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Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 11, 2011

An English school for orangutans

You may have seen the YouTube footage of an orangutan cooling her face with a wet towel. Filmed on a sweltering day in August at Tama Zoological Park in Tokyo, the ape is seen dipping a towel in a pond, wringing it out, and patting it on her face.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 11, 2011

The annual Kerala festival in Tokyo

This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 10, 2011

Swiss tries to bring foreign tourists back to Japan, a step at a time

The undulating sea observes the solitary walker. A triangular bamboo farmer's hat shades his face as the infinite horizon stretches ahead, marking out his path.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Sep 10, 2011

Capello can't get his message across

It was the kind of incomprehensible, muddled display we have become used to when England plays.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 10, 2011

A guide to fortunetellers

Japan is a fortunetelling nation and so, to start, here is Truman Capote's famous line about fortunetellers . . .
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 9, 2011

Sendai to hold jazz festival

In times of trouble music can soothe the soul. And if anyone's souls needed soothing, it would be the people of Sendai.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2011

Beating the midlife blues

Are you feeling down about middle age? Do you find yourself thinking that time is hurtling and you'll never reach your goals — or, perhaps more distressingly, that they don't even fit who you are anymore?
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Sep 9, 2011

Geary looking forward to coaching B-Corsairs

Reggie Geary brings a big smile, lots of energy, a well-rounded basketball background and a desire to build a winner as he steps into the spotlight as the first coach in Yokohama B-Corsairs history.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Sep 9, 2011

Seasonal tea with flavors of autumn

The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzan-so is offering its popular Harvest Afternoon Tea set at its lobby lounge, Le Jardin, until Nov. 14.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 9, 2011

Going crazy for vintage wines

"Wine, the most agreeable of beverages, whether we owe it to Noah who planted the first vine or Bacchus who pressed the first grapes, dates from the beginning of the world ...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 9, 2011

Fukuoka fast becoming Asia film hub

During a speech to mark his receipt of The Japan Foundation Award for Arts and Culture late last year, there was one point that the widely respected film critic Tadao Sato was especially keen to convey to his Tokyo audience.
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

Red herring of impeded shipping

Michael Richardson's Sept. 1 article, "Beijing wastes no time with Noda," panders to sinophobics. Even if China were to "extend its presence" in the East China Sea and South China Sea, it certainly wouldn't be the first time in history that Southeast Asian countries have had to deal with a dominant power,...
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

Economic superpower notions

Regarding Ramesh Thakur's Sept. 5 article, "Forecasts of robust middle-class growth are reason enough for Chinese, Indian optimism": I admire Thakur's optimism about India and China. In the first two decades after India's independence, it was touted as one of the next economic superpowers. Years of waiting...
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

Aggravating our radiation fears

Although the issue of how to address people's concerns about radioactive contamination was not among those taken up ahead of the Democratic Party of Japan's presidential election, if you ask the nation's housewives, especially those with children, what they expect of the new administration is that it...
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

Skimming over a barbaric hunt

The Sept. 2 Kyodo article "Typhoon delays Taiji dolphin hunt" misses the main point. It should have said: "While coastal whaling involving catcher boats usually starts May 1, drive hunting — a traditional whaling method born in Taiji in which cetaceans are herded into a shallow bay where they are brutally...
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

What is Tepco talking about?

Regarding the Sept. 1 Kyodo article "Tepco plans to flood reactors, extract fuel": I find it simply amazing that the press continues to report the absurd pronouncements of Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials with a straight face. They have lied repeatedly about what they knew had happened. These lies...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Sep 8, 2011

Aki Basho: Normal sumo service resumes in the capital — almost

Sunday Sep. 11 will see the Sumo Association resume the closest thing to normal service they can hope for in the present era of post-scandal reflection. It will be he first tourney back in the Ryogoku Kokugikan after a summer of much discontent and thus "coming home" to the capital will offer the powers...
BUSINESS
Sep 8, 2011

BOJ to maintain 'zero' rate, sees second-half recovery

The Bank of Japan's Policy Board unanimously agreed Wednesday to maintain the current virtually zero-interest rate policy while shunning additional monetary easing to cope with impacts from the recent sharp rise in the yen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 8, 2011

Seifuku Kojo Iinkai ditch the idol prattle for an antinuke message

It's the kind of protest song you'd expect from hardened punks or political rappers — not seven high school girls in synchronized dance.
COMMENTARY
Sep 8, 2011

China turns up the heat

As Chinese President Hu Jintao greeted his Philippine counterpart Benigno Aquino in Beijing recently at the start of a state visit, the official Xinhua news agency laid out terms for a sustained improvement in relations between the world's second biggest economy and its much smaller and weaker Southeast...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Shockwaves from the West

A nervous calm has returned to the streets of England after last month's widespread riots, arson and looting across London and other cities sent shockwaves around the world. As far away as Japan people were asking if Britain was safe any more, and one German politician suggested moving next year's Olympic...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Taking aim at foreigners' blinkered views on doing business in China

Fraser Howie is scathing about foreigners' blinkered views, particularly those of his financial colleagues who believe they are God's gift to a reforming China. "Some of the management of these top firms genuinely believe that China is reforming and say 'we will be in there and China needs us.'
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Sep 7, 2011

With the rise of smartphones, Nintendo faces a grim future

There was a time when Nintendo could do no wrong, when everything the Kyoto-based game maker touched turned to gold. That time is over — and has been for some time. However, that doesn't mean you should count them out.
COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2011

Instrument of love in Libya

Somebody (perhaps a Jesuit) once said: "Force is an instrument of love in a world of complexity and chance."
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Sep 6, 2011

Fighters would be wise to hang on to manager Nashida

Baseball is a funny sport sometimes in that no one ever seems content to live in the present.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 6, 2011

Yen intervention failure may spur more BOJ easing

The yen's third monthly gain against the dollar means the Bank of Japan may decide this week to boost injections of funds into the financial system as Policy Board members seek ways to stem the currency's strength and spur growth.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2011

Jobs could reboot working class

In the week since he announced he was stepping down as Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs has been accorded the kind of demigod status that Americans bestow on the handful of their countrymen who invent, manufacture and market the goods that change their lives for the better.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Sep 5, 2011

University of Hawaii hopes to form bond with Japan

Hosting a regular-season college football game abroad would certainly have an impact, but the University of Hawaii is seeking more than just that.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb