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Reader Mail
Jul 17, 2013

Deserving of a medal of honor

Regarding the July 9 AFP-JIJI article "Man who battled Japan nuke disaster passes away": I am profoundly saddened by the news of the death this month of Masao Yoshida, 58.
Reader Mail
Jul 17, 2013

Tribute to people like Snowden

Regarding Daniel Ellsberg's July 9 article "Leaker Snowden made the right call": Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg are heroes. More than that they are true patriots. They love America and its fundamental values so much that they were willing to sacrifice their careers and, if necessary, their freedom...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 17, 2013

Holder decries self-defense laws

Attorney General Eric Holder strongly condemned "stand your ground" laws Tuesday, saying the measures "senselessly expand the concept of self-defense" and may encourage "violent situations to escalate."
EDITORIALS
Jul 16, 2013

Few feeling the economic recovery

The Bank of Japan on July 11 upgraded its assessment of the Japanese economy for the seventh straight month and said that it is "starting to recover moderately" on the strength of various economic indexes turning upward, including improving business sentiment and steady consumer spending.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2013

Do unto Exxon as you would do unto yourself

Last week's resolution on climate change by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ has garnered mostly admiring attention from the news media. But I must admit to a degree of perplexity and sorrow over the document, which seems to place the blame for our heavy use of fossil fuels on the companies...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 16, 2013

Starkly different outcomes in Florida gun cases

Two Florida towns, 200 km apart. Two people firing weapons at unarmed aggressors, purportedly in self-defense.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 15, 2013

Time running out for South Korean POWs still in North

Sixty years ago this month, a 21-year-old South Korean soldier named Lee Jae-won wrote a letter to his mother. He was somewhere in the middle of the peninsula, he wrote, and bullets were coming down like "raindrops." He said he was scared.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jul 15, 2013

Mosquito coils

Dear Alice, I have lived in Japan for almost 30 years, and nothing says 'summer in Japan' to me like the sight and smell of those once-ubiquitous green mosquito coils.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 15, 2013

Walk away from dessert or literally walk it off

If you knew that a 340-gram chocolate-chip frappe (530 calories) would cost you up to two hours of brisk walking, would you still order it?
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 14, 2013

Zimmerman acquitted of Martin killing

A Florida jury acquits George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter in a case that both fascinated and appalled large segments of a spellbound America.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2013

Bad week for a hateful televangelist

The week of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's ouster was also a bad one for the Al Jazeera television network and a hateful Sunni televangelist.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 14, 2013

Furigana: read the fine print, decode the hidden meanings

Years ago, a colleague at a company where I worked had a surname written using a character so obscure, that when handing out his business card he used to joke apologetically, 名前の漢字、ほとんど誰も読めない (namae no kanji, hotondo dare mo yomenai, hardly anybody can read the kanji in...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 13, 2013

Democracy hits the Web, but are the 'real' voters listening?

The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article on its Japan Real Time blog regarding the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP's) beef with broadcaster TBS, whom it accused of bias against the ruling party on its "News 11" program.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2013

Entertainingly angry study of Italy's trains

Thirty years ago, Tim Parks moved from London to Italy. As a writer until recently mired in the midlist, he admitted that he didn't want to watch "the rise of the Amises and McEwans" in more detail than strictly necessary. He has written 15 novels, but his breakthrough came with a nonfiction work, "Teach...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2013

A diary washed ashore opens up a world of multiple realities

A good read transcends into the eternal, melding the real now with a timeless present. Ruth Ozeki's "A Tale for the Time Being" is all that and more: a quietly amazing achievement, a careful construct bridging quantum physics and the role of the reader/observer, a Zen eternity of multiple realities...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2013

West must deal with Egypt's de facto leadership

Events in Egypt are the latest example of the interplay worldwide among democracy, protest and government efficacy. Western disengagement is not an option.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2013

Intriguing coming-of-age story masquerading as a crime thriller

'Joyland" comes with all the horror trappings for which Stephen King is known: a sinister carnival, a grisly unsolved murder, a haunted ride.
Reader Mail
Jul 13, 2013

The old man and his reputation

While telling us of the important contributions he has made to the consumption of whiskey in Japan, both by his own efforts in that direction and by the good advice he says he gives its makers, C.W. Nicol, in his July 7 article 'Water of life' helps to keep spirits up," also refers to "good old Bill...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 13, 2013

Water issues around Asia; the world of solo karaoke; CM of the Week: Recruit

Monday is Marine Day, a national holiday, and as has been its tradition for a decade, Nippon TV will air a 90-minute afternoon special about sustainability hosted by Osaka-based announcer Seiji Miyane. "Nippon no Shoku no Mirai" ("The Future of Food in Japan," 2:55 p.m.) attempts to project the future...
BUSINESS / Economy
Jul 12, 2013

'Abenomics' dark side: hinterland pay cuts

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cuts to local-government subsidies are like trying to "wring water from an old rag that's been squeezed dry," says Kazuya Yoshida, a 27-year municipal employee in Shijonawate, Osaka Prefecture.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 12, 2013

The Cockney hardman who is Britain's most bankable star in Hollywood

Clipped vowels, a suggestion of impeccable breeding: when it comes to Hollywood's appetite for British and Irish actors it is easy to see why producers keep shopping on these islands. It does not matter whether the stars really went to Eton, the public school sheen on Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Orlando...
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 12, 2013

Tweet Beat: #七夕, #鯖アニメ, #愛国競争

Tanabata wishes, political demonstration and a whole pile of anime premieres featured big in last week's Japanese Twitter hashtags! #TweetBeat
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 11, 2013

Experiments in the wild

Ten years ago, when a new cultural facility opened in the western Japan city of Yamaguchi, its founders sought to fulfill a role quite different from those museums in the countryside.

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