16
P/CLOUDY
NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda made a policy speech before the Diet on Tuesday as it started a regular session for 2012. His main theme was a raise of the consumption tax and he called on opposition parties to take part in consultations on the ...
Forty years ago, the arch-conservative American President Richard M. Nixon shocked his country and the world by visiting communist China, a country that the United States did not recognize and whose soldiers had fought American soldiers in the Korean war. Last week, that historic ...
THE SHOCKING COUP: “The situation is no good.” “It’s just a matter of time,” a top minister had told him. “We only have a few weeks left before they act.” Another had told him: “Our days are numbered.” By Sept. 17, 2006, in New ...
Compared with its long historical and cultural ties and deep economic relations with China, Japan’s relations with India are not so strong. But the economic and strategic importance of the world’s largest democracy to Japan is growing fast. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s visit to ...
When the Arab Spring began a year ago, the Western world was shocked. On the surface, it had seemed that liberty had bypassed the Arabs; they had seemed resigned to tyranny. But once unleashed, the upheaval knew no restraint, and there were mayhem and ...
Japanese have been taught over the centuries that loyalty is the supreme virtue. Loyalty to Japan and to the emperor was inculcated into every child in prewar Japan. The emphasis now seems to be on loyalty to the company employing you, loyalty to your ...
In July 2009, China’s Foreign Ministry made a demand of the American embassy: Stop taking measurements of air pollution in Beijing available to ordinary Chinese since they conflicted with official data and could lead to “confusion” among the public and undesirable “social consequences.” The ...
At the European crisis summit in December, David Cameron was snubbed by his European colleagues. His “veto” on accepting treaty changes believed by other members to be necessary to save European economies left Britain isolated. All the other 26 countries were prepared to enter ...
A ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in mid-December unanimously approved Russia’s request to join the world trade body. It also approved Samoa’s and Montenegro’s entry. It took 18 years for Russia to become a WTO member. This is the first time since ...
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday reshuffled his Cabinet. His main aim is to push a hike in the consumption tax and social welfare reform. To show his strong will, he picked Mr. Katsuya Okada as deputy prime minister and minister in charge of ...
In a report to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in mid-December, an advisory panel on local autonomy recommended that local governments be allowed to hold assembly sessions throughout the year so that a wide range of local residents can serve as local assembly members. But ...
India’s economy grows mainly in the night, some say, when the government is asleep. If every economic prospect pleases, India’s politics can be vile. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flattered in his first term only to deceive in the second. His government has been drifting ...