For slam-dunks, sweet jumpers and non-stop end-to-end action, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the league to watch. Going all the way back to 1946, the NBA has been the top men’s professional basketball league in North America with support and fans growing every year. The NBA has grown from a league low of just…

You breathe in steam, the smell of soap. The water around you is so hot that it feels like it is melting through your skin, dissolving the knots in your calves and the tension in your shoulders. When you step out of the water, skin steaming, you are clean and utterly refreshed. This is the…

You might say there are two Okinawa’s. The first we all know because it is tirelessly promoted on TV, milked to the last drop by tour operators. The other is a little harder to define: small islands out of the mainstream, where life goes on without the fuss and flurry of activity that precedes the…

Yoga’s rich heritage has allowed it to become a symbol of any number of philosophies, physical or otherwise, that have begun to redefine modern attitudes towards health and wellness, in Japan and around the world. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT YOGA If you’re looking for the “essence” of yoga, you’re in for…

It’s almost midnight and by rights you should be curled up on the sofa in pre-bed chillout mode, watching nonsense on Fox. Instead you’re still at work. You’ve just got out of a weekly conference call with HQ in London and being that it’s HQ, GMT always trumps EST, as antisocial as this makes all…

The marshlands of Chiba must have seemed a forbidding and pestilential place to a young girl peering out from the wretched discomfort of a palanquin as it made its passage back to Kyoto and civilization in the year 1021. Lady Sarashina’s father had just completed a term as Assistant Governor of what is now Chiba…

The long, long NHL season is drawing to a close and with each team having over seventy games in the books, the playoff picture is starting to shape up. With some teams having secured their place in the “second season” virtually months ago, others need every point to break their way into the finals for…

How many Japanese people does it take to operate a doll? If the doll happens to be one of the intricate dolls used traditional Japanese Bunraku, also called “Joruri Puppet Theater” or “ningyo joruri” in Japanese, the answer is three. These dolls that can weigh up to 15 kilograms (33 pounds) and are about one-half…

The street spills out from the station, a narrow and unassuming road. You probably know it well, in the mornings on the way to the train you may have noticed the rolled down garage-style doors at the front of the buildings, the sprays of bright plastic cherry blossoms bobbing with the wind, the small signs…

Until very recently, shochu has had the reputation for attracting a target audience of elderly or homeless people, due to its cheap price and high alcoholic content (around 25%).  But back in 2003, shochu not only caught up with the more sophisticated sake (rice wine), but actually outsold its grown up cousin for the first…