Americans Japan

"Tokyo Bound" is Hollywood bound. Fresh from a smash run at East West Players, Amy Hill's one-woman "Tokyo Bound" has moved to the Matrix Theatre in Hollywood, a prospect that prompts its writer-star to say: "I'm terrified of not having an audience. "It's a new environment," she added. "Also, Asian-American theater produced by the person performing it is rare. At East West, I'd look into the audience and see faces like mine, people who are half" Asian. The actress, born in Deadwood, S. D.

Investigators Thursday identified the charred remains of an American researcher and two French volcano experts recovered from a Japanese mountain that erupted in an avalanche of hot rocks and ash. Troops recovered one additional body Thursday, bringing to 27 the number found since 4,452-foot Mt. Unzen erupted Monday. Another six people have died in hospitals of burns. At least five people are missing.

Troops failed to retrieve the last bodies from the dangerous slopes of a volcano whose avalanche of burning rock and ash is believed to have killed at least 38 people. Officials said it was not known if the bodies of three missing foreigners--U.S. researcher Harry Glicken, 33, and a French couple--were among those retrieved after Monday's eruption of 4,445-foot Mt. Unzen in southern Japan.

Soldiers raced for their lives as Mt. Unzen in southern Japan billowed showers of lava, searing stones and deadly gas for the second day Tuesday, a day after a major eruption killed at least 33 people. "We had just recovered four bodies when Unzen began spewing again," said a spokesman for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces unit spearheading rescue work at the site of the volcano disaster.

Moses Savory is not your typical Japanese fisherman. He grew up harvesting the abundant reefs around the Ogasawara Islands and knows these waters like few other men. A Japanese citizen who attended only Japanese schools, his gestures and speech are pure Japanese. But he has always looked as different as his name sounds.

Nomura Securities Co., the world's largest brokerage, has become the first Japanese financial company to name a foreigner to its board, a Nomura spokeswoman said Thursday. Max Chapman, co-chairman of Nomura's U.S. unit, Nomura Securities International Inc., was elected to the parent company's board at a shareholders meeting late last month. The meeting also approved an expansion of the board to 45 from 40 members.

On a scorchingly hot Saturday afternoon in Hondo, Tex. (pop: 6,000), a dozen guys were knocking back a few beers at the ramshackle College of Knowledge. A fan made out of a beer can whirled lazily over the bar. Although this homespun watering hole hasn't been a grocery store for quite some time, no one ever bothered to remove the wooden shelves lining the walls.

It was a brilliant spring day. While trade wars dominated the news in Tokyo, my parents and I journeyed into the rural heart of our ancestral homeland to find a past we had lost so long ago. For the first time, we were meeting relatives who live on the rice farms our ancestors have owned since the feudal 18th Century. Amazingly, they've preserved the tradition of handing down the family homestead, the honke , from generation to generation, from parent to eldest son.

Dave Spector has a problem. Six years ago, he came to Japan from Los Angeles as a segment producer for ABC's "Ripley's Believe It or Not." But instead of returning home after a few weeks as planned, the Chicago native stayed on and transformed himself, Cinderella-like, into a media superstar in Japan.