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P/SUNNY
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
It is a tricky deal being an authorized biographer. Charles Moore’s big advantage over those who have previously tackled Margaret Thatcher is that he has been provided with material denied to them. Of the arrangement that he was offered by his subject, he writes: ...
Unbelievable energy. Splendid self confidence. Never-wavering faith in his abilities or his teammates. Those are ingredients to success for Draelon Burns, the Yokohama B-Corsairs’ super substitute. Burns buried a remarkable three buzzer-beating shots to close out the three final quarters, and his team needed ...
The Bank of Japan on Thursday eased its monetary policy, boosting the size of its asset purchase program by another ¥5 trillion, raising its total funds to ¥55 trillion, citing the current instability in global financial markets and economies, as well as the yen’s ...
As Europe continues to walk a tightrope over Greece’s bloated debt and a continental sovereign crisis, money men in Japan are advising the public to buckle up before any shock waves reach domestic soil and damage the economy. “The amount of exports from Japan ...
The Bank of Japan Policy Board said Friday it will maintain its virtually zero-interest rate policy while putting off additional monetary easing to cope with impact from Europe’s debt crisis and the yen’s sharp rise. As a result of the unanimous agreement reached by ...
The nation’s large manufacturers are more confident about business conditions but have yet to recover their prequake optimism, the Bank of Japan’s quarterly “tankan” sentiment index said Monday. While midsize and small manufacturers did not share the sense of strong recovery, the sentiment index ...
The government and the Democratic Party of Japan have finalized their temporary tax hike plan and will ask the public to cough up ¥11.2 trillion to help reconstruct the disaster-hit Tohoku region, but experts Wednesday were quick to point out flaws in the hastily ...
The government may purchase additional rescue bonds to be issued by Europe’s bailout fund to help cure the volatile situation triggered by the Greek crisis, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Tuesday. “If there is any scheme that could help ease tensions worldwide, including financial ...
Exports in August rose for the first time since the March 11 earthquake, up 2.8 percent from a year earlier, but an increase in energy resource imports resulted in a trade deficit of ¥775.3 billion for the month, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday. Despite ...
The Cabinet on Tuesday approved a plan to cap budget requests for fiscal 2012 and keep total general account spending — excluding debt-servicing costs — to less than ¥71 trillion, while allocating about ¥700 billion for special policy measures to boost economic growth. The ...
The Tax Commission on Friday unveiled three provisional tax hike proposals centered on increasing income and corporate taxes to secure funds for reconstruction from the March 11 disasters. The government’s three proposals are: to increase income, corporate and residential taxes; to hike the income, ...
Government discussions over a looming tax hike hit full throttle Tuesday as the Democratic Party of Japan’s tax panel kicked off its first meeting to discuss how to gather financial resources to reconstruct the Tohoku region. The panel, led by former Finance Minister Hirohisa ...
The yen climbed to and has remained at a historic high since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster. On Aug. 19 it hit a postwar high of 75.95 to the dollar, an event that has led the government to intervene in the foreign ...
Economic and fiscal policy minister Motohisa Furukawa said Thursday he and other economy-related ministers stand united on tackling the yen’s excessive surge, with an eye on both maximizing the merits of a strong currency and helping small and midsize companies suffering from the high ...