Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
'Teachers quitting before graduation?!' the headlines screamed as we headed into the new year.
Patrick Newell, 47, founder of Tokyo International School, calls himself a “learning activist,” a zealot on the frontlines of learning.
Not too long ago, I heard from a foreign resident of Tokyo looking for a high school for her daughter, a 14-year-old who will begin her final year of junior high in April. Both parent and child were extremely excited about recently discovering a ...
"I don't see any benefit in corporal punishment, whether at the hands of teachers or parents."
This year marked the fifth anniversary of the collapse of English language school giant Nova, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 26, 2007. Under the guidance of Nagoya-based G.Communication, the cram school and restaurant operator that initially bailed out the company, Nova was ...
I spent a beautiful Sunday in May of this year taking a national law exam. I did not pass and wasn’t expecting to: I could barely work up the energy for the 90-minute commute to the test venue in Osaka, let alone study for ...
Do young Japanese people dream big? This was the question posed by Steven Kim recently on LinkedIn’s “InStyle Tokyo Premier Networking” group. When I taught at a Japanese women’s college in the late 1990s and early 2000s, one of the entrance exam questions was, ...
Remember grade school, when the most demanding question put to you was something as simple as “What color do you like?” Choose any color, for there is no wrong answer. This is the power of “like,” where nobody can dispute your preference. You don’t ...
Before instructors became embroiled in a fierce legal battle with Berlitz Japan, there was a time when the English language school chain’s robust image made it a top choice among foreign job-seekers. In particular, it was the company’s good reputation over competing language chains ...
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 ...
English teachers on the JET program are often faced with the bittersweet moment when they realize their contract is ending and they will soon be returning to their home country. However, for one former JET teacher, that moment turned out to be a poisonously ...
Some readers’ thoughts on the dueling Jan. 10 Zeit Gist columns by Charles Lewis (“Local Japanese school is the obvious choice if you want your child to fit in“) and Lisa Jardine (“International education a triple-A investment in your child’s — and Japan’s — ...
