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BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jan 23, 2013

Garnett an enigma despite unquestioned greatness

So why are so many people applauding a guy who makes fun of cancer patients, calls other men's wives sluts and punches opponents in the groin?
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB
Jan 23, 2013

Tellem's take: Matsui a special person

Arn Tellem is considered one of the most prominent agents in the sports world. He represented former Yomiuri Giants star Hideki Matsui during his entire 10-year career in the major leagues. Here he shares his thoughts on the Ishikawa native in an exclusive piece for The Japan Times.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 22, 2013

Rag-and-bone man Kei Ochiai

Kei Ochiai is a rag-and-bone man for the Kanto region. He drives his small truck through neighborhoods in Tokyo and Yokohama, circling the areas while sounding his pitch with a loudspeaker: "Furniture, bikes, fridges, anything big and heavy, I'll take it." His jovial demeanor instantly wins him hearts...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 21, 2013

Panama Canal expansion spurs race to fit supersized ships

This is a story about big, and how one of the biggest construction projects in the world, the remaking of the Panama Canal, will let bigger boats sail into deeper harbors, where authorities are spending billions dredging channels, blasting tunnels and buying cranes from China the size of 14-story buildings...
WORLD / Politics
Jan 21, 2013

Stress gives presidents more than a few gray hairs

Time roughs up presidents. Photos of Barack Obama on election night in 2008 look like they were taken much longer than four years ago. Now his face has deeper creases and crow's feet, while his hair is salted with white.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 20, 2013

Hostage crisis upends U.S. regional plans

The hostage crisis in Algeria has thrown a wrench into the Obama administration's strategy for coordinating an international military campaign against al-Qaida fighters in North Africa, leaving U.S., European and African leaders even more at odds over how to tackle the problem.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 20, 2013

Fed stayed optimistic in '07 even as warnings appeared

It was December 2007, and officials at the Federal Reserve were torn between two visions of what was in store for the nation's economy: a mild slowdown or outright recession.
EDITORIALS
Jan 19, 2013

Violation of criminal procedure

The Tokyo District Court ruled Tuesday in favor of the religious group Aleph, formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo, in a lawsuit Aleph had filed against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and a former head of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Reader Mail
Jan 19, 2013

Let the games inspire Japan

Regarding William Noll's Jan. 17 letter, "Olympics bid a waste of money": Is Tokyo's bid a waste of money?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 19, 2013

Meiji Japanese who sought to improve China

ASIA FOR THE ASIANS: China in the Lives of Five Meiji Japanese, by Paula S. Harrell. Merwin Asia, 2012, 407 pp., $35 (paperback)
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 19, 2013

Beating kids to create 'fighting spirit' in sport doesn't translate

In a recent interview on the Barnes & Noble Review website promoting his latest book, historian Jared Diamond mentions how treatment of the young "varies among traditional societies just as it varies among industrial societies," and gives examples of how some of the former use corporal punishment for...
JAPAN
Jan 19, 2013

Agura Bokujo victims may sue Kaieda

Investors who were fleeced when the Agura Bokujo cattle farm business went under are threatening to sue Democratic Party of Japan President Banri Kaieda for damages over articles and books he wrote 20 years ago recommending investment in the ranch, according to their lawyers.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jan 19, 2013

Kyoto gardens give up all their secrets during intimate guided tours

How do you appreciate a Japanese garden? The typical temple visit — where you ponder a seemingly random assemblage of rocks and raked gravel or push your way through a throng of tourists jostling for camera angles — can leave one confused and underwhelmed.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Jan 19, 2013

Hague treaty not priority, past bill needs study: Tanigaki

Although the Liberal Democratic Party-led government is moving toward signing the Hague Convention on cross-border parental child abductions, the issue may not be a priority in the next ordinary Diet session, Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 19, 2013

Israel prepares for next act in the great moving right show

Dalya Steinberger's journey across Israel's political landscape began more than 20 years ago when she cast a vote for Labor, one of almost a million people who helped propel Yitzhak Rabin to the leadership of the Jewish state. A year later, in 1993, Rabin signed the historic Oslo Accords, shaking hands...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jan 19, 2013

Lance Armstrong and the art of public confession

There are no free rides out of paradise. As a disgraced sporting legend, Lance Armstrong, who for the most part came clean to Oprah Winfrey on American television this week, could be forgiven for thinking he has trespassed in the Garden of Eden, or perhaps gone sunbathing on the rock usually occupied...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 19, 2013

Democrats no longer gun-shy on restrictions

For the first time in more than a decade, Democratic presidential aspirants see a political advantage in championing far-reaching restrictions on guns.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 19, 2013

Why spider's silk is becoming man's best friend

Up on the roof of professor Fritz Vollrath's lab in the zoology department at Oxford University, there is a makeshift greenhouse in which he nurtures his favorite golden orb web spiders. Walking into the greenhouse is a little like finding yourself inside one of those Damien Hirst vitrines that dramatize...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2013

Nation's firms lured by Algeria's resources

Engineering firm JGC Corp., whose employees are believed to have been taken hostage Wednesday by Islamist militants in Algeria, is just one of many Japanese companies making inroads in the resource-rich country.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2013

Moscow's not-so-friendly environmental quirks

Moscow, they say, "wasn't built at one go" — in contrast to St. Petersburg, which emerged laid out, as if by magic, in strict conformity to Peter the Great's plan — and it has been growing chaotically for more than 800 years on seven gently sloping hills surrounding the river of the same name.
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
Jan 17, 2013

Tango orchestra to tour country

A renowned Argentine tango orchestra and dancers will bring their passion for the art to audiences in more than 30 cities across Japan through March.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2013

When the connections are as crucial as the art

Amid the hurry of daily life it is easy to forget what lies below our feet. To most of us, it may appear to be just cement or dirt, but to artist Kenji Yamada there are profound mysteries contained on the ground, in things as simple as our own footprints in the snow. His installation artworks are born...
CULTURE
Jan 17, 2013

Audie Bock interviews Oshima at Cannes

The award for "Best Direction" at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival actually caps the achievement of a decade for Japan's Nagisa Oshima. His latest film, "Ai no Borei (Empire of Passion)," a ghostly story of doomed love, saw its world premiere as Japan's official entry in the most important international...
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2013

Corporal punishment common

The Jan. 11 Kyodo analysis article, "Physical punishment at elite school shows limits of ban," is unfortunately not surprising. I have seen firsthand as well as heard from others how sadly common the practice of corporal punishment is.
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2013

Ridiculous hypothetical question

In his Jan. 10 letter, "Jet scramble all huff and puff," Robert Thornton asks what Japan would have had its scrambled F-15s do if the Chinese aircraft that approached the Senkaku Islands recently had entered Japanese airspace completely and then done dives and other provocative maneuvers?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 17, 2013

Patti Smith hopes 2013 is about rebuilding

By the time you read this, Patti Smith will have been in Japan for nearly a week. The iconic poet, author, painter and "Godmother of Punk" hasn't yet played a gig with her band; that will come later. First, Smith is reconnecting with a country with which her affinity runs deep.
SOCCER / J. League / J. LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jan 17, 2013

Promoted teams hoping to buck trend with J1 survival

Teams around the J. League have been busy parading their winter recruits this week, but if the recent travails of several promoted sides are anything to go by, this year's J1 new boys will need all the reinforcements they can get.

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’