17
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 ...
Raha Muharraq, a 25-year-old Saudi woman, on Saturday reached the summit of Mount Everest in a first for the conservative Muslim kingdom, where women’s sports are severely restricted, her father said. Hassan Muharraq said that Raha, a graduate of the University of Sharjah in ...
Sachiko Banba aches for children in Fukushima Prefecture, who worry whether they can lead a normal life.
A French court on Thursday ordered Air France to pay a ?10,000 ($12,800) fine for having ordered a pro-Palestinian activist off a flight to Tel Aviv because she was not Jewish. The court also ordered the French flagship carrier to pay ?3,000 in damages ...
Two years after a repressive junta ceded power, Myanmar is grappling with a surge in religious extremism that experts trace to anti-Muslim “provocateurs,” including radical Buddhist monks. At least 43 people have been killed while mosques, schools and Muslim homes have been destroyed over ...
In a country infamous for heavy-handed officials, the government employees who harass and sometimes beat and extort money from street vendors are among the most despised. Their official name is “chengguan” — literally, “city management” — but the word has become slang for someone ...
Muslim and Western nations on Friday overcame deep divisions to agree on a historic U.N. declaration setting out a code of conduct for combatting violence against women. Iran, Libya, Sudan and other Muslim nations agreed to language stating that violence against women and girls ...
Just a few salient facts are known about the Americans whose lives might be changed by a Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage expected this summer. About 1 in 5 gay and lesbian couples are raising children that are under age 18. Same-sex couples ...
When Patrick Linehan, the U.S. consul general in Osaka and Kobe, attends a black-tie dinner party, like others he takes his spouse: in his case his husband, Emerson Kanegusuke, 40. Linehan, 60, has been in his post, under the administration of Barack Obama, the ...
Japan's informal army of young, hyper-nationalist Web users puts U.S. citizen Miki Dezaki in its cross hairs for uploading a video titled "Racism in Japan" on YouTube.