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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
May 25, 2003

Classic country without the hair spray

Neko (pronounced like Nico) Case certainly has the tresses to make it in Nashville. Her long luxurious auburn locks would need only a little coaxing and a lot of hair spray for a Loretta Lynn do.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2003

Art that's sweet enough to eat

In early summer, they might evoke dewy irises and swirling water. In autumn, plume grass trembling in the wind. Quite obviously, Japanese sweets are more than a mouthful of sweetness: They evoke the poetry and beauty of life itself.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 25, 2003

Vietnamese cuisine in a Parisian scene

The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 261 pp., $24 (cloth). It's Paris, 1929. You're young, Vietnamese and gay. You don't speak much French, but you can cook a mean omelet. You see an ad in the paper: "Two American Ladies Wish to Retain a Cook." You answer the ad. You get...
SUMO
May 25, 2003

Asashoryu's hopes put on hold

Mongolian Asashoryu will have to wait another day for a chance to win his first title as grand champion.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2003

Soaked in the city

Though you may not have seen Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning animated film "Spirited Away," which is set in an opulent bathhouse for the gods, even the most fleeting acquaintance with Japan will have made it clear that soaking in a hot tub is an almost celestial experience for the inhabitants of these...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 25, 2003

Time to examine different approaches toward education

The eradication of illiteracy throughout the world is an ongoing endeavor and a noble one. However, in countries where the vast majority of the population can now read and write, those populations did not, as the German poet-essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger once said, learn to do so "because they felt...
BASEBALL / MLB
May 25, 2003

Tuffy's replacement powers charging Buffaloes over Orix

Daisuke Masuda went 2-for-2 at the plate and connected for a solo homer in the seventh inning Saturday to lead the Kintetsu Buffaloes to a 9-1 win over the Orix BlueWave in Kobe.
EDITORIALS
May 25, 2003

Auguries in a coffee cup

Eight years ago, there was no such thing as a Starbucks coffee shop in Japan. Now they are part of the landscape; in the big cities, you can often find two or three of the ubiquitous stores with the round green logo within a couple of blocks of each other. That might sound like the ultimate definition...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 25, 2003

Anthropology through the lens

GUNMA: Life and People. by Greg Davis. Tokyo: IPJ, 2002, 107 pp., 5,000 yen (cloth). Greg Davis had lived in Japan since 1970, working as a photojournalist throughout Asia. His sudden death on May 4 of liver cancer at the age of 54 is a major loss to his profession and those whose lives he touched all...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 25, 2003

The boy bachelor

Last week, the National Tax Bureau released its annual list of the country's top tax-payers, and at the summit of the pile of show business personalities was Masahiro Nakai, the self-effacing leader of the boy group SMAP. Nakai's high salary is easy to understand: He appears in at least a half-dozen...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2003

The rise and fall of the Romanovs remembered

First of two parts At its height, in the middle of the 19th century, the Russian Empire ruled by the Romanovs covered more than one-sixth of the surface of the globe. It was a glorious era for a dynasty that had sprung from obscure beginnings, when in 1613, in a bid to end years of civil unrest at home...
COMMENTARY / World
May 25, 2003

Marooned Argentines trust in Kirchner

NEW YORK -- The election of Nestor Kirchner as Argentina's new president offers hope for a national economic and social recovery following decades of government mismanagement. Kirchner will need to back his intentions with prompt implementation of effective policies to convince Argentines that he will...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Fuji Heavy banking on new Legacy

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., which makes Subaru vehicles, launched a remodeled Legacy wagon on the domestic market Friday, hoping the key product will reinvigorate the carmaker's sluggish sales.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Tertiary activity index posts first decline in four years

The index of tertiary industry activity in Japan fell 0.4 percent in fiscal 2002 from the previous year, due to sluggish business in the financial and insurance sectors and the transport and communication sectors.
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2003

Restoring trust in the ROK-U.S. alliance

South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and U.S. President George Bush took a major step in restoring mutual trust in the South Korea-U.S. alliance by announcing at their May 14 summit that the Korean Peninsula should be nuclear-free and that the North Korean nuclear problem should be resolved through peaceful...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Hazama logs net loss of 122 billion yen

Ailing contractor Hazama Corp. said Friday its group net loss swelled to 122.6 billion yen in fiscal 2002, due to valuation losses on its asset holdings, including stocks. The firm posted a group net loss of 1.66 billion yen in fiscal 2001.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Scandal-hit Snow posted major loss in fiscal 2002

Snow Brand Milk Products Co. continued to struggle in fiscal 2002, suffering a group net loss of 27.1 billion yen for the year that ended in March, the scandal-tainted dairy said Friday.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Legislation to cut yields paid by insurers submitted to Diet

The government submitted an amended bill Friday to the Diet to allow life insurance companies to cut the guaranteed yields they promised to policyholders, government officials said.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Shiokawa not sold on Thai FTA

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa and Somkid Chatusripitak, deputy prime minister of Thailand, remained divided Friday over whether to launch talks on a bilateral free-trade agreement, according to a ministry official.
SUMO
May 24, 2003

Asashoryu closes in on Cup

Yokozuna Asashoryu employed a crafty leg technique to trip up ozeki Musoyama to move one win away from securing his first Emperor's Cup as grand champion with a 12-1 record at the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament on Friday.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Jury out on new bank's prospects

A new bank proposed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government appears to be good news for struggling smaller companies.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Isuzu eyes fiscal 2003 turnaround

Isuzu Motors Ltd. expects to return to the black in the year to March 2004 with a group net profit of 35 billion yen, company officials said Friday.
COMMENTARY
May 24, 2003

A boost for Japan-China ties?

China has been attracting much attention in the international community of late for both positive and negative reasons. On the positive side, as the confrontation between the United States and North Korea intensifies, and the positions of Japan and South Korea remain delicate, China is playing the role...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2003

Hokuriku, Hokkaido banks to merge

Hokuriku Bank and Hokkaido Bank said Friday they have agreed to integrate their businesses under a joint holding company in fiscal 2004, creating Japan's second-largest regional bank in terms of deposits after the Bank of Yokohama.
EDITORIALS
May 24, 2003

Tighten Japan's tobacco controls

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control adopted at the latest annual assembly of the World Health Organization is the first multilateral pact in the field of public health. The harmful effects of tobacco on health are well-known, but its use remains widespread. The fact is that while the health dangers...
BASEBALL / MLB
May 24, 2003

BayStars' Nakamura blasts Giants

Takeshi Nakamura connected for three homers Friday as the last-place Yokohama BayStars defeated the Yomiuri Giants 14-10 in a slugfest at Yokohama Stadium.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers