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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 12, 2012

When it comes to technique, Ozone says, 'Go West'

In 1956, pianist and band leader Toshiko Akiyoshi made the brave decision to leave Japan and enter the Berklee College of Music in Boston. As a young Asian woman embarking on a career in jazz, she was a novelty back then. She persevered and subsequently spent the majority of her career in the United...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jan 11, 2012

Players no different than in old days

On second thought, I was wrong to make it appear coach killers DeMarcus Cousins and Tyreke Evans of the Sacramento Kings — who paved the way for Paul Westphal's recent ouster — are more full of themselves than self-absorbed slugs back in the day.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jan 11, 2012

Cyborg teddy bears, telephonic androids, USB missiles set to stun

Assuming you haven't had your fill of toys already this past holiday season, we have a lineup of three gadgets that look particularly fun.
BASKETBALL
Jan 11, 2012

Defensive stalwart Blackledge leaves Evessa

The Osaka Evessa have parted ways with versatile forward Lawrence Blackledge, The Japan Times has learned.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 10, 2012

International education a triple-A investment in your child's — and Japan's — future

Bicultural families are on the rise in Japan. In 1970, less than 6,000 "international marriages" — where one partner is non-Japanese — were registered, or 0.5 percent of the total. In 2000, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported that one in 22, or 4.5 percent, of all marriages that year...
Reader Mail
Jan 8, 2012

Clinging to nuclear fantasies

Michael Conley's Jan. 5 letter, "New paradigm for nuclear energy," perpetuates misinformation regarding thorium nuclear reactors. Conley insinuates that certain technologies were fully developed but somehow put aside because of some U.S. "Cold War strategy." In fact, a number of countries globally have...
Reader Mail
Jan 8, 2012

Australians' vital contribution

Regarding my Dec. 29 letter, "Japanese aren't the only whalers": I made a factual error. British Commonwealth nations were indeed a vital part of the postwar allied Occupation forces in Japan. The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) operated in Japan from Feb. 21, 1946, until 1952. There were...
Reader Mail
Jan 8, 2012

A crisis generated by leadership

I am an American who engineered a score of nuclear power plants, nine of the Fukushima type, the Mark I. If this article (Jan. 3, "Fukushima meltdowns set nuclear energy debate on its ear")reflects Japanese thinking, it is a tragedy.
Reader Mail
Jan 8, 2012

Selective opposition to whaling

As for Robert McKinney's Dec. 29 letter, "Japanese aren't the only whalers," I would like to add:
LIFE
Jan 8, 2012

Stories spiked despite journalism's mission to inform

Olympus isn't the only story that has been or is being ignored or squashed by powerful forces in Japan. Here are three more gems from that rich vein.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jan 8, 2012

Stop the presses and hold the front page

It was perhaps the biggest financial story of postwar Japan — or it should have been.Yamaichi Securities, one of the nation's four top brokerages, which was among the world's six largest in the 1980s, had in 1992 started to illegally bury millions of dollars in red ink off the books, setting up dummy...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2012

Holding court on warped ideas of sex and love

LOVESICK JAPAN: Sex, Marriage, Romance and Law, by Mark D. West. Cornell University Press, 2011, 272 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) Nobody else explores the law in Japan quite like Mark West, bringing it to life and close to home. "Lovesick Japan" is an entertaining and insightful examination of the courts,...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jan 7, 2012

Man United's flaws on display in loss

Wayne Rooney looked like someone who had not been training properly during a shocking cameo display in Manchester United's 3-0 defeat at Newcastle three days ago.
BUSINESS
Jan 7, 2012

Woodford ends fight to lead Olympus

Former Olympus Corp. President and CEO Michael C. Woodford said Friday in Tokyo he will give up his proxy fight to regain the top job in the medical equipment and camera maker because of lack of support from Japanese shareholders and trauma suffered by his family.
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2012

Russia's mental adjustment

Through the centuries, every people — big or small — has been working out its own approaches to various sides of life that, summed up, predestine its mentality and national character.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 6, 2012

Firefighters to do acrobatics as part of safety awareness campaign

Wishing for safety in 2012, Tokyo Big Sight will be holding their annual dezomeshiki (new year's fire review) event this weekend. Organized by the Tokyo Fire Department, the event includes an array of fire engines and helicopters, which will be displayed to help promote safety.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 6, 2012

'Spamalot' cast hopes 2012 is Year of the Python

"This is Spam," says Eric Idle to a room full of Japanese journalists, holding up a can of the precooked meat product that he and his fellow Monty Python cast members mocked to lasting effect in 1970 in their iconic BBC TV series.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jan 5, 2012

Mahjong parlors go deeper underground to stay in business

Police get wise and crack down on some of the mahjong industry's more creative ideas.
Reader Mail
Jan 5, 2012

What a 'war-lover' has wrought

Talk about living in a glass house. I have a couple of questions for Kenzaburo Sugai (Jan. 1 letter, "What drives a war-loving culture?"):
Reader Mail
Jan 5, 2012

No monopoly on monotheism

In his Dec. 25 Timeout article, "The holy trinity of religions," Michael Hoffman writes: "Hindus, 870-million strong, comprise the bulk of what's left of the polytheists. For Hindus, the world is simply too rich, too overflowing, too monstrous and too beautiful, to be explicable in terms of a single,...
Reader Mail
Jan 5, 2012

Get real and focus on substance

There have been two worrying letter responses to what many would term the "pro-nuclear" Dec. 25 letter by Andreas Kolb, "Ridiculous antinuclear claims." In Nancy Foust's Dec. 29 letter ("Gross nuclear misrepresentations"), we get an insinuation that Kolb may be linked to the nuclear industry, and in...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 5, 2012

Beginning of the world's end?

You may not believe so, but millions do. They're convinced that ancient Maya priests calculated Dec. 21, 2012, as the end of the world as we know it. These claims and warnings, prognostications and reassurances are on bookstore shelves, on websites, in museum exhibits and in tourist promotions. The global...
Japan Times
JAPAN / NUCLEAR AWAKENING
Jan 5, 2012

Disasters kick-started dormant volunteer spirit

The March disasters generated an outpouring of volunteerism unseen since — let alone matched by — what followed the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.
BASKETBALL
Jan 5, 2012

Levanga cruises past Jets

If anything, Wednesday afternoon's Chiba Jets-Levanga Hokkaido contest was a small step forward for Japanese basketball.

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