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JAPAN
Sep 2, 2001

Tokyo hoping to double number of foreign tourists

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government hopes to more than double the number of foreign tourists visiting Tokyo to 6 million a year within five years and is considering building a casino to attract visitors, officials said.
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2001

Disaster drills staged across Japan

Disaster drills were held across the country on Saturday, the 78th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake which reduced most of Tokyo and Yokohama to rubble and left more than 140,000 people dead or missing.
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2001

Severity of injuries left doctors powerless

Most of the victims of a powerful gas explosion and fire in Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment district early Saturday morning were dead before they reached hospitals in the metropolitan region, leaving doctors with no chance of saving them.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 2, 2001

Reflections on Buddhist soul food

I have always believed cooking is more religion than art. We expect our artists to entertain us and elicit emotion. What we ask most of all of our chefs and our spiritual leaders, however, is that they soothe us.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Suzuki denies all links with Kenyan project

The following are excerpts from an interview with Lower House member Muneo Suzuki about a controversial hydropower project in Kenya. The interview was conducted on Aug. 22 in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Foreign Ministry tied to new scandal involving padded Tokyo hotel bills

A number of bureaus and departments within the Foreign Ministry have been improperly pooling funds by having several Tokyo hotels overcharge the ministry account, according to ministry sources.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Britain probes Blackman case 'con artist'

British police are investigating the man who claimed to be offering a 77 million yen reward in last year's search for hostess Lucie Blackman on suspicion of fraud.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Nikkei hits postbubble closing low

An overnight tumble on Wall Street and investors' disappointment in what they see as lukewarm government action on structural reform kept Tokyo stocks weak Friday and again sent the key price index to a new postbubble closing low.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Tokyo price index falls 1.2%

The key gauge of Tokyo's consumer prices fell 1.2 percent in August from a year earlier for a record 23rd consecutive month of decline, the government said Friday in a preliminary report.
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2001

IMF can't review Japan banks: FSA

The government cannot accept a request from the International Monetary Fund to conduct an assessment of Japan's financial system, Financial Services Agency chief Hakuo Yanagisawa said Friday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 1, 2001

Prize-winning poet and the Japanese connection

By today, Ken Taylor will be back in his native Australia after a month in France and three weeks in Japan. He says he always learns something from his trips here -- 17 to date -- but at our time of meeting has no idea what that is. "The process can take a long time, or I may know when I step off the...
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Islanders' concerns over cash grow

More than half of the people evacuated from Miyake Island following the eruption of Mount Oyama a year ago are experiencing economic difficulties, according to a recent survey by Kyodo News.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Dirty waters surround Kenya dam plan

A group of lawmakers will arrive in Kenya on Sunday for a two-day inspection tour that is likely to end up endorsing a controversial hydroelectric dam project.
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2001

Rise in housing starts is first since December

Housing starts rose 1.8 percent in July from a year earlier to 103,135 units, marking the first increase since December, the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry said Friday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 1, 2001

Keiko Sato and Haruko Miura

LONDON -- Japan 2001, a series of events, is being presented across Britain to show the culture of contemporary Japan to Britons who normally are not familiar with Japanese life. Last May, a full-scale Japanese festival in London's Hyde Park opened the yearlong, nationwide project. As well as concerts...
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2001

Overtime hours declined in July

Employees in Japan's manufacturing sector worked less overtime in July than a year earlier for the fifth straight month of decline, the labor ministry said Friday.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Ministry to get ex-justice as adviser

Former Supreme Court Justice Itsuo Sonobe will become an inspections adviser at the scandal-riddled Foreign Ministry, Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Friday.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

Kinki post office linked with Koso support meeting

OSAKA -- The Kinki Postal Administration Office in March paid for a meeting in Osaka of a group of special post office heads connected with an election violation case surrounding Kenji Koso, a newly elected House of Councilors lawmaker in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, investigative sources said....
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2001

14,700 Hitachi staff to be cut in IT slump

Hitachi Ltd. said Friday that it will abolish 14,700 jobs, or 4.5 percent of its 324,000-strong group workforce, by the end of March to help turn around declining earnings amid the slump in the information technology sector.
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2001

Reform timetable necessary: Koizumi

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Friday that it is necessary to draw up a specific timetable for reform initiatives to promote understanding and support.
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2001

NTT union members slam transfer, wage-cut plans

Around 150 members of a Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. workers union took part in a sit-in and rally Friday morning in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward protesting planned restructuring moves by the company.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic