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NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
As anti-Japan protests in China rage with no end in sight, Japanese businesses there are seeing their operations disrupted, while government officials seek to limit the damage to economic ties. “The share that Japan and China hold in the global economy is overwhelming,” Finance ...
The exchange of jabs between Japan and South Korea over the territorial dispute in the Sea of Japan will reach a key turning point in October when a temporary bilateral currency swap arrangement comes to an end. But while the latest quarrel has some ...
Over its 850 plus years, sake maker Sudohonke Inc. has endured wars, famines, earthquakes, plagues, droughts, storms and everything in between. But the nuclear crisis that started last year at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant was an unparalleled catastrophe that pushed it to ...
Sales of puppies and kittens would be prohibited until they are at least 56 days old under a planned revision of the Animal Protection Law expected to passed by the Diet this session. Working-level talks within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan resulted in ...
Sales by 10 major power utilities in July dropped by 6.3 percent due to a decline in demand, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has revealed. But while efforts to cut down electricity use by households and the business sector are paying ...
A byproduct of Honda Motor Co.’s development of the Asimo humanoid robot may be about to come to the aid of Japan’s aging population. “The Stride Management Assist device helps the elderly lengthen their stride when they walk and in doing so helps them ...
The countdown to raising the sales tax officially began Friday with the Diet passing the necessary legislation, but the move is just the start of a long road that still lies ahead. Even the welfare ministry acknowledges that the consumption tax must be increased ...
Scrutiny of the 150 hours of teleconferencing footage recorded by Tokyo Electric Power Co. in the initial days of the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant shows that crucial decisions were being made hastily. Tepco on Monday started letting journalists view ...
As the 67th anniversary of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing approaches, the prefecture is trying a new tactic to achieve the goal of global nuclear disarmament. A prefectural official told The Japan Times on Tuesday that Hiroshima will conduct its own research and analysis of nuclear ...
When the 293 Japanese athletes compete in the London Games that start Friday, they will represent a century of the participation in the Summer Olympics, starting with marathoner Shiso Kanakuri and sprinter Yahiko Mishima in Stockholm in 1912. Here are some questions and answers ...
The push by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his administration to raise the consumption tax is a key step that “will make the Japanese economy more agile and efficient,” Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Friday in Tokyo. Appearing at ...
Business sentiment among large manufacturers improved for the first time in three quarters in the three months through June, reaching minus 1, according to the Bank of Japan’s quarterly “tankan” index released Monday. The business index for major manufacturers — companies capitalized at ¥1 ...