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CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 1, 2008

Cultural visitation, travel show special, eating game show

This week, rakugo (raconteur) storyteller Tsurube Shofukutei visits the historic town of Izumo in Shimane Prefecture on his travel show "Tsurube no Kazoku ni Kampai (Tsurube Toasts Families)" (NHK-G, Monday, 8 p.m.). He's joined by former J. League soccer star Rui Ramos, whom he meets under the torii...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 31, 2008

Che's daughter speaks out

Aleida Guevara, daughter of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, recently made an emotional visit to Hiroshima to follow in the footsteps of her father and address her country's humanitarian efforts to provide medical aid to other nations in need.
Rugby
May 30, 2008

Kirwan to lead Japan against former team

Japan coach John Kirwan will get a little help from his former New Zealand teammates as he prepares his side for the upcoming Pacific Nations Cup.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
May 30, 2008

Good drinks for those who wait

In most sake breweries, the brewing season is over by May, a month marked by the announcement of the National New Sake Awards, the biggest public prize to which a brewer can aspire. (Those interested can taste some of the prizewinners at the National Sake Fair in Tokyo's Ikebukuro on June 11th.)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 30, 2008

'Black Gold'

Some two decades of involvement in the music industry has done little to dull my amazement at how the person who creates the actual product for sale — the musician — is the lowest person on the food chain. Musicians get paid last and least, their cut far less than that of the retailer or the distributor...
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2008

Mr. Fukuda's vision

In August 1977 then Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda in Manila gave a speech on Japan's Asia diplomacy. Under what was later called the Fukuda doctrine, Japan promised to refrain from becoming a military power, to pursue "heart-to-heart" relationships of mutual trust in various fields, to seek solidarity...
COMMENTARY / World
May 29, 2008

Myanmar's referendum farce

PRAGUE — The enormous suffering of the Burmese people caused by the recent cyclone, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths, deserves the sympathy of the entire world. But more than sympathy is needed, because the Burmese military junta's incompetence and brutal oppression are further aggravating...
SOCCER / World cup
May 28, 2008

Nakamura unable to give Japan scoring spark in return

Shunsuke Nakamura's return to international action was not enough to inspire Japan to victory as Takeshi Okada's men labored to a 0-0 draw with Paraguay on Tuesday night.
EDITORIALS
May 27, 2008

Common sense on eating

The recently issued fiscal 2007 government white paper on agriculture conveys a strong sense of crisis over Japan's food supply, stating that "unprecedented changes are taking place." The government must take measures to increase domestic food production and stabilize food imports, and consumers should...
JAPAN / AFRICA LIFELINE
May 26, 2008

Tokyo ready to shift foreign-aid focus from Asia to Africa

Japan is embarking on a diplomatic sea change.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 24, 2008

Terry's miss took Ronaldo off the hook in Moscow

LONDON — For a few minutes Cristiano Ronaldo's CV had a new, ignominious entry. The player who lost the 2008 Champions League final for Manchester United.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / LIQUID CULTURE
May 23, 2008

Japanese malt scotches rivals

If you know Nikka Whisky only as the producer of the extraordinarily cheap peatless Black that fills the nether regions of Japan's whisky market, you might be surprised to learn that the company makes around 40 other styles — and one of them has just been voted the best single malt in the world....
Reader Mail
May 22, 2008

The right thing for public health

Tom Plate's May 4 article, "A chance for Beijing to take a stand on health," is insightful in that it points out that health, press freedom and, most of all, human consciousness are our most precious assets. There are no national boundaries for epidemics such as SARS and bird flu. They could occur in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2008

Rwandan troupe investigates societies' failures

I n 1994, Hutu militias began the systematic genocide of the Tutsi people of Rwanda. In just 100 days, an estimated 1 million people had been butchered and whole families, villages and towns destroyed. Once Tutsi rebels regrouped and took control of the unstable country, many of the Hutus responsible...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 21, 2008

A nature sanctuary for the ages

Regular readers know that my usual sphere is the biosphere and that I typically pursue wildlife in the wilds. Occasionally, though, one should step beyond home turf and try dipping a toe into a new stream of consciousness.
JAPAN
May 21, 2008

Onus on Japan to spur African development

Given that Japan is hosting both the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development and the Group of Eight summit this year, the international community expects it to show leadership in promoting the sustainable development of African countries, Sadako Ogata, president of the Japan International...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 21, 2008

Twitter launch in Japanese a boon for microblogging

Twitter is the Web site and service on a lot of lips in the technology world right now. It is a service that serves one very simple function by letting its users answer a simple question, "What are you doing now?" Users then subscribe to these answers by "following" the accounts of other users. The result...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 20, 2008

Tachikawa Three claim ruling marks 'crisis for Japan and its democracy'

Prisoners of conscience, communists, antiwar activists, martyrs for Japan's tottering pacifist Constitution: Toshiyuki Obora, Nobuhiro Onishi and Sachimi Takada have been called many things since February 2004, and worse besides.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 20, 2008

U.K. home-schoolers come to Tokyo for robot comp

Donning T-shirts of all colors and designs, some of the world's brightest science-minded boys and girls met in Tokyo in late April for the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Open Asian Championship, an international robotics competition for children aged 9 to 15.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 18, 2008

Japan affords translators an elevated status not found elsewhere

Here's a little quiz for you.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 18, 2008

Nature naturalized in Japanese gardens

INCOMPARABLE JAPANESE GARDENS, photographs by Gorazd Vilhar, text by Charlotte Anderson. Tokyo: IBC Publishing, 2008, 192 pp., with 159 full-color plates, ¥5,500 (cloth) If we compare the "incomparable," we will discover that the difference of the Japanese garden depends upon the Japanese, very different,...
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2008

What if Barack Obama were a real Muslim?

LOS ANGELES — A significant number of West Virginians (and some others in America) evidently take the view that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. In a surpassingly depressing report from the coal-miner state on the eve of Tuesday's West Virginia primary, The Los...
SOCCER / J. League
May 16, 2008

Okada unveils Kirin Cup squad

Japan manager Takeshi Okada called up Celtic playmaker Shunsuke Nakamura for the first time Thursday as he prepares for June's do-or-die World Cup qualifying matches with two friendly matches later this month.
BUSINESS
May 15, 2008

Internet businesses try luck in overseas markets

While Japanese products from cars to TVs are known throughout the world, the country's Internet services have so far been conspicuously absent abroad.
COMMENTARY / World
May 14, 2008

Condemning the crime in Gaza

ATLANTA — The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned — with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air or land.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past