Tokyo

The Belgian men's team wears blue shirts during a tug of war competition.

Sports of Olympic past: Where are they now?

Tokyo Olympics

Securing a spot at the Olympics isn’t a lifelong promise. The International Olympic Committee has cut sports like plunge-for-distance, tug of war and rope climbing out of the Games, but competitions have continued outside the Olympic ring.

In this May 17, 2021, demonstrators protest against the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The IOC and Tokyo Olympic organizers run into some of the strongest medical-community opposition so far with the games set to open in just over eight weeks. 

As demand grows to cancel Tokyo Olympics, who has the power to call it off?

Tokyo Olympics
The World

Made it!

Arts, Culture & Media
The World

Mysterious Mountain Monk

Arts, Culture & Media

Purikura

Arts, Culture & Media

The old poet and the radios

Arts, Culture & Media

While the girls were hanging out in Golden Gai last night, I was picked up by William Elliott and Kazui Kawamura, the English translators of the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa and taken to an undisclosed location to meet the poet himself. I had met Tanikawa in Copenhagen 10 years ago and immediately liked him and his […]

Kawaii Kurt

Arts, Culture & Media

The motto of a fictional character of mine was All Cliches Are True. As I was reminded twice, spectacularly, during my first full day in Tokyo. Of course I knew about the (cliche of the) Japanese schoolgirl subculture, and its devotion to cuteness, uniformity, pinkness, intense girl-to-girl friendliness, technology, and so on. But my visit […]

She looks like an axelotl?

Arts, Culture & Media

Today I joined Lisa Katayama for her interview with Erina Matsui, a 24-year-old artist who’s already gotten the attention of Takashi Murakami and other art world big-wigs. Erina paints playful and surrealistic self-portraits, which she says should make people laugh. So as we walked into the Yamamoto Gendai galley, I have to say I was […]

The World

Street festival for drummers, breakdancers

Arts, Culture & Media

On the streets of Shibuya today: drum circles, drumming lessons, and breakdancing. We met a young radio reporter (Pejk spotted his DAT recorder) and he told us it’s the third annual Shibuya music festival, called Shibu-on. Some video highlights: first, breakdancing unplugged – to hand drums, pan flute and didgeridoo. (No patchouli or hacky-sacks sighted.) […]

Sun(glasses) King

Arts, Culture & Media

I knew about otaku, the term for Japanese obsessively interested in particular cultural artifacts — particular kinds of anime, arcade video games, 1950s L.A. jazz, whatever. But I had no idea how deep and odd the obsessions ran until today. As I was wandering through the neighborhood of used book stores called Kanda, I came […]