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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 31, 2009

Eco-friendliness starts at home

Hiroko Kawata, a tour guide with the nonprofit organization Japan for Sustainability, covers her microphone with her hand and whisper-rehearses a section from her handwritten notes, running over a few words and the trickier English phrases. She nods to Julie Emmings, her British companion, who unfurls...
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2009

Fukushima strives to carve a pacifist path for the SDP

After being handed a fourth term as president of the Social Democratic Party without a vote, Mizuho Fukushima on Dec. 4 took her seat at the SDP's headquarters in Tokyo and faced reporters to give her victory speech.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 31, 2009

Eco-friendliness starts at home

Hiroko Kawata, a tour guide with the nonprofit organization Japan for Sustainability, covers her microphone with her hand and whisper-rehearses a section from her handwritten notes, running over a few words and the trickier English phrases. She nods to Julie Emmings, her British companion, who unfurls...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 30, 2009

Need to know those buzzwords to follow Japan's big hit products

Of all the jobs I've held in Japan, by far the most challenging was the four years I spent during the baburu keizai (バブル経済, bubble economy) as a trend watcher for a market-research company.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Dec 30, 2009

Lakers, fans embarrassed on Christmas Day

NEW YORK — Win or lose, Laker fools remain consistently bad sports. Secure a championship at home and they burn the surrounding neighborhood. Have calls go against them in a game already decided in their disfavor and they chuck souvenir foam fingers (I get the imagery) and plastic bottles onto the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 30, 2009

HRW chief working to change diplomacy

Kanae Doi, a 34-year-old lawyer, has always wanted to be on the side of the weak. As a director of the Tokyo bureau of Human Rights Watch, a position she has held since 2008, she is trying to change Japanese politics to protect human rights.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Dec 30, 2009

CJK recruits Android for new Camangi Webstation tablet

Going tablet: Android is Google's shot at hitting Microsoft where it hurts — mobile devices. Windows might still dominate PC operating systems, but it has never duplicated this overwhelming presence on the small screens of mobile phones, PDAs and the like. So far, Android has shaken things up by becoming...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Dec 29, 2009

Why is the Kansai region a better place to live than Kanto?

JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 29, 2009

New Year's: Communing with family, the gods

In the West, people count down the seconds to midnight Dec. 31 and in many cases keep partying into the wee hours, then sleep in. Once the clock strikes 12 in Japan, many people head to temples and shrines, then proceed to make New Year's Day a family occasion.
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Dec 29, 2009

Why is the Kansai region a better place to live than Kanto?

Reader Mail
Dec 27, 2009

Land mine status quo disheartening

Who would be the eager attackers if all land mines were to vanish overnight? That's the question I had on reading Jody Williams' Dec. 5 article (from the Los Angeles Times), "Obama continues shameful land mine policy." Civilians continue to be maimed and killed by them, while China, India, Pakistan,...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 27, 2009

Thank God the year's over

History has seen worse years than 2009. All the same, this Year of the Ox has been more than most of us born after World War II in the relatively privileged regions of the Earth were conditioned to cope with.
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 27, 2009

Koza remembered

It's October 2009, and I'm sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store in Koza city, taking photographs of the sidewalk. I've been here for close to an hour — surrounded by a dozen old photographs, four maps and reams of photocopies all weighed down with chunks of brick to stop them blowing away...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 26, 2009

The industry of the under-motivated

"How do you do?" The man greets her in Japanese and bows in his doorway. He wears the same teasing grin and the same rumpled shirt as always. Even the cookie crumbs on his collar seem the same.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Dec 25, 2009

Foreign currency saving: Norway or the highway

Why save yen at zero interest in Japan when you could make your savings become a money-earner overseas?
EDITORIALS
Dec 25, 2009

Children's rights treaty turns 20

Acknowledging that children often require special care and protection, and pushing for the world to recognize that children have human rights, in 1989 world leaders moved to draw up a special convention for people under the age of 18. The resulting Convention of the Rights of the Child spelled out the...
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Dec 24, 2009

Trends in Japan 2009: virtual love

In 2009, a lot of hype surrounded human's attachment to virtual and 2-D characters. Was it just hot air, or a sign of things to come?
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Dec 24, 2009

Mao looks for 4th straight Japan title after long break

With the Vancouver Olympics only 50 days away, Mao Asada will take the ice on Saturday in Osaka looking for redemption at the Japan nationals, having not skated competitively for two months.
Reader Mail
Dec 24, 2009

Valuable investment for students

Regarding the Dec. 18 article "Students give job-hunting system a big F": Aside from the current economic situation, which may or may not affect Japanese students' likelihood of securing a job when they graduate — seemingly not if 95 percent are expected to be hired by the time they graduate — I...
Reader Mail
Dec 24, 2009

Flawed 'power structure thinking'

In his Dec. 20 article, "Wake up a friend about China at Christmas," Tom Plate recommends that readers give their friends a book about the Middle Kingdom for the holidays, specifically one with the scary title "When China Rules the World." Everyone, East and West, seems to agree that China is the emerging...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 24, 2009

Web designer Peter Brune

Peter Brune, 45, is a Web designer and photographer who has been a Japanese resident for 10 years. Born and raised in East Berlin, Brune was a world traveler even before he set foot outside the walls of his home: Absorbed in books and glued to the television and radio, he was constantly crossing borders...
EDITORIALS
Dec 23, 2009

Erratic confessions addressed

On Dec. 15 the Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions ordering a retrial of two men convicted in a 1967 murder-robbery case in the town of Tone, Ibaraki Prefecture. Although no material evidence came forth in the case, the life sentences given to the two men were finalized in 1978 on the strength...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2009

Using financial aid to curb suicides

KURIHARA, Miyagi Pref. — Four years ago, suicides in this city in the Tohoku region were running at nearly double the national rate, and as the global financial meltdown hit Japan they might have been expected to go even higher.
BUSINESS
Dec 23, 2009

LDH looks to unload Livedoor Web portal unit

LDH Corp., the Internet company that paid ¥30.6 billion in dividends this year to Morgan Stanley and other investors, plans to sell its Livedoor Co. Web portal unit, sources said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Dec 22, 2009

Expat's Japan remedy: assimilate

Don't be a nail that sticks up. Assimilate.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear