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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 8, 2013

Life under the kotatsu — let the upper body fend for itself

I'll never forget my first winter in Japan when I heard that some Japanese people sleep under the kotatsu.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2013

Wiped out city waits for Tokyo to wake up

It has been almost two years since much of Tohoku's coastline was wiped out by tsunami on March 11. Gone are many of the destroyed buildings and vehicles that served as reminders of the horror and tragedy caused by the monster earthquake in the Pacific.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2013

'Kiiroi Zo'

Ryuichi Hiroki has become the go-to director for romantic dramas that quality-wise are a cut above the local formula weepers whose starred-crossed lovers are parted by a slow, beautiful death (though Hiroki's couples are hardly immune to life's vicissitudes). At the same time, his films in this genre...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2013

How to cope when home is where the radiation is?

When she hears the phrase "a sense of home," filmmaker Michale Boganim always endures a wave of sadness. "Home can mean a whole lot of things, but to me it has connotations of displacement and loss," she tells The Japan Times. "I come from a family that was always moving around, and even as we were moving,...
Reader Mail
Feb 7, 2013

Absurd treatment of an 'idol'

I am a foreign student studying at Meiji University and am deeply concerned after I saw the shaved head of AKB48 member Minami Minegishi. This is absolutely absurd; even in North Korea, people have freedom to date. But I kind of understand it.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2013

Land parliamentary secretary resigned over sex scandal involving a minor

The abrupt resignation of the land ministry's parliamentary secretary, was the result of a sex scandal involving a minor, according to the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 7, 2013

Dirty Beaches draws from Serbian film on new album

Alex Zhang Hungtai is constantly in motion. The Taiwanese-born artist, who performs under the name Dirty Beaches, has said in interviews the idea of "home" doesn't mean much to him. He's lived in Taipei, Honolulu, Shanghai and Montreal, and is an avid traveler on top of that. This feeling of always being...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 5, 2013

Missteps bedevil U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa

The U.S. military was closely tracking a one-eyed bandit across the Sahara in 2003 when it confronted a hard choice that is still reverberating a decade later. Should it try to kill or capture the target, an Algerian jihadist named Moktar Belmoktar, or let him go?
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2013

Time for a reboot with North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun should break the cycle of getting hit with additional sanctions over his behavior by talking directly with the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2013

To regain its vitality, U.S. must lose its paranoia

A Marine officer cannot square the pettiness in the discourse of U.S. elders with the nobility of the men and women he served with in Afghanistan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices
Feb 4, 2013

Tokyo: Are you better or worse off than this time last year?

Dan Lewis
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 4, 2013

Navy SEAL author of 'American Sniper' shot dead

He said he killed 160 people, perhaps many more, making him one of the leading U.S. military snipers of all time. In the course of four combat deployments to Iraq, he said insurgents nicknamed him "the devil of Ramadi" and placed a $20,000 bounty on his head.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 4, 2013

The illness of depression and how psychotherapy may help

One of the most common issues that comes up in sessions with patients at our clinic in Tokyo is depression, and one of the most frequently asked questions is "How can psychotherapy help people with depression?"
BASKETBALL
Feb 4, 2013

Rizing hold off Cinq Reves

This season Rizing Fukuoka head coach Atsushi Kanazawa's message to his players has been consistent.
EDITORIALS
Feb 4, 2013

Civil court reform

Reform has been the watchword for Japan's criminal courts in recent years. Now there are calls to improve the system for civil trials and court mediation.
COMMENTARY / Japan / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 4, 2013

Abe's 15-month reversal budget fudges cost of swapping people and butter for concrete and guns

The government of Shinzo Abe has just unveiled its budget for fiscal 2013 starting in April. Abe's stated intention was to “radically reset” spending priorities.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2013

Soul of GOP depends on immigration reform

U.S. Republicans have an existential reason to support immigration reform. The last thing Barack Obama should do now is give them cause to oppose it.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 4, 2013

Under fire

The video would be viewed more than 23 million times, making it perhaps the most watched footage of the Afghan war. It began last April when U.S. Army Pfc. Ted Daniels pressed the record button on his helmet camera.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 4, 2013

Mass-shooting survivors aim for stricter gun control

The mass shootings that have rocked communities across the country in recent years — from Blacksburg, Virginia, to Tuscon, Arizona, to Aurora, Colorado, to Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to Newtown, Connecticut — have left a well-documented trail of carnage and grief.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 4, 2013

Russians cast wary eye on volunteerism

A country doctor, a tiny, dilapidated village hospital, an indifferent health bureaucracy — and now, coming to the rescue, volunteers from distant Moscow, bringing furniture, equipment, money and, maybe most important, good cheer.
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2013

Saturday class would be a waste

Regarding the Jan. 26 editorial, "Six days of school not the answer": I also would oppose a six-day school week. As a student who has experienced both the five-day and the six-day school system, I can say it is a waste of time and money for students and the schools to open schools on Saturdays.
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2013

A Western woman's perspective

Denny Pollard, in his Jan. 24 letter, "Men to decide the demographics," states that "Japanese women don't want to marry a man who looks down on them, treats them with disrespect and tells them they should only do as they're told."
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2013

Leave Japanese courses alone

Regarding the Jan. 30 Kyodo article "U.K. plan to limit Japanese worries language teachers": While Japanese could be considered a luxury item on the curriculum, ironically, the same label could also be applied to subjects such as art, music, drama, dance and even English, science and math!
BASKETBALL
Feb 3, 2013

Osaka coach Cartwright puts focus on fundamentals

Osaka Evessa bench boss Bill Cartwright reveals what he thinks are important traits for the team leader after landing his first head coaching job since guiding the Chicago Bulls from 2001-03.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 3, 2013

Japan's medical system skewed toward men in treating depression

DEPRESSION IN JAPAN: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress, by Junko Kitanaka. Princeton University Press, 2011, 264 pp., $29.95 (paperback) Twenty-first century Japan is in the throes of a depression epidemic. Until the late 1990s, mental depression was not widely diagnosed or treated in Japan,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 3, 2013

Tokyo's wilderness within

What did our cities' natural landscapes originally look like? In a sprawling metropolis such as Tokyo, with concrete encrusting almost every inch of earth, walling every riverbank and towering up to the skies, it is almost impossible to imagine.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2013

Court hands Somali pirates 10-year term

The Tokyo District Court jails two Somali pirates for 10 years for trying to hijack an oil tanker operated by a Japanese company in the Indian Ocean in 2011.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years