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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 ...
After me, the deluge. For some reason, when NBA center Jason Collins recently became the first active player in any of the big four American sports to announce he was ...
One cool thing about being an old coot like MAS is that when Hollywood cranks out a historic docudrama, you often remember experiencing the event portrayed first-hand. So it is ...
It’s time once more for NFL personnel honchos to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” In other words, the pro football draft will be taking place shortly. And much ...
The Dodgers MLB franchise sure has a way of breaking the hearts of towns that love them. First, back in ...
It is a moment Jonathan Pearce will never forget. Pearce, who now has a leading role in the BBC’s football ...
The Denver Nuggets are trying to do what the conventional wisdom says in the NBA cannot be done. Twice. And they may actually be on the way. You are supposed to lose the trade when you give up the All-Star and all-NBA player, though ...
Two in-form teams go head-to-head Saturday in a game that will go a long way to deciding the Premier League fate of Aston Villa and Queens Park Rangers. Despite the specter of relegation that hovers over both clubs, each approaches the showdown in a ...
Terry Collins’ second year as skipper of the New York Mets promises to go a lot smoother than his soph season at the helm of the Orix Buffaloes back in 2008. You’ll recall early in that second campaign with the Buffs, Collins resigned abruptly ...
No doubt the Hanshin Tigers are the more popular of the two Japanese professional baseball teams in the Kansai area. Their games at historic Koshien Stadium between Osaka and Kobe draw packed crowds most of the time, and the fans are arguably the most ...
Teen striker Mina Tanaka scored in her senior national team debut, but women’s world champion Japan was condemned to its second straight defeat at the Algarve Cup on Friday after going down 2-1 to title holder Germany in a rerun of last year’s final. ...
Donnie Walsh wasn’t impressed. The former and longtime Indiana Pacers general manager had returned to his Indianapolis home for the 2011-12 NBA season. He still was on the payroll of the New York Knicks, but they were going in that famous other direction — ...
While Japan and the rest of the baseball universe are deep in the World Baseball Classic fever, the conventional major league and Japanese teams are going about their business getting ready for their respective April 1 and March 29 opening days. In the U.S., ...
The American media recently made a big to-do over Michael Jordan turning 50. Among noted outlets, Sports Illustrated devoted the greater part of an issue to His Airness. And ESPN the Magazine likewise allocated huge space to the beginning of Mike’s sixth decade on ...
The Dodgers are not returning to Brooklyn, and neither is Phil Jackson. Actually, when Phil was playing for the Knicks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he lived in an apartment in Chelsea in lower Manhattan not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s ...
To all those who say Manny Pacquiao is finished because of his recent knockout loss, MAS says “Hogwash!” Manny hasn’t lost “it”. What he definitely needs to lose, though, is his humongous, concentration-sapping entourage. Those myriad hangers-on, just as much as the perfect storm ...
MAS felt quite guilty seated on press row at a recent Charlotte-Portland NBA contest, courtesy of the home team Bobcats. You could even say he was on a literal guilt trip that had taken him across three U.S. state lines to North Carolina’s Queen ...
Former longtime Japan resident Dave Wiggins, who was a sports columnist and television analyst in Tokyo, is now a sports writer based in Vero Beach, Florida. He will be contributing a bi-monthly column on the North American sports scene to The Japan Times beginning ...