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Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 6, 2008

Hillman aims for Sapporo-like success in K.C.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Last November at his sayonara party in Tokyo, I semi-promised outgoing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Trey Hillman I would travel to Kansas City in 2008 to see him in action as skipper of the American League Royals. Last month, I made good on that promise.
JAPAN
Jul 6, 2008

Still 'efficient' G8 faces new realities

The 19th-century historian and political analyst Walter Bagehot divided affairs of state between what he called the dignified and the efficient. In the dignified category were great formal meetings of state, the pomp and ceremony surrounding heads of state and monarchs, and all the symbolic parades and...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 4, 2008

Plunging into the abyss

I'm hanging from a rope, high above the churning froth of an ice-blue river. My friends are waving and shouting out to me, but the roar of the waterfall muffles their voices. I pull myself off a wooden seat and lower my legs. Now there's nothing between me and the water below but crisp mountain air....
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jul 2, 2008

Talks may heat up and go nowhere but global warming isn't waiting

Eleven of the 12 years between 1995 and 2006 ranked among the 12 warmest years since 1850, and since 1993 the global sea level has risen by an annual rate of 3.1 mm.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2008

Fukuda's heart for G8 leadership

This fragile earth of about 6.5 billion souls faces grave and unprecedented challenges: soaring prices of oil and basic commodities that fuel daily life; price increases that make staple foods like rice and wheat too expensive for millions of poor people; a savage profusion of natural and man-made disasters...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jul 1, 2008

"The Roar," "Waves"

"The Roar," Emma Clayton, Chickenhouse; 2008; 473 pp. 'The sun was setting over the Atlantic and as it ran like molten gold into the waves, a girl in a Pod Fighter ripped through the scene, like graffiti sprayed across a landscape painting, and for a few startled moments, the sun and the sea trembled."...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

Christine Flint Sato: Inking her own mark

For Christine Flint Sato, the key to understanding her adopted homeland has been through the world of sumi-e, a Chinese style of water-ink painting adopted in Japan in the 14th century.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

David Bull: In the wake of Hokusai

From behind his shaggy beard, affable British-born Canadian woodblock printmaker David Bull ended our interview at his studio in western Tokyo with what sounded like a challenge.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

Odile Lundy: Learning the sublime ikebana lessons of nature

Nature and humanity are brought together in ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging cut flowers.
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2008

Social security is calling

The People's Conference on Social Security, established on Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's initiative, has handed him an interim report on how to reform Japan's social security system. The group, composed of 15 members including business and labor leaders, academicians and social welfare experts, is expected...
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2008

Zimbabwe: opposition right to cut its losses

Morgan Tsvangirai was right to withdraw from the runoff presidential "election" in Zimbabwe on Sunday. Thousands of his supporters have been kidnapped and tortured by President Robert Mugabe's thugs since the campaign started, and 86 have been murdered already.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 22, 2008

How can the press be free if it's used as a public-relations tool?

The Supreme Court's decision on June 12 to reverse a lower-court ruling that had found in favor of a women's group received a fair share of concerned media coverage. The suit involved a program NHK had produced about a 2001 citizens' tribunal, which prosecuted Japan's wartime leaders on behalf of sex...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Give guest workers a set contract

Regarding Nick Wood's June 12 letter, "Whiff of hypocrisy in gate-tending," which referred to my June 5 letter on foreign workers ("Hold guest workers to a timeline"): Wood uses rather emotive language such as guest workers being "sent packing when their contracts expire."
Japan Times
JAPAN / RETRACING ROUTES
Jun 20, 2008

Immigrants weave tale of triumph

When the Kasato Maru arrived in Brazil with the first Japanese immigrants at Santos port near Sao Paulo on June 18, 1908, a shipload of Okinawans and other Japanese disembarked and headed out to find work on the coffee plantations, seeking a better life.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jun 20, 2008

Sake and sculptures in an Aoyama backstreet

Tokyo's backstreets can be dank or swank, but on the whole, they're safe. The biggest risk lies in the lure of diversion. Wander off the beaten path on your way to buy eggs or mail a letter, and you'll get sucked in by bizarre Lilliputian entrepreneurships, copper-clad fronts of prewar wooden shacks,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 20, 2008

The rhythm is gonna Gotye

"There are just tons of bands in Melbourne, and I think there is a bit of a chip on the shoulder that too many of them are going unrecognized." So says Wally De Backer, aka Gotye.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jun 17, 2008

Is Japan more dangerous than it was 10 years ago?

JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 17, 2008

How hard is it really to learn Japanese?

As a language so distinct from most others, Japanese has an air of mystery about it.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 15, 2008

Medical variety show, 'surprising' news stories, women's boxing

There's no cure for growing old, but you can slow down the aging process in a fairly painless manner. On this week's edition of the medical variety show "Shujii ga Mitsukaru Shinyojo (The Clinic Where You Can Find a Family Doctor) (TV Tokyo, Monday, 7 p.m.), guest physicians explain how rejuvenation...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Jun 15, 2008

Women vie for the lead in motor racing

Hollywood's finest scriptwriters couldn't have come up with a better story line. A 92-year-old American car race where the winners celebrate with milk rather than champagne; where female drivers are more popular than their male counterparts; and where all V8 engines, supplied by Honda, run on renewable...
Reader Mail
Jun 15, 2008

Eliminate tuition for kindergarten

Due to the fall in the economy, price increases on daily products and the high costs of schooling for kids, young people are thinking twice before deciding to have kids.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jun 15, 2008

Trio release music that's all bottled up

One recent night at Note Cafe, a small coffee shop tucked away on a side street off a shopping arcade in the Jujo district of northern Tokyo, two women and a man sat round a table together. They took out a dozen glass bottles of various sizes, shapes and colors, and placed them on the table.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / WEEK 3
Jun 15, 2008

Get into golf's virtual swing

Considering that people can be prosecuted for driving a car under the influence of alcohol, what about those who go hitting golf balls while imbibing? Perhaps it's just a matter of time before "drink-driving" by golfers becomes the latest buzzword on the greens and fairways in safety-conscious Japan....
JAPAN
Jun 13, 2008

NHK censorship ruling reversed

The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling Thursday, dismissing a suit filed by a women's rights group that demanded NHK and two production companies pay compensation for altering the content of a documentary on Japan's wartime sexual slavery.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’