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LIFE / Digital
May 8, 2013

Google Glass, half full or half empty?

The Chinese name their years after animals — the year of the goat, the rat and so on. In the tech world, we name years after devices. Thus, 2007 was the year of the iPhone and 2010 was the year of the iPad. It's beginning to look as though 2013 will be the year of Glass. This prediction is based on...
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2013

Putin's hand in radicalizing a secular rebellion

It was Vladimir Putin's refusal to distinguish legitimate Chechen demands for independence from terrorism that created the jihadist movement in the North Caucasus.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
May 8, 2013

Cartwright gives parting thoughts on experience in Japan

Head coach Bill Cartwright returned the Osaka Evessa to respectability after a remarkable plunge in the season's first four months.
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2013

Proud war on fools and sociopaths won't win over the anti-Keynesians

American economist Paul Krugman has been right about the U.S. fiscal stimulus being too small and being withdrawn too soon. But he's wrong about many of his critics.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FOCUS
May 8, 2013

Britain's ports put wind in investors' sails

Methil port north of Edinburgh, once the focus of Scotland's coal exports, is set to tap a greener kind of energy as Samsung Heavy Industry Co. constructs the world's biggest wind turbine in the town's faded harbor.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 6, 2013

Software program gives Gettysburg Address poor grade

"Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the 'send' button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program."
ENVIRONMENT
May 6, 2013

Ocean warming threatens fish off U.S.: report

Fish stocks off U.S. coasts, restored to health over the past four decades by cooperation among competing interests and careful management, are being threatened anew by warming and increasingly acidic waters, according to a new report and experts who are gathering in Washington for a conference on the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 5, 2013

Dai Tamesue: Japan's 'samurai hurdler' keeps rising to new challenges

Though word-class track athlete Dai Tamesue may have hung up his spikes, he has plenty of insights to share on how sports can play a bigger role in society.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
May 5, 2013

Shimane advances to second round; Iwate, Toyama earn historic wins

Three historic achievements were achieved in the bj-league on Saturday.
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
May 5, 2013

Yakuza links put nation at added nuclear risk

On April 15, two alleged terrorists in Boston killed three people, injured more than 170 others and terrified a nation — for about $100 it cost them to modify pressure cookers into bombs. We should be glad they didn't come to Japan, where they may have been able to explode a ready-made nuclear dirty...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
May 5, 2013

Antics of 'Animal' hard to forget more than 25 years later

He wasn't the best foreigner to ever play in Japanese baseball, but Brad "The Animal" Lesley was surely one of the most colorful and unforgettable characters to ever put on the uniform of a Central or Pacific League team.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 5, 2013

The right to die: letting individuals make the choice themselves

It was not the most elegant way to launch a national conversation about the right to die, but this past January Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, 72, certainly drew attention to the issue of terminal patients. Unfortunately he did so by saying that old people should "hurry up and die" to unburden the nation's...
Reader Mail
May 5, 2013

What was there to celebrate?

As for the front-page April 29 article "Sovereignty celebration hit by protests": Soon after the security treaty between Japan and the United States was furtively signed on Sept. 8, 1951, the San Francisco Peace Treaty was gloriously signed between Japan and the relevant countries.
Reader Mail
May 5, 2013

Mom should not have to pay

Regarding the April 25 Kyodo article "Mom, firm in crane case ordered to pay": It seems that some measure of justice has been served in the case of the epileptic driver who killed six schoolchildren in 2011. Accidents are dicey situations that force us to confront the enigmatic intersection between intention...
Reader Mail
May 5, 2013

Viewing the enemy as we are

Regarding Hiroaki Sato's April 29 article, "Photos of carnage would check war sentiment": This is very true. So many "armchair warrior" Americans seem to revel in war sentiment. Case in point: the iconic photo of a badly burned Vietnamese girl running naked down a highway after her village was hit by...
Reader Mail
May 5, 2013

The 'right' stand against 'wrong'

As a longtime teacher of comparative religions at several universities, let me add a note to a recent topic in the news and among letter writers. When judging a behavior or attitude connected with a religion, we should think first whether the actions under judgment are the result of the religion itself...
Reader Mail
May 5, 2013

Motivations of disabled workers

I often wondered in my youth why disabled people wanted to work so enthusiastically, because I thought some of them could live in protective institutions without any anxiety.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 4, 2013

An introspection on what's behind the make-your-baby-sleep industry

When my friend Hannah had a baby, someone gave her "Go the F—k to Sleep," the bedtime story written by an exasperated New York dad whose toddler was driving him nuts at night.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
May 4, 2013

Shimane's Davis stands tall in Game 1 win over Hamamatsu

Shimane center Jeral Davis dominated defensively in Game 1 of the Western Conference first-round playoff series, helping the Susanoo Magic rout the visiting Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix 80-67 on Friday afternoon.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 4, 2013

The French left turns on Francois Hollande

The freshly cut inscription on the marble "tombstone" was savage and to the point: "Betrayal! Here lie the promises of F. Hollande which were made to workers and their families in Florange on 24 February 2012. From the steelworkers of Lorraine." With barely suppressed anger and bitterness, Frederic Weber,...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 4, 2013

Evolution: a new boost for 'aquatic ape' theory

It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water's edge.
Events / KANSAI: WHO & WHAT
May 4, 2013

International cultural festival on tap in Suita

A fair is being held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, on May 11 and 12 to offer various cultural experiences from around the world.
EDITORIALS
May 4, 2013

Mr. Kaieda must lead and fight

An Upper House by-election victory in Yamaguchi Prefecture is a boon to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of nationwide Upper House elections this summer.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 3, 2013

Yoshida's ode to a distant Okinawan island

Many directors hit everything from the books to the streets in preparation for their next film, but for his second feature, “Tabidachi no Shima Uta — Jugo no Haru (Leaving on the 15th Spring),” Yasuhiro Yoshida went far further than most.
JAPAN
May 3, 2013

Nation's first egg bank deluged with donors

Japan's first egg bank for infertile women is expected to log its first donors this month, with 38 out of 100 applicants already selected.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 3, 2013

'Evil Dead'

When Sam Raimi's low-budget splatter flick "The Evil Dead" emerged in 1983, it had the same sort of queasy impact you get when you hear a thud and feel something dragging under your tires. "The Evil Dead" was a terrifying and ghoulish film like no other, a signpost of sorts, marking new territory on...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 3, 2013

Girl group bases style on Nikkei ups and downs

Kanon Mori, Yuki Sakura, Hinako Kuroki and Jun Amaki have been following the Nikkei 225 stock average obsessively since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December. The oldest of the foursome is Mori, but she is still only 23. The youngest is Kuroki, 16 and still in high school.

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped