Tag - light-gist

 
 

LIGHT GIST

Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Dec 25, 2012
The year in quotes: 25 windows on the way things were in 2012
It was a year dominated by Japan's spats with its most powerful neighbors, China and South Korea, over tiny specks in the sea, and by national soul-searching over nuclear power and the calamity that struck Japan in March 2011. It ended with the stunning political resurrection of the Liberal Democratic Party. In between, there were memorable faux pas on homosexuality, welfare and official sexism.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Nov 27, 2012
I have a dream: a 'young first' Japan that works for all
It is a political season. Barack Obama was recently re-elected president of the United States, China has anointed Xi Jinping as its new leader, and Japanese politicians are jockeying for position in advance of a general election to be held on Dec. 16.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Oct 30, 2012
The world according to Toru Hashimoto
Loved by his supporters for his fiery rhetoric — which often involves bashing the Tokyo-centric status quo, overpaid local bureaucrats, utility executives, teachers' unions or, indeed, anybody who disagrees with him — Hashimoto's critics charge that he's a dangerous rightwing demagogue seeking a fascist dictatorship, and a political amateur who will destroy the country.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / LIGHT GIST
Sep 25, 2012
Grab your bentō, mat and a prime spot: It's undōkai
For the next few weekends all over Japan, mothers will be up at dawn preparing elaborate bentō, while fathers toting plastic mats will set off to school to claim a prime spot (or perhaps vice versa in some households). It's undōkai season!
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Aug 28, 2012
How did we end up here, in 'Hashimotopia,' 2022?
Walking home the other night, I glanced furtively over my shoulder and clocked the notorious tattoo-enforcement police heading in my direction. I ducked into a nearby konbini and cursed that bad decision inked onto my forearm in the 1990s.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Jul 31, 2012
Green-fingered gaijin reaps alien harvest in Tokyo
Dazed and drenched within Tokyo's oppressive summer furnace, I peered up from my squat through the prism of perspiration in my eyelids to see a figure I had gradually come to know as the grumpy ol' garden drunk.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
May 29, 2012
Manjiro, patron saint of eikaiwa, watches over English teachers
It can be tough teaching English in Japan. The chain school grind of late hours, noisy kids and boring middle-aged office workers takes its toll. Uppity teachers at public schools treat ALTs with contempt and all English instructors feel the humiliation of being looked down upon by their foreigner brethren who don't teach.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LIGHT GIST
Apr 24, 2012
Poetic, but maybe not justice: Japan demystified in haiku
One of my goals in writing for The Japan Times over the years has been to try to render the seemingly arcane functioning of the Japanese legal system a bit more comprehensible to non-Japanese, non-legal types. This involves a big assumption that I understand it myself, but I have at least tried to offer up an analytical framework for trying to understand how things work in the legal sphere here (executive summary: You will probably lose).
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Dec 27, 2011
2011: a year of disaster in quotes
This year produced more than its share of memorable quotes, many of which were inspired by the March 11 disaster and its aftermath. But figures from other fields, from sports to entertainment, also said things worth repeating. Here is a sampling, in chronological order:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Oct 25, 2011
The ridiculously frightening world of Japanese spooks
Halloween is that time of the year when the occult, macabre and humorous come together to create a festival of fear and fun for all the family. A celebration of death and demons with its roots in pre-Christian Europe, the summer's-end spook-fest has morphed over the centuries into a highly commercialized — and arguably sanitized — phenomenon that has spread its icy grip around the globe.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Sep 27, 2011
No-nos for Noda: Japan's top 10 most useless PMs
On Sept. 2, Yoshihiko Noda was appointed the 95th prime minister of Japan, the sixth man (and they have all been men) to hold the job in five years. To mark this occasion and offer lessons to the new Democratic Party of Japan chief on how not to lead the country, the Community Page asked 10 writers to pick "Japan's most useless postwar prime minister." Here, in chronological order, is the rogues gallery they came up with:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Aug 30, 2011
Mascots on a mission to explain the mundane
It is often said that the Japanese have a unique attitude towards law. Many explanations have been offered for why this is so, and in what circumstances:

Longform

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