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DRIZZLE/RAIN
Farmers in the city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, have begun planting rice in a district once designated a no-go zone because of radioactive fallout ejected by the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Recently I was asked to write a blurb for a new liquid plant-nutrient. As soon as I saw the name of the product, 早根早起 （Hayane Hayaoki), I smiled at this example of linguistic creativity.
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night with her ethno-inspired flute and drum tune “Only Teardrops,” despite tough competition from spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Juries and television viewers across Europe awarded the barefoot, ...
One team’s quest for a first title has ended. The other team’s fight will continue next season. The Yokohama B-Corsairs outplayed the Rizing Fukuoka in Sunday’s bj-league championship game, controlling the tempo for larger stretches and making enough timely baskets to fill an instructional ...
Even ambassadors, it turns out, are turf-conscious when it comes to waiting in the supermarket checkout line. Ecuador’s envoy to Peru has admitted getting into a fight — backed up by his wife — with two women he said tried to cut in front ...
Cote d’Ivoire’s ambassador to Japan, Jerome Kloh Weya, says his mission is to enhance economic ties between his country and Tokyo — equal to the level of amicable diplomatic relations that the two countries have shared over the past 53 years. During a courtesy ...
Responding to regional worries over North Korea’s bellicose threats, China on Sunday expressed concern and what appeared to be veiled criticism of its longtime ally. “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains,” ...
Japan faces threats to its land, sea and airspace, as well as to the lives of its people, as Chinese vessels repeatedly enter waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, the government’s annual foreign policy report said Friday. Under such circumstances, ...
China is expected to appoint two men to its top foreign policy positions who have devoted their careers to Beijing’s relations with the United States and Japan, reflecting in part the rising tensions with both countries, according to former diplomats and foreign policy experts. ...
Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who returned Thursday from a controversial visit to North Korea, said he did not meet a detained American whose case he had cited as part of the reason for the trip. But Richardson said he was given assurances ...
President Barack Obama proclaimed Syria’s newly reframed opposition as the “legitimate” representative of the nation’s people Tuesday, in the most significant U.S. intervention in a brutal civil war. As Washington cranked up pressure on beleaguered President Bashar Assad, the Obama administration also blacklisted the ...
In what may be a sign of renewed frictions between key Cabinet figures, Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka launches a private advisory panel on diplomatic issues.