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P/CLOUDY
The consumption tax increase next April will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people's financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the impact of the hike, experts say.
Every parent is all too familiar with The Tantrum. The screaming, the flailing arms, the angry head butting — and the timing (normally in the most inconvenient public place possible).
International events undermine Japan's democracy. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for being a party to it.
Tucked away behind the main museums in Ueno, the Tokyo University Art Museum may not be on most people’s radar, but it is definitely one of the city’s top museums in terms of curatorial quality. Whenever I go there, I am always delighted by ...
Francisco Liriano showed up at PNC Park on Tuesday afternoon in a suit with his suitcase packed for a trip St. Louis. The message reverberated through the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. After 21 years away from the playoffs, it was time for the best story ...
Spare a thought for Marutei Tsurunen, Japan's first European-born naturalized immigrant parliamentarian, who was voted out in last month's House of Councilors election.
The prime minister's dogged focus on amending the American-tainted Constitution might reflect an uncomfortable unspoken truth — that it may be easier to change the Constitution than revise another document of potentially greater importance: the Status of Forces Agreement between Japan and the United ...
Japanese are Japanese and foreigners are foreigners, and never the twain shall meet? In many aspects of daily life in this country, there is one way for the Japanese and another for the rest of us. Like it or not, that's just how it ...
For foreign residents, having a child in Japan can be a daunting prospect. Going to the hospital and trying to figure out what the doctor is saying in complex Japanese medical terms is just one of myriad trials.
The family of Scott Kang had hoped that the release the autopsy report would shed some light on the U.S. teenager's death in Shinjuku in 2010 and bring them nearer to obtaining closure. Instead, it has reopened old wounds and raised fresh questions about ...
Have the foreign media got it in for Japan? Do they unduly focus on, and sensationalize, Fukushima radiation leaks, alleged racial intolerance and the self-aggrandizing policy pronouncements of the reborn Liberal Democratic Party?
At a certain company, workers take their lunch break every day from 12 to 1 p.m. But just 10 minutes before noon, a small contingent of workers get up and leave the room. A few minutes later the fragrance of miso soup wafts in ...
Rene Duignan is passionate about life — so much so that he made an award-winning film about it. Yet Duignan, 42, is not a professional filmmaker; he’s an Irish economist working for the European Union delegation to Japan. The documentary, titled “Saving 10,000 — ...
These Community pages have reported many times on how the National Police Agency (NPA) has manufactured the illusion of a “foreign crime wave,” depicting non-Japanese (NJ) as a threat to Japan’s public safety (see “Upping the fear factor,” Zeit Gist, Feb. 20, 2007; “Time ...
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for constitutional change. Yet he is playing the political huckster by proposing to first only fiddle with the amendment procedure in Article 96, lowering the threshold for the process to move forward from the approval of two-thirds of ...
It’s an all-too-familiar story: On the romantic front, foreign ladies living in Japan have it bad while the guys do unbelievably well. For every woman who complains about Japanese men’s aloofness and lack of communication skills, there is a man who boasts about all ...
Here is a dumb thing you should never do: watch the 007 caper “You Only Live Twice” with your feminist American girlfriend — a woman of color to boot. In a series renowned for its sexism, the Japan entry takes the biscuit. My date ...