Search - u_times

 
 
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 26, 2014

Roll with it: Tama-chan on the art of making maki zushi

With often hilarious and shocking results, Takako Kiyota, aka Tama-chan, embeds illustrations into rice, wraps them in seaweed and presents them as both dishes and artworks.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 26, 2014

Poland's last communist ruler, Wojciech Jaruzelski, dies at 90

Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader who imposed martial law to crush the Solidarity movement only to hand over power less than a decade later, died aged 90 on Sunday following a long bout of illness, a military hospital in Warsaw said.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 25, 2014

Supercharged CEO Musk aims for cars and stars

When Hollywood wanted to bring to life Tony Stark, the comic-book engineering prodigy who grew up to be the billionaire industrialist and slick playboy alter ego of Iron Man, it turned to the closest thing the real world seemed to offer.
MORE SPORTS
May 25, 2014

Murofushi urges Japanese athletes to expand horizons in preparation for 2020 Games

Former Olympic hammer champion Koji Murofushi has urged Japan's athletes to embrace the pressure of the 2020 Tokyo Games and end the country's track and field gold drought.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
May 25, 2014

With one eye on the future, globe-trotter builds a foundation for change

Having lived in Punjab, California, London and Tokyo and set herself one huge goal after another, Sonia Dhillon-Marty is now trying to make a difference through her Tokyo-based nonprofit foundation.
BASKETBALL
May 24, 2014

Brave Thunders cap dominant season with NBL championship

They had the best record during the regular season (46-8), produced the league's best player, and swept through the conference finals. Now they've added one last dominating victory in the championship round.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
May 24, 2014

Kaneko continues push toward elite status

Chihiro Kaneko showed up Kenta Maeda twice Friday night.
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
May 24, 2014

Tiananmen Square stokes patriotic education

Last week, I discussed the prelude to the Tiananmen Square uprising and the ruthless government crackdown on June 4, 1989. The slaughter of students and their supporters who gathered in Beijing in the spring of 1989 and occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks made the world recoil in horror and isolated...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 24, 2014

Small presses fill a niche in books about Japan

Isobar Press (Tokyo)Speciality: Poetry
COMMUNITY / Voices / OVERHEARD
May 24, 2014

Accident and emergency

American man: One time I went to the emergency room because I hadn't pooped in four or five days.
Reader Mail
May 24, 2014

A free society can handle wing nuts

Regarding Timothy Bedwell's May 11 letter, "Deniers won't let war wounds heal": While agreeing with the first part of Bedwell's letter, I cannot agree with his conclusion [that anyone that denies the reality of the horror of Japanese imperialism should be thrown in jail].
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
May 23, 2014

Five suicide bombers involved in latest Urumqi attack: state media

Five suicide bombers carried out the attack that killed 31 people in the capital of China's troubled Xinjiang region, state media reported a day after the deadliest terrorist attack to date in the region.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 23, 2014

Mizkan buys up Ragu, Bertolli sauce brands

Mizkan Group has agreed to buy Unilever's Ragu and Bertolli pasta sauce brands for $2.15 billion as Japanese companies continue to diversify by acquiring Western assets.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014

Opportunity for U.S. to extricate itself from Korea

The U.S. should reduce the possibility of impoverished, remote North Korea interfering with its own peace, stability and prosperity by simply going home: Terminate the defense treaty with South Korea.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014

How easy is it to indoctrinate students? Easy

Research from the University of Munich shows that it wasn't so hard for China's government to get high school students to believe that it is trustworthy, committed to the rule of law, and that free markets are a big problem.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 22, 2014

Phrase archive restores lost voices

Volunteers are reading out random lines of text to help people with Lou Gehrig's disease communicate in synthesized voices that sound more similar to theirs.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 22, 2014

Hirai refuses to pull plug on Sony TV business

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said Thursday the company still expects to turn around its loss-making home electronics business, which includes TV sets, this fiscal year after completing restructuring.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
May 22, 2014

North Korean nuclear missiles 'imminent,' some experts fear

North Korea, which this month threatened to carry out a fourth nuclear test, may be closer than previously thought to mounting a nuclear warhead on a missile, some experts say, making a mockery of years of U.N. sanctions aimed at curbing its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 22, 2014

Take a country stroll in Kobe

One of the best ways to improve overall health is to take at least 10,000 steps a day, but getting into the habit isn't always so easy. Rokkosan Country House's Two-Day Walk, an event hosted at a small farm at the top of Mount Rokko in Kobe's Nada Ward in Hyogo Prefecture and nearby locations, could...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 22, 2014

Marty Friedman takes a fiery break from J-pop on 'Inferno'

"When you're a 'rock' guy, there's something that makes you want to be in the business, as a photographer, working at a label . . . I mean, you're not going to be a fan of Cat Stevens and all of a sudden decide to be a roadie for Pantera or something. Rock gives you the inspiration to get involved."...
JAPAN
May 21, 2014

Kinki no more: With eye on foreign students, university opts for new name

Perhaps fed up with being the butt of jokes by English speakers, Kinki University in Osaka will rename itself Kindai University from April 2016, when it launches a new department offering courses in foreign languages.
BUSINESS / Economy
May 21, 2014

LDP's new plan to beat deflation: more baseball

Can more baseball save Japan — or at least "Abenomics"?
CULTURE / Entertainment news
May 21, 2014

Sequel eyed after 'Godzilla' crushes box-office rivals

Legendary Entertainment LLC is primed to commission a sequel to "Godzilla" following the film's roaringly successful debut at the box office, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
May 21, 2014

North Korea building disaster reveals regime vulnerability

It may have taken the collapse of an apartment block in an exclusive district of the North Korean capital to reveal the Achilles' heel of young leader Kim Jong Un's secretive regime.
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014

Spare Japan a Vietnam spectacle

Most of us are against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan for collective self-defense. If Japan had legalized this in 1965, thousands of Japanese soldiers might have been sent to fight in the jungles of South Vietnam with the United States. What a meaningless loss of life that would have proven to be....
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014

Vulnerability of nuclear power

On April 11, NHK broadcast a debate program concerning the right to collective self-defense. In the middle of it, all six participants and two moderators were frozen by a question from a scholar: "Each and every government official insists that the international environment surrounding Japan is getting...
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014

Clear view of immigration bias

It was good to read about Hidenori Sakanaka, former director of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, essentially admitting that, despite its international treaty obligations, Japan is a determinedly anti-immigration country with a racial prejudice ("Population fixes have anti-foreign bias, official...
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014

Uncertainties of social welfare

The May 9 editorial "Social welfare is not for profit" expresses concern that publicly subsidized operators of social welfare services are accumulating large amounts of internal reserves. Although maximization of public benefits is an essential part of such businesses, much deeper analysis of why they...

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person