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Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Why tobacco taxes must rise

Joseph Jaworski, in his Oct. 2 letter "Downside of higher tobacco tax", states that, "In a free society, is being unhealthy a legitimate life choice? For a country with socialized health care, critics would say 'no.' Yet, where is the limit? Virtually anything can be consumed in an unhealthy way. Why...
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

What does college ranking mean?

Regarding the Oct. 7 Kyodo article from London titled "Todai slips but reclaims best Asia university title": Who cares? What is it with the need to establish rankings? Is it for bragging rights? Academic chest-beating? Snob appeal on resumes?
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Useful film about depression

Mark Schilling's Oct. 7 review of the Japanese film "My S.O. Has Depression (Tsure ga Ustu ni Narimashite)" said two things to me:
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Careless treatment of a survivor

Amy Chavez's Oct. 1 Japan Lite column about Maruko, the dog from Iwate Prefecture ("Not just cats — will dogs also get nine lives?"), left me fuming. While it had a happy ending, the apathy and lack of common sense displayed by the hokenjo (local health centers that operate animal pounds) was unbelievable!...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2011

'Jobs factor' made Apple's closed strategy work

Normally, you need a distinctive first name not to need a last name, but in this — as in everything that he did — Steve Jobs was different. He was always just "Steve."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 13, 2011

The Human League know you still want them

Emerging out of the late-1970s new-wave scene in the English industrial town of Sheffield alongside fellow electronic and synthpop luminaries such as ABC, Cabaret Voltaire and Heaven 17, The Human League was one of the bands that defined the sound of the '80s, with their distinctive plastic-glamour fashion...
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Cyberspace for telemedicine

Regarding the Sept. 2 editorial "Protection of cyberspace": In order to revive the flagging economy, Japan needs to map out the cyber-security strategies for realizing a system of sophisticated tele-medicine. Effective use of medical information technology will enable Japan to differentiate itself as...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Oct 13, 2011

When the 'City of Water' was a font of culture

From the Byzantine times in the 9th century, Venice was a strategic trading center straddling Europe and the East. Venetian merchants traded wool and silk textiles for spices, grains and other commodities from Asia, making the city — and the Venetian Republic of which it was the center — one of the...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2011

Missing the boat to Myanmar

Where is Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's foreign policy? A neighboring country that has suffered years of isolation and plunder by the misruling junta may be signaling that it wants to come in from the cold. Japan, which could offer the greatest help, seems to be asleep to the opportunity.
COMMENTARY
Oct 10, 2011

Lord, let me quit cigars, but not yet

Despite increasing bans on tobacco use, smoking cigars will continue to have universal appeal. As the trade embargo on Cuban cigars in the U.S. is still in place, it is good to remember one of the greatest fans of Cuban cigars: the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Oct 10, 2011

Darvish's recent struggles to win byproduct of Fighters' real issues

Yu Darvish's struggle to get into the wins column recently, could be indicative of problems that could doom the Hokkaido Nippon Fighters' latest bid to reach the Japan Series.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

Ripoffs on parade in Roppongi

I find it quite humorous that TV celebrity Shimada Shinsuke is mentioned in the article ("Tokyo, Okinawa usher in antigang legislation") as if he were a criminal — guilt by association.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

Think of the survivors' feelings

I was surprised to read the headline of the Oct. 4 Kyodo article "Disaster-zone population would've fallen 46% anyway: study." It suggests that the loss of life — if not from the 3/11 tsunami and earthquake — was going to occur anyway (by 2040). It lacks any sense of condolence for the victims.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

Thorium reactors for the future

Regarding the Oct. 5 Kyodo article "Japan panned for pushing nuke plant exports after accident": I despair of the black comedy of Tokyo Electric Power Co. pressure and my Japanese friends' understandable, if naive, knee-jerk reaction to it.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

Decay within the legal system

Regarding the Oct. 1 front-page article "Tokyo, Okinawa usher in antigang legislation": Why is any new legislation needed to combat criminals? Surely, by definition, criminals should be prosecuted because they are criminals. If not, why are the authorities always referring to such groups as organized...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

In praise of Noda's good sense

Regarding the Oct. 4 front-page article "Noda halts state housing complex": Low-cost housing for civil servants flies in the face of all of us who have to pay through the nose here in Tokyo by having to fork up extra months of rent money and contract fees every two years, while the government does nothing...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2011

Past opportunities for Palestine

Kevin Gaffney's Oct. 2 letter, "Effects of disenfranchisement," claims that Palestinian Arabs could "become citizens of their own nation through the United Nations as Israelis did, but that peaceful path has been blocked by, of all people, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, (U.S. President) Barack Obama."...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Oct 9, 2011

Iso happy to leave pro game to follow dream at OSU

For Ariko Iso, a stint with one of the NFL's perennial powerhouses may have only been a path to achieve her ultimate goal.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 9, 2011

Television's skewed version of poverty

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations currently taking place in New York continue to garner more and more attention from the American media, which mostly ignored the movement when it began several weeks ago. Now everybody in America who reads a newspaper or watches TV news understands that the protesters...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2011

Rescuing America from Wall Street

Better late than never, the movement to take America back from Wall Street has arrived. This week the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street encampment swelled as MoveOn.org members, union activists and ordinary disgruntled citizens joined the demonstration against our financial sector's misrule of the American...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2011

Love and loathing of racial preferments Down Under

In 2009, in two articles published in the Herald Sun and the Herald and Weekly Times, columnist Andrew Bolt wrote that many light-skinned — that is, those who did not look Aboriginal — Australians had chosen to identify themselves as indigenous in order to gain material or professional advantage....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 8, 2011

Communication skill, beyond language, called key necessity

When Mark Rubiner drove tens of thousands of kilometers from Arizona to Mexico and through South America when he was only 21 years old, his high school Spanish skills became a key tool for survival.
EDITORIALS
Oct 8, 2011

Mr. Ozawa pleads not guilty

Former Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiring with his three secretaries to falsify reports of his fund management body Rikuzankai, at the start of his trial at the Tokyo District Court on Thursday. The trial has a special character since it is based...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 7, 2011

Helping Japan with a dance

Take any teenager nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles) from home on their first-ever overseas trip and you are bound to reap wonder. For 16-year-old French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, who came to Tokyo with the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1981, that wonder grew into 30 years of mutual admiration.
Reader Mail
Oct 6, 2011

Plutonium perspective needed

Regarding the Oct. 1 Kyodo article "Plutonium traces found in Iitate (Fukushima Prefecture) soil": Traces of plutonium will be found at every location on Earth if the test is sensitive enough.
Reader Mail
Oct 6, 2011

Close the air station ... tomorrow

On Sept. 7 the Noda Cabinet's new Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba made an inaugural telephone call to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which he assured her that Japan would stick to the accord reached last year to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko in northern Okinawa....
Reader Mail
Oct 6, 2011

Doubts about Japan predate 3/11

I don't want to cross swords with Donald Wood, as I agree with most of what he says in his Oct. 2 letter, "Japanese leaders will find a way," but not with all. He misses the point of my Sept. 25 letter ("Mixed American views of Japan").
Reader Mail
Oct 6, 2011

Noda can't afford Futenma issue

The Oct. 3 editorial "Driving 'safe' through the Diet" states that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda "is under pressure from the United States to resolve the issue of relocating U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa Island."

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