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CLOUDY
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 ...
Japan marked the 65th anniversary of the enforcement of the postwar Constitution on Thursday, and 60 years have passed since the San Francisco Peace Treaty went into effect on April 28, 1952, ending Japan’s occupation by the Allied Powers. Until that day, decrees issued ...
A special committee was set up in the Lower House on April 26 to mainly discuss tax and social welfare reform bills, including a bill to raise the consumption tax. The political parties should have careful discussions in the committee because the bills will ...
The Tokyo District Court on Thursday acquitted former Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa of charges he violated the Political Funds Control Law. But the ruling shows that it is a bittersweet victory for Ozawa. He needs to pay careful attention to his ...
The Upper House on Friday passed censure motions against Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka and infrastructure and transport Minister Takeshi Maeda. The nonbinding motions were submitted by the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito and two smaller parties. The LDP at first said it would boycott all ...
One-on-one Diet debates between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and opposition leaders held on April 11 primarily concerned Mr. Noda’s plan to raise the consumption tax from April 2014. The prime minister has stated that he will stake his political life on the tax hike ...
The Lower House on Thursday passed a bill to revise the privatization scheme of the Japan Post group. The bill was jointly submitted to the Diet on April 3 by the Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito. It represents a ...
The ¥90.33 trillion fiscal 2012 budget was enacted April 5. If a special budget for the reconstruction of areas hit by the 3/11 triple disasters is included, its size expands to ¥93.55 trillion. Because the budget failed to be enacted by March 31, the ...
The Democratic Party of Japan has proposed cutting Diet members’ salaries by ¥3 million annually in fiscal 2012 and 2013. The proposal came after the Diet enacted a special law to cut the wages for national public servants by an average of about 7.8 ...
Providing a monthly child allowance of ¥26,000 for each child aged 15 or younger to all the child-rearing families was one of the primary campaign promises made by the Democratic Party of Japan in the August 2009 Lower House election and it began providing ...
The Lower House on Thursday passed the ¥90.333 trillion fiscal 2012 budget with the support of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and its coalition partner, the People’s New Party. But Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cannot be optimistic about upcoming Diet business and must ...
Ever since the huge earthquake that hit Japan’s Tohoku-Pacific coast on March 11, 2011, the country’s mass media have obsessively focused on the magnitude of the physical damage and the loss of life. Repeated broadcasts of traumatic video images of the great tsunami and ...
During a debate in the Lower House last week, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Mr. Sadakazu Tanigaki, chief of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, appeared to have reached agreements on several issues. The ruling and opposition parties should use that momentum to break the ...