Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Lenny Bernstein
For Lenny Bernstein's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Environment Sep 9, 2013
Could man-made clouds help lower the planet's temperature?
With the planet warming inexorably, some experts are wondering whether the time may have come to deliberately attempt "solar radiation management.
Science & Health | Focus Aug 28, 2013
Air gun noise sparks alarm in war over offshore drilling
The use of “seismic air guns” to determine how much oil and gas lies beneath a vast swath of the ocean floor off the southeast coast of the United States is provoking an early skirmish in a battle over oil drilling that is still ...
Lifestyle Jun 25, 2013
Flying through an urban obstacle course like 007
If you’re my age (meaning not in your 20s) and you’ve even heard of “parkour,” it’s probably because of that scene in the 2006 remake of “Casino Royale” when James Bond chases a bounding, bouncing bad guy up a giant construction crane, down an ...
Reader Mail Feb 27, 2011
Pawns of leading-edge 'research'
The front-page Feb. 22 article “Work starts at Shinjuku Unit 731” prompted me to make a few comments as a student of the Chinese language who visited the Biological Warfare Unit 731 site in the Pingfang district of Harbin, China. (The Shinjuku site in ...
Reader Mail Jan 6, 2011
No proof seniors drive less safely
The Jan. 3 Kyodo article “Traffic deaths down but not for seniors” reports that, for the first time, half of all victims of fatal traffic accidents in Japan during 2010 were 65 or older. The piece then opines that the imbalance in the distribution ...