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SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 10, 2013

World Cup place on line for mediocre England

England's national football team is like the English weather. Rarely very good, seldom that bad . . . a sort of middle line, occasionally hitting a high like beating Brazil (albeit in a friendly at Wembley) but generally a safe bet with few extremes.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 10, 2013

Yellen aims to take over Herculean effort at Fed

President Barack Obama formally nominated Janet Yellen as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, ensuring that the powerful U.S. central bank will be led for the next four years by someone who shares the basic philosophy of the current chairman, Ben Bernanke.
CULTURE / Music / JAZZ NOTES
Oct 9, 2013

Hakuei Kim heads to the border for Yokohama Jazz Promenade

When you think about a so-called jazz capital of Japan, there are a couple of contenders. Kobe makes a claim to history, the first Japanese jazz band Laughing Stars started up there around 90 years ago. Tokyo has the overseas stars, being the actual capital gets you that kind of clout. Yokohama also...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2013

Angela Merkel's pyrrhic victory

Converting all outstanding European government bonds — with the exception of Greece's — into Eurobonds would be by far the best remedy for resolving the euro crisis.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2013

Nuclear arms also serve as instruments of peace

The sensible path to peace starts with the realization that peace can be secured only through strength. Nuclear weapons represent that strength.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Relieving environmental malaise

Regarding naturalist C.W. Nicol's Oct. 6 article, "Canadian sojourn helps to shake off Japan malaise": Wouldn't it be grand if Nicol's son-in-law, Don McCubbing, could travel to Japan and get to work restoring some of those salmon streams that the construction ministry has bulldozed under in the name...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Kanji requirement for daily life

Regarding Dipak Basu's Sept. 16 letter, "Questionable link to innovation" [in which professor Basu recommends that Japanese education abolish the kanji character system]: The kanji character system is only a problem for primary schoolchildren, who take longer to learn the needs of daily life. This difficulty...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Evidence of Mary's virginity

Regarding Reza Aslan's Oct. 6/7 article, "Separating Jesus from the legends": Aslan's accusations of irrationality notwithstanding, there is plenty of scriptural evidence to support the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Abe waiting for right moment

Regarding the Oct. 7 Kyodo article "Documents detail how Imperial military forced Dutch females to be 'comfort women’": To be made to wait seven decades for this fragment of truth to emerge about the sexual slavery of European women is a new war crime in itself, but the government's ongoing attempts...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Activists who act like terrorists

The Oct. 4 Washington Post brief "Russia charges 14 Greenpeace 'pirates" made me think, "Good!" I am instinctively unimpressed by the more aggressive tactics of activist groups — Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherds in particular.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2013

Death of a Vietnamese patriot: Vo Nguyen Giap

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese teacher and journalist whose ragtag communist insurgency went on to defeat the the world's two most powerful armies, is dead at 102.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2013

At 77, he flips burgers to earn his old hourly wage in a week

It seems like another life. At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2013

Toyoda tries to revive love for cars

While Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda is on the cusp of a record year for profit, kids nowadays make him nervous. They're so clueless that boys without cars have the nerve to ask girls out.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Oct 8, 2013

U.K. political pledges reveal divide

After a year that saw him lead the charge for gay marriage in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron seemed to go back to his roots this week. Serving up red meat to his base at the Conservative Party's annual conference, Cameron repeatedly blasted the left and offered a core vision of tax cuts, reduced...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society / FOCUS
Oct 8, 2013

As China targets graft, bribes abound in schools

For years, Yang Jie's friends warned her to save up for her daughter's education. Not for tuition or textbooks, but for the bribes needed to get into the city's better public schools.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON: FASHION
Oct 7, 2013

Madstore, Christian Dada, Alexander Wang make Tokyo debuts, while Parco pushes the envelope

Alexander Wang lands in Aoyama
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2013

Averting conflict over water

In an increasingly water-stressed world, shared water resources are becoming an instrument of power, fostering competition within and between nations and impacting ecosystems.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2013

Navigating the risks of investing in Asia's future

Markets and economies need to work now to brace themselves for a period of higher borrowing costs, some market volatility and slower economic expansion in Asia.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 7, 2013

Growing Community: the JT's most talked-about section is about to get larger

From Oct. 17, the Community section in the Japan Times print edition will be expanding to four days a week. Here's a taste of what to expect.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 6, 2013

Ginsburg's tough decision: to stay or go?

Who dreamed up this bit of kismet? How did the stars align to make this spot of New Mexico desert the best place in the world on a late summer evening to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 6, 2013

Deep political divisions at root of U.S. shutdown

The government shutdown did not happen by accident. It is the latest manifestation — an extreme one by any measure — of divisions long in the making and now deeply embedded in the country's politics.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2013

Separating Jesus from the legends

There's enough biblical scholarship about the historical Jesus to raise questions about some of the myths that have formed around Him over the past 2,000 years.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2013

Does China's left turn indicate reforms ahead?

Some analysts believe that China's turn to the left and its crackdown on democratic ideas are tactical moves that foreshadow the launch of major reforms later this fall.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 6, 2013

Unique ginkgoes are living fossils

This fall, the fan-shaped leaves of the ginkgo tree will turn a golden yellow, and in the silence of the night, the tree will offer a little arboreal tremor and drop its entire canopy in a total release of its unique and primal foliage.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo