of the wireless carriers. This approach has become known as the 'official service' model, and works something like this...

Yubari City, on Hokkaido, northernmost of the main Japanese islands, is known for its orange-fleshed melon. Film buffs will recognize it as the partial setting for the 1977 film 'Shiawase no kiiro hankachi' (The Yellow Handkerchief), which won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture. Now it is notorious as a symbol of...