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Philip PatrickThe Spectator |
Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president...
Let’s face it, there are many reasons not to visit London these days: the crime, the intimidatory protests, the woeful public transport, the...
In a dramatic and unnanounced move, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday in a live broadcast on YTN television....
It’s a reasonable bet that if Jeremy Clarkson stood for prime minister tomorrow, he’d win by a country mile. Some might even crown him the next...
Having thought it was all over, several times, it is now – for Gary Linker as presenter of Match of the Day. Lineker who has occupied the hot seat...
Poor old Bruce Springsteen. The legendary rocker bet the farm on an endorsement of Kamala Harris and may well have alienated about half his audience...
What now? This is the question on everyone’s lips here in Tokyo after a dramatic general election which looks to have inflicted a potentially...
Is a major scandal over the sale of Newcastle United to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund about to engulf the club? And...
It has been an alarming day in Tokyo as political terror returned to the streets of the capital. A man was arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails...
Thomas Tuchel has been confirmed as the next manager of the England national football team, to take over from the hapless and seemingly confused Lee...
Japanese culture is rapidly colonising the West, from our theatres to our cinemas, to our streaming services and our bookshops, to the food we eat and...
It will soon be the end of an era at Wimbledon. From 2025, the All England Club has announced that the services of line judges, who ringed the court...
The 67-year-old Shigeru Ishiba will become Japan’s new prime minister on 1 October after winning a surprisingly exciting play-off vote against his...
Yet another natural disaster has struck in Japan as floods and landslides in the Noto peninsula, precipitated by ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, have...
The revamped Champions League kicks off this week with all the gushing hyperbole we have come to expect from this glossy, money-saturated event. Five...
Most people know that Japan is a country cursed with considerable seismic activity; frequent, and very occasionally devastating, earthquakes and...
England’s interim manager Lee Carsley has intimated that he will not be singing the national anthem as his team takes on Ireland in the Nations...
An important international conference will take place this week in South Korea, focused on the peninsula’s security concerns. The UK will not be...
Unlike a slightly more high-profile reunion event, the ticketing website for the Scottish referendum tenth anniversary show is not expected to...
The Japanese are battening down the hatches – again – as typhoon Shanshan wreaks devastation to the south-west of the country, with worse,...
Six men have died on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji since the start of the climbing season in July. This figure, two more than last year, is especially...
‘Kanko kankai’ (tourism pollution) is the latest buzz phrase here in Japan as the double-edged samurai sword of the visitor boom continues to...
The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and...
Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democratic party next month. This means yet...
Nagasaki’s Peace Park held a ceremony today to mark the 79th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city (which killed 74,000...
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index registered its biggest ever daily fall on Monday, plummeting by over 12 per cent and continuing the extraordinary collapse...
Japan is running out of rice. Stocks have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, prompting fears that emergency reserves may need to be accessed....
Sadiq Khan has suggested that the long rumoured prospect of Premier League fixtures being played in the United States is now inevitable. Khan, a...
Japan’s Olympics have got off to the worst possible start. The captain of their women’s gymnastics team Shoko Miyata has withdrawn, or more...
The Japanese singer, actor and heartthrob Matsumoto Jun, who I’ve always thought of as an Oriental David Cassidy (thus showing my age), will make...
Portugal squeezed through to the Euros quarter finals last night after a penalty shoot-out victory against plucky Slovenia. Or perhaps I should say...
In a move that sounds like something out of the new Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis, the Japanese government has announced that it will build a...
Older Japanese women are boozing more than ever, according to a new survey conducted by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The study found that while...
The Japanese Emperor is in London today for a state visit, the first by the occupant of the chrysanthemum throne to the UK for 26 years. Along with a...
Thailand has just passed a ‘landmark’ marriage equality bill, which will pave the way for the recognition of same-sex unions in the Land of...
It is hard to imagine the European football championship, which kicked off last night, was a big factor in Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a snap...
The Tokyo metropolitan government has announced that it will soon be in the online matchmaking business. It is launching a dating app, which will...
‘There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine’. This is a quote from the novel Butter by Japanese writer Asako...
The European football governing body Uefa has informed competing nations at this summer’s Euros that only team captains will be allowed to...
A high-ranking member of the yakuza (Japanese mafia) has been arrested in Tokyo for selling stolen Pokemon cards. Keita Saito was taken into...
Tokyo, Japan ‘Shhh! Now on face to respectable great eels life’. How’s that for the first line of an article? I spotted this gem written on a...
Joe Biden just threw a particularly nasty insult the way of Japan, a close ally of the United States, at a campaign event. The president accused the...
Is time running out for the oldest knock-out tournament of them all? The FA cup‘s obituary has been written a few times in recent years but the...
All good things must come to an end, and that surely now ought to include the footballing career of Cristiano Ronaldo, who disgraced himself again on...
Finally, eight months after its US premiere and a month after it triumphed at the Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has opened here in Japan....
Another week, another fun fact about Japan’s declining birthrate and ageing population to startle and amuse us. Japan has now recorded a full decade...
Unlike David Cameron – who famously got in a muddle about which team he supported – Rishi Sunak is a genuine football fan. But this makes the...
What is the world’s best city in which to be caught short? You can imagine a lively discussion on this question on a TripAdvisor forum. A strong...
Liverpool fans, a significant number at least, booed the national anthem at the Carabao Cup final at Wembley yesterday. It wasn’t the first time...