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Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 19, 2013

Israel prepares for next act in the great moving right show

Dalya Steinberger's journey across Israel's political landscape began more than 20 years ago when she cast a vote for Labor, one of almost a million people who helped propel Yitzhak Rabin to the leadership of the Jewish state. A year later, in 1993, Rabin signed the historic Oslo Accords, shaking hands...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 13, 2013

Anniversaries abound around NPB

The year 2013 will mark a season of notable anniversaries for Japanese baseball franchises and ballparks. It is Japanese year Heisei 25, the 25th anniversary for Tokyo Dome, Japan's first indoor stadium, and the 20th for Fukuoka Yahoo Japan Dome, the country's first-and still the only-retractable roof...
LIFE
Jan 13, 2013

What Japan needs to do

With its economy spluttering, large parts of its northeastern region still devastated by the effects of the mammoth Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 — and releases of radioactive materials that followed — its population shrinking and aging at unprecedented rates and its citizens despairing of...
EDITORIALS
Jan 9, 2013

Wasteful spending must be avoided

The Abe administration will soon compile an around ¥12 trillion supplementary budget for fiscal 2012 and the fiscal 2013 initial budget. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for a bold economic policy to pull the Japanese economy out of a long period of deflation, including unlimited monetary easing...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Jan 8, 2013

Seven sumo stories to look out for in the year of the snake

1. Baruto — make or break
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 8, 2013

Unneeded farm subsidies off table as U.S. debates budget cuts

FOCUS
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 7, 2013

The dynasty-loving Asians

To the extent that culture matters in politics, the recent spate of leadership changes in Northeast Asia suggests that Asian societies are more tolerant — if not supportive — of dynastic succession.
BASKETBALL
Jan 6, 2013

B-Corsairs squeak past Albirex for ninth straight win

The Yokohama B-Corsairs capitalized on the dynamic one-two punch of Draelon Burns and Masayuki Kabaya in their first game of 2013. They combined for 49 points and buried 8 of 15 3-point attempts as Yokohama edged the Niigata Albirex BB 75-74 on Saturday to extend their winning streak to nine games.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Jan 4, 2013

NHK spotlights gunslinging daughter of the north in yearlong Sunday drama

How to rebuild when you've lost everything? In the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, as many thousands of people in northeastern Japan sought to answer that question for themselves, public broadcaster NHK began looking for a historical figure whose story might...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 3, 2013

Globalization is on the ropes

One fateful question for 2013 is this: What happens to globalization? For decades, growing volumes of cross-border trade and money flows have fueled strong economic growth. But something remarkable is happening; trade and international money flows are slowing and, in some cases, declining. David Smick,...
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 1, 2013

Summer poll to keep Abe in check

While nearly 300 Liberal Democratic Party candidates nationwide rejoiced over their resounding success in the Dec. 16 Lower House election, the mood of some at party headquarters was more sober.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2012

The fight to limit agricultural use of antibiotics can be won with the right political alliances

Ask a dozen food activists what political change they want to see in 2013 and you'll get a dozen different answers, maybe two dozen: Restrict sodium in packaged foods. Label genetically modified ingredients. End subsidies to big farms.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language
Dec 30, 2012

The wonderful worlds of 100 waka

The scene: England, Boxing Day 2012. The archetypical Carters are relaxing after a cold turkey lunch (with bread sauce) and are watching the Royal Family's latest sonnets being read on the goggle-box. Time for a game!
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Dec 23, 2012

Popular slugger Ramirez, family opening Latin-style cafe in Tokyo

Most foreigners who come to Japan to play baseball do just that — and only that. Whether a career lasts a few games or several years, the guys go back to their home country to continue playing ball, stay in the game as coaches or managers or find another job outside the game. A few, however, have stayed...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Dec 21, 2012

Food festivals: all yesterday's parties

The best of 2012 The inaugural Tama Geta Shoku no Saiten in Hachioji offered locavores a chance to sample the creative cuisine of western Tokyo. Thirty vendors showed off dishes such as motsu yaki-udon, a bowl of beef tripe and noodles from the town of Mizuho in Nishitama, and the "Tokyo-X" hot dog,...
MULTIMEDIA
Dec 21, 2012

Manga convention hopes to get a crowd of fans jumping with joy

'Friendship," "endeavor," and "victory" are three main concepts underpinning a slew of popular manga stories that constitute the long-running weekly magazine Shukan Shonen Jump. As the titular word shonen (boys) suggests, these themes are precisely designed to intrigue fantasy-prone, thrill-seeking young...
BUSINESS
Dec 21, 2012

Toyota scores 'poor' on insurers' crash tests

Toyota Motor Corp.'s Camry, the best-selling midsize car in the U.S., and the Prius V hybrid earned the lowest ratings in a new crash test simulating a severe front-end collision, an insurance group found.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 20, 2012

Civil war fears surge over Exxon's deal with Iraqi Kurds

With their opposing armies massed on either side of the contested border dividing southern and northern Iraq, leaders in Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdistan region are warning they are close to civil war — one that could be triggered by Exxon Mobil.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2012

Toyota redesigns RAV4 for U.S. market

Toyota Motor Corp.'s RAV4 was an oddity when it went on sale in the mid-1990s: a tiny, low-priced alternative to hulking sport utility vehicles such as the carmaker's own 4Runner and Ford Motor Co.'s Explorer. But it was a hit.
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2012

Will the second time be a charm for the Fed?

It was big news last week when the Federal Reserve announced that it wants to maintain its current low-interest rate policy until unemployment, now 7.7 percent, drops to at least 6.5 percent. The Fed was correctly portrayed as favoring job creation over fighting inflation, though it also set an inflation...
BUSINESS
Dec 19, 2012

Does Abe win signal a Volcker moment?

Shinzo Abe was chief Cabinet secretary in 2006 when he backed the Bank of Japan's interest rate hike, a move that the prime minister-in-waiting, who is growing increasingly intolerant of the nation's chronic deflation, now says was a mistake.
EDITORIALS
Dec 18, 2012

Avoiding disaster in Doha

Our planet continues to warm. A recent series of reports anticipates a 4-degree (Celsius) rise in global temperatures by 2100 — twice the target that nations adopted in 2010 as the maximum allowable range for avoiding dangerous changes that will include the loss of coastal communities, the spread of...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes