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BASKETBALL
Aug 25, 2011

Broncos sign ex-Mountaineer Flowers

Forward John Flowers, who started 33 games for the West Virginia Mountaineers last season, will play for the Saitama Broncos for the 2011-12 campaign, the bj-league team announced on Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Aug 25, 2011

Back to the rice futures trade

In Japan, futures trading for rice started in 1730 at Dojima, Osaka, with the Tokugawa shogunate's approval. Such trading ended in 1939 as the government's wartime control of the economy was strengthened. On Aug. 8, futures trading for rice resumed in Tokyo and Osaka for the first time in 72 years.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 25, 2011

Japanese brothers who championed Korean ceramics

In ancient times, Japanese arts and crafts were greatly influenced by the introduction of techniques and aesthetics from Korea and China. In particular, Japan owes the development of its ceramics to the skilled craftsmen brought over from Korea at the end of 16th century, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded...
COMMENTARY
Aug 24, 2011

America's databook is far too valuable to kill

If you want to know something about America, there are few better places to start than the "Statistical Abstract of the United States." Published annually by the Census Bureau, the Stat Abstract assembles about 1,400 tables describing our national condition. What share of children are immunized against...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Aug 24, 2011

Kim's compassion enhances her legendary stature

"No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child."
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 24, 2011

Panasonic and Sharp betting that, in Japan, 7 inches is enough

It's obvious that tablet computers are making their mark on the electronics world, with Hewlett Packard this past week citing "the tablet effect" as a reason to consider a spinoff of its PC business. That's big. Especially as the company also said that it will cease production of its own tablet, the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 23, 2011

Ondagumi president Chuya Onda

Chuya Onda, 68, is the president of Ondagumi, one of Japan's biggest hikiya companies. Hikiya specialize in deconstructing, rebuilding and moving buildings. They are also experts at lifting up houses in order to make them earthquake-proof with special high-tech materials. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 23, 2011

U.S.-China economic stage

In conventional mass media and online of late, one can discover abundant information describing the unprecedented scale and intensity of industrial cooperation and capital migration between the United States and China.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 23, 2011

Peace Boat-Rolls Royce talks lay bare ethical minefield

Convinced the recovery in Tohoku will result in the birth of widespread corporate philanthropy in Japan, in the same way the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake prompted the proliferation of volunteerism, Peace Boat director Tatsuya Yoshioka spent a day in June shepherding a busload of businesspeople on a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 23, 2011

Last chance for a fix of '90s 'Alien Humor'

The newly released "Alien Humor" (Treasure Productions, 140 pages, soft cover, ¥1,400) is a collection of many of the pieces that Neil Garscadden wrote while editor of the humor section of The Alien magazine. Features that readers might remember include "Why It's Hard to Explain Life in Japan," "Inventions...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

New foreign policy for Obama

When President Barack Obama announced the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last month, he offered a memorable justification: "America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home."
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2011

China's dream boat

China's first aircraft carrier left Dalian port in northeastern Liaoning Province on Aug. 10 and started its first sea trial. There is a speculation that if everything goes smoothly, it will be commissioned on Oct. 1, 2012, China's national founding day.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

Apple core of capitalism

For a few hours this month Apple, once regarded as a maverick upstart company, became the world's biggest company by stock market capitalization, until Exxon Mobil again seized the title.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

Understanding the deer life cycle

The Aug. 13 article "Mie crop-eating deer: venisons of the forest" (reprinted from the Chunichi Shimbun) is interesting but very naive with regard to controlling the deer population. Good wildlife management is imperative, but that doesn't exist in Japan. "Hunters," most of whom aren't very skilled,...
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

Tax hike won't fix the problem

Regarding the Aug. 14 Kyodo article "Fiscal reform necessary to avoid crisis": Politicians understand that when you tax something you get less of it. In the United States, this prohibitionist rationale outweighs the revenue-raising rationale in the case of tobacco and alcohol taxes.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

The real power when Edo opened

In his July 31 Timeout article, "Most unlikely bedfellows" — on the beginning of U.S.-Japan relations — writer Michael Hoffman made a number of assertions that might have either confused or misled readers.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

No country for Asian refugees

Regarding the July 6 article "UNHCR exec lauds refugee strides, urges more": In the 1970s, Japanese vessels in the South China Sea rescued a lot of boat people who hoped to live in Japan. After several years, though, most of them left for the United States and other Western countries.
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2011

Pentagon denies burying Agent Orange in Okinawa

The Pentagon has once again denied allegations that the U.S. military buried the highly toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Okinawa, the Foreign Ministry said.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

Japan's wall of double standards

It's not clear whether the comment by Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, reported in the Aug. 17 Kyodo article "S. Korea blasts Noda's war criminal remarks," is aimed at the Japanese public or at other countries including the United States.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Aug 21, 2011

The 1940 Olympics, decreased rice consumption results in improved health, nuclear power perceptions unchanged by Chernobyl

75 YEARS AGOSunday, Aug. 2, 1936
Reader Mail / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Aug 21, 2011

What more autopsies might tell

The Aug. 14 Media Mix article, "Media coverage often 'the last push' to suicide," contains the following paragraph:
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Aug 21, 2011

Westover brings impressive record with him to Shiga

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with personalities in the bj-league. Coach Alan "Al" Westover of the Shiga Lakestars is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 21, 2011

A blood donor to the masses

The bug days are here again. Shades of green are deepening in the debilitating heat of a summer that's made more of a hardship this year due to the post-March 11 energy-saving efficiencies required of us.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 21, 2011

Korean television dramas are not the real problem

On July 23, actor Sosuke Takaoka tweeted that he was sick of all the Korean dramas on Fuji TV, a network he "used to be indebted to," and demanded more "traditional" Japanese programming. "If anything related to South Korea is on," he continued, "I just turn it off." The backlash was swift, and the actor...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 21, 2011

Veteran umpire Hirako remembered fondly after passing

Japanese sports papers and various Web sites on Aug. 17 reported the death of former Central League umpire Kiyoshi Hirako.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 21, 2011

Emergency escape routes: Publisher maps the best way home

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 brought death and destruction on an horrific scale to a vast area of the northeastern Tohoku region.

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