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COMMENTARY
Jan 21, 2014

Obama's still spying on you, no matter what he says

If you're worried that the government has already collected enough phone-call metadata to map out the details of your life at the click of a button, then President Barack Obama's much-hyped speech recently on intelligence gathering will probably do little to allay your concerns.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 20, 2014

Lego could help girls build their future careers

Writer Rachel Cooke believes that if more girls were encouraged to play with building toys such as Lego, then there may be more female architects and engineers.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jan 20, 2014

My niece, the drug smuggler

Imagine two New York Jewish women groomed among the stylish and well-educated on opposite shores of Long Island. They meet up in Tokyo for the first time. In a strange twist of fate, they are not sipping tea from fine bone china, as they might have back home. Instead they find themselves seated on opposite...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 19, 2014

Marketers succeed by generating hitto products

Japanese consumers and marketers alike certainly love their ヒット商品 (hitto shōhin, hit products). To understand how this term came about, we need to look back to the decade following World War II. When living standards gradually began to improve from the early 1950s, Japanese consumers eagerly...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 19, 2014

Abe: 'Numbers do not lie'

Prime Minister Abe plays up fiscal consolidation and across-the-board prosperity as he returns to his “Abenomics” script for the Liberal Democratic Party convention.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 19, 2014

'Damning' Savile review expected to reveal up to 1,000 cases of child abuse

The BBC will be plunged into fresh crisis with the publication of a damning review, expected next month, that will reveal its staff turned a blind eye to the rape and sexual assault of up to 1,000 girls and boys by Jimmy Savile in the corporation's changing rooms and studios.
WORLD
Jan 19, 2014

'Living suicide bomb' returns to wage jihad

Ahmed al-Shayea was known as the "living suicide bomb" — the young Saudi driver of a fuel tanker bomb in Iraq who survived to renounce violence and warn his countrymen of the dangers of jihad.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 18, 2014

How a yoga school became a doomsday cult

Aum Shinrikyo's criminal activities began in the late 1980s and culminated in the 1995 nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo's subway system. The group was founded in 1984 by Shoko Asahara, the babbling, half-blind guru whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 18, 2014

Meditation may reduce anxiety, depression

Meditation may offer the same relief as antidepressants for people with symptoms of anxiety and depression, according to an analysis of previous findings on the practice.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 18, 2014

Exploring the realm of Lewchew

When I told the Japanese woman with whom I'd struck up a conversation in central Tokyo's very handy Haneda airport that I was flying to Lewchew, she looked puzzled.
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 18, 2014

Will Japan prepared mean nature ruined?

"Resilience" is a hot topic these days — not in self-help books, but among policymakers worldwide. As governments become convinced that climate change is a real threat, they are taking steps to ensure communities can bounce back from the increasing impact of floods, storms, fires and droughts they...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2014

A True Novel

Like all artists, novelists find the impetus to begin in various places. Some inspire themselves with a formal challenge. Georges Perec, for example, asked himself what would happen if he tried to write a novel entirely bereft of the letter "e." Others, in their doodling and false starts, stumble upon...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jan 18, 2014

The Setting Sun

Career nihilist Osamu Dazai had already attempted suicide four times when he published his most famous novel in 1947. "The Setting Sun" quickly became a byword for the decline of Japan's aristocracy in the wake of World War II, but its portrait of a country adrift from its spiritual moorings would resonate...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Jan 17, 2014

Coach serves up support for Japan's budding tennis stars

Arriving in Japan in 1986, Colombia-born coach and player Rodrigo Hernandez brought with him a wealth of experience and expertise gained from working with and competing against some of the greats of world tennis. Expecting to stay only a year, he's been coaching here ever since.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 16, 2014

Study dispels 'obesity paradox' idea for diabetics

The "obesity paradox" — the controversial notion that being overweight might actually be healthier for some people with diabetes — seems to be a myth, researchers report. A major study finds there is no survival advantage to being large, and a disadvantage to being very large.
EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2014

Election spotlight on nuclear power

Expect the question of whether Japan should rely on nuclear power generation in the future to be a main theme of the Feb. 9 Tokyo gubernatorial election after former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced his candidacy.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Jan 16, 2014

Exploring Omotesando's cool cultural playground

Over the course of my adult life, I've made — and forsaken — countless New Year's resolutions. So many that by my mid-30s I had stopped making them altogether. Then a few years ago, I began using Jan. 1 to commit myself to small parental self-improvements that were feasible enough that even I could...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jan 16, 2014

Hit Hokkaido's slopes for tasty seasonal fare

Kutchan, near Niseko, is probably the only town in Japan where convenience stores stock pinto beans and Vegemite. In fact, Hokkaido's ski paradise, internationally known for its powder snow, is steadily forging a new reputation, one bite at a time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2014

Why Winding Refn doesn't care if you hate his movie

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn was a film-school dropout who gained sudden acclaim at the tender age of 24 with his ultraviolent 1996 film "Pusher," which was eventually developed into a trilogy. He reached wider audiences with "Fear X" (starring John Turturro) and British crime flick "Bronson,"...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2014

'A Late Quartet (25-Nen-me no Gengaku Shijuso)'

Director: Yaron Zilberman
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 16, 2014

Cultist downplays guilt as trial opens

Makoto Hirata, one of the last Aum Shinrikyo cultists yet to be tried, on Thursday played down his involvement in the 1995 kidnapping of a Tokyo notary, telling the Tokyo District Court in his first trial session that he only drove the getaway car and had no inkling of what was to unfold.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 15, 2014

'Kaz' Kumagai brings tip-top tap to town

"Anyone can enjoy being be a tap dancer in their daily life; all you have to do is casually make a rhythm with your feet when you're walking down the street," Japan's leading exponent of the art, Kazunori Kumagai, insists — seemingly oblivious to the gulf between him and most of the rest of clod-hopping...
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jan 15, 2014

Three cases, three paths to legitimacy for Supreme Court

When I began studying Japanese, one of my goals was to be able to read the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's version of The Wall Street Journal. Achieving that goal, however, meant realizing that it is possibly The Most Boring Newspaper on Earth.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 15, 2014

Two photographers in a state of play

In an intriguing double-header, two of photography's more colorful characters are exhibited together at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, providing an interesting glimpse of art form as play.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 15, 2014

'Missing' U.K. man turns up safe in Britain

Running in fear for his life or just to escape it? A British businessman who mysteriously disappeared from Tokyo last year, sparking speculation of misadventure, has turned up back in England, safe and sound, according to a British media report.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 14, 2014

Maishin: Safe haven in Shibuya for sake-loving adults

Shibuya is not a neighborhood where you head for haute cuisine. But all that window-shopping, people-watching, hanging out and having fun can be hungry work. So it's good to have a few places up your sleeve that offer sustenance and respite from the crowds and noise.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2014

India's shambolic Afghan policy

India stands at a crossroads where it remains keen to preserve its interests in Afghanistan but has refused to step up its role as a regional security provider.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2014

The deal breaks down in Bangladeshi politics

Since the restoration of democracy in 1991, Bangladesh has managed to avoid the political turbulence that haunted it during the first two decades of its existence. Until now.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2014

Economic inequality by the click

Free markets are expected to distribute the fruits of some new technologies in dramatically unequal ways. Will the relative losers, satiated by computer games and Internet entertainment, and provided with the basics of a minimally acceptable life, be too docile to revolt?

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