"Tokyo Spring"

I see the New York Times to be a newspaper full of contradictions. The paper and magazine combined juxtapose the high life (high art, fashion, culture, music) and the lowest (war, poverty, etc.) in a very strange way. Page one will feature an amputee while page two will feature Paris Hilton in a mini skirt. Keeping that in mind, I did enjoy the Tokyo Spring articles (that specific link is to the "Murakami Method" article, but there were lots more, including a "Tokyo Girls" portfolio, a fashion section called "Turning Japanese," a cute little Japanohile article entitled "Tokyo, Mon Amour," and finally, a tribute to the Lawsons コンビニ (conbini, or convenient store) chains in Japan called "Eat, Memory: Our Lady of Lawson", by Pico Iyer).

Due to my power failure (36 hours of no electricty), I did not get to the articles first, and both Jean Snow and Marxy have blogged about and extensively discussed how much the articles (especially the Murakami one) suck.
Oh, and there is stuff about it at Kissui.net as well ...