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P/SUNNY
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
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 ...
It is a tricky deal being an authorized biographer. Charles Moore’s big advantage over those who have previously tackled Margaret Thatcher is that he has been provided with material denied to them. Of the arrangement that he was offered by his subject, he writes: ...
Unbelievable energy. Splendid self confidence. Never-wavering faith in his abilities or his teammates. Those are ingredients to success for Draelon Burns, the Yokohama B-Corsairs’ super substitute. Burns buried a remarkable three buzzer-beating shots to close out the three final quarters, and his team needed ...
So-called medical tourism is a growing market worldwide and high-tech Japan hopes to get a piece of the action. Millions of people worldwide travel abroad seeking high quality or cheaper medical treatment. A 2008 report by McKinsey & Co. forecasts the global medical tourism ...
On July 1, a new law takes effect requiring utilities to purchase electricity generated from five renewable energy sources at a fixed price for a set length of time, under what is known as a feed-in tariff system. The law was approved on the ...
Despite reporting a record ¥457 billion annual loss last year, Sony Corp. earlier this month said it would return to the black in fiscal 2012 with a ¥30 billion profit. The Great East Japan Earthquake, Thai floods and strong yen have all been recent ...
The auto and electronics industries have served as the economy’s main locomotives for decades, but now they are being eclipsed by heavier global competition, particularly from their aggressive Asian rivals. To offset the dip in dominance, the government is turning to Japan’s cultural exports, ...
Japanese spirits were uplifted recently by the news that three “toki,” or Japanese crested ibis, chicks were hatched in the wild for the first time in 36 years, the culmination of a ¥300 million project that was started in 1999 to breed the endangered ...
Thursday marks the 65th year since the Constitution took effect in 1947. Drafted during the Allied Occupation under the leadership of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Constitution has remained untouched since its birth, despite years of divided discussions among experts and lawmakers over whether it ...
Although they have similar names and operate Web portals with a variety of services, Yahoo Japan Corp. is in many ways a very different company from Yahoo Inc. Yahoo’s profits have been falling because of competition from Google, Facebook and other popular sites. This ...
Regional utilities have long dominated the power market, but companies and local governments are starting to get interested in new retailers offering much cheaper rates. This rise is especially true since the Fukushima No. 1 crisis erupted last year and its operator, Tokyo Electric ...
A new education rule that kicked in this year has created a fresh challenge for gym teachers across the nation: how to teach hip-hop. Thanks to teaching guidelines revised in 2008, dancing joined martial arts as a compulsory subject for junior high school students ...
Welfare commissioners cover a broad array of tasks, including regularly checking in on elderly and disabled residents, looking for signs of child abuse, providing local residents with information about services, and even helping them dispose of garbage. Although demand for welfare commissioners is on ...
As Tohoku struggles to rebuild from last year’s quake and tsunami, money continues to pour into the region in the form of central government subsidies for cleanup, repair and reconstruction. The result has been a reconstruction bubble providing a massive cash infusion to not ...
The Tohoku region continues to struggle beyond the first anniversary of the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake, particularly Fukushima Prefecture, whose recovery is being greatly hampered by the triple-meltdown crisis at a coastal nuclear plant. But before the severity of the Fukushima ...