https://www.scmp.com/rss/142162/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Japan’s home-delivery system, the envy of the world, is breaking down under the load of rapidly expanding e-commerce companies demanding same-day delivery of their wares. Want to play a round of golf but don’t have a car? No problem. Simply drop the clubs off at the local convenience store, and they will be delivered straight to the golf course – and back to your front door after the round is over. Gift giving is a big thing in Japan, and whole floors of department stores are given over to gift... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2095329/japans-frenzied-same-day-delivery-race-pushes-drivers-past-red?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2095329/japans-frenzied-same-day-delivery-race-pushes-drivers-past-red?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 May 2017 09:28:21 +0000 It is 3am on a cold and dark Tokyo morning, but people are already lining up in the hope of getting one of the 120 coveted seats to view the daily blue fin tuna auction that takes place at 5.20am. The huge, 200kg tunas have been known to go for more than a million dollars. When the auction is over, many repair to one of the tiny restaurants that surround the market for a sushi breakfast. Welcome to the world-famous Tsukiji Fish Market, soon to be closed forever in favour of a new market in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2047374/japans-reluctant-sayonara-tsukiji-market-so-long-and-thanks-all?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2047374/japans-reluctant-sayonara-tsukiji-market-so-long-and-thanks-all?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Nov 2016 12:03:07 +0000 In faraway Toronto, an art exhibition titled “The Third Gender – beautiful Youths in Japan” is an eloquent statement on Japan’s attitude towards gender. Long before the term LGBT came into vogue, Japan went its own way regarding gender definitions, as the exhibition shows. It harkens back to a more relaxed era, depicted in art as the “Floating World”, before the Meiji restoration in the 19th Century opened Japan to Western ideas and concepts, including a more Victorian attitude towards sex... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2024111/why-japanese-businesses-are-embracing-lgbt-community?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2024111/why-japanese-businesses-are-embracing-lgbt-community?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 03 Oct 2016 02:00:15 +0000 After a decade-long fling with Hollywood, Godzilla has emerged from the muck of Tokyo Bay to reclaim his rightful territory around Japan’s capital, and still offers a mirror on the Japanese people’s worries and fears. Read more from This Week in Asia The rampaging reptile is one of the most universal, enduring and recognisable symbols of Japanese popular culture and the longest running series – at more than 60 years – in film history. Only James Bond comes close as an enduring international film... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/1999114/tokyo-godzilla-returns-old-stomping-ground?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/1999114/tokyo-godzilla-returns-old-stomping-ground?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Aug 2016 02:00:00 +0000 IT'S EASY TO SEE WHY DUBAI - a land of sun, sand and shopping - is developing a reputation as a playground for the rich and famous. Piercing the blue sky of this emirate - one of seven that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - are properties that take luxury living to a new level. Last October, 144 apartments went on sale there, and within a week more than half had sold at prices rumoured to be more than US$5 million - even though the new owners won't be able to move in until the end of... https://www.scmp.com/article/621581/skys-limit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/621581/skys-limit?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World by Gordon G. Chang Random House, $217 Trying to make sense of international efforts to disarm North Korea of its ambitions to own nuclear weapons is like trying to follow three-dimensional chess. Ostensibly, all six countries involved in the talks favour a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. That includes North Korea, which - in theory, at least - is willing to trade its purported nuclear weapons for aid, recognition and light-water reactors.... https://www.scmp.com/article/543060/nuclear-showdown-north-korea-takes-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/543060/nuclear-showdown-north-korea-takes-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Apr 2006 16:00:00 +0000 'I DON'T WRITE horror,' says Koji Suzuki. 'I'm not interested in horror.' Quite a surprising claim coming from the man known as Japan's answer to Stephen King. Suzuki's novel Ring sparked a boom in Japanese horror films, or J-horror. It was made into the Japanese movie Ringu (1998), then given the Hollywood treatment as The Ring (2002). Another of his books, Dark Water, was made into a movie last year. 'All over the world people think of my novel as a horror story, but I don't look at it... https://www.scmp.com/article/531911/dark-horse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/531911/dark-horse?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jan 2006 16:00:00 +0000 The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $203 In the tense months of the winter of 2003, when preparations for the Iraq war were under way, George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, weighed the pros and cons and came down pro-war - but only, he later said, 'by a whisker'. With such thin support to begin with, it's not surprising that now, after 21/2 years of blunders and a grinding insurgency, Packer believes the war has turned into a... https://www.scmp.com/article/524714/assassins-gate-america-iraq?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/524714/assassins-gate-america-iraq?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:00:00 +0000