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COMMENTARY
Oct 16, 2010

Beijing's reaction justifies Nobel Committee's choice

In China's upside-down world where black is white, the great honor of the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Liu Xiaobo, a writer, intellectual and human rights activist, has been denounced by the government as a "desecration" of the award because it was given to "a criminal who broke China's laws."
JAPAN
Oct 15, 2010

Secret to work-life balance vital for Japan

While the phrase "work-life balance" has gained some currency in Japan recently, there is still a long way to go before people here can find the right mix between careers and personal life, due in part to cultural stereotypes about gender roles, participants at an international symposium in Tokyo said...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Oct 15, 2010

Even with new faces, Phoenix favored in East

The defending champion Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix's two best players last season, bj-league MVP Wendell White and Billy Knight, are now playing for the Kyoto Hannaryz and Osaka Evessa, respectively.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Oct 15, 2010

Tohoku Derby highlights tipoff of sixth season

Finally, after weeks of anticipation, the bj-league's sixth season will tip off on Saturday.
BASKETBALL
Oct 15, 2010

Golden Kings should rule West

A pair of new expansion teams, the Miyazaki Shining Suns and the Shimane Susanoo Magic, join the bj-league's Western Conference this season.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 15, 2010

Celebrate German tradition at Oktoberfests in Kanto, Chubu

Nobody does autumn festivals like the Germans. Originally a royal wedding bash in Munich in 1810, Oktoberfest is now considered by some to be the largest people's fair in the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / IN THE RECORD
Oct 15, 2010

Billion Dollar Boys Club

Billion Dollar Boys Club is the creator of 4 The Love, a Tokyo party featuring everything from house to R&B to hip-hop. The Japan Times asked him about his favorite songs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 15, 2010

Lopez-Curval tells moving motherly tale

"Meres et Filles" (released in Japan as "Kakusareta Nikki)" is a film about women. But contrary to expectations, it's not a celebration of womanhood. Director Julie Lopez-Curval (working from a script by Sophie Hiet) is more concerned with the telltale details of women's lives: the momentary coldness...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 15, 2010

The history hidden behind the mask

Kiyotaka Imai, 67, is a prominent noh performer from the Kongo School, which was established in the Kansai region during the 14th century, and headquartered in Kyoto. The son of the late Ikusaburo Imai, a Kongo noh master of the highest ranking (shokubun) and a designated Intangible Cultural Asset, Imai...
BUSINESS
Oct 15, 2010

Japan will default on debt, fund exec says

Japan will be forced to default on its debt, Greece's economy is "done" and Iceland is worse off than Greece, said J. Kyle Bass, the head of Dallas-based Hayman Advisors LP who made $500 million in 2007 on the U.S. subprime collapse. Nations around the world will be unable to repay their debt, and financial...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 15, 2010

Rue de Shuri: Small is beautiful out in Nakame

Everyone likes Naka-Meguro. With its languid tree-lined creek, quirky bars and design boutiques and easygoing low-rise ambience — away from the station, at any rate — it's one of the Tokyo locales we all wish we lived in. Best of all, Nakame (as those in the know call it) has some excellent little...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 15, 2010

Fischli and Weiss: Creative pile ups

I n 1987, the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss completed a film of what can best be described as a dysfunctional experiment carried out in an anonymous warehouse space.
JAPAN
Oct 14, 2010

Man jailed for child sex in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (AP) A Cambodian court sentenced a Japanese man to seven years in prison Wednesday for repeatedly buying sex with a 13-year-old girl.
JAPAN / U.S. FORCES IN JAPAN
Oct 14, 2010

Bases: Transplanted slices of Americana

Edward Papazian, an American, visits the U.S. Navy bases at Yokosuka and Atsugi, both in Kanagawa Prefecture, once every two or three months, escorted by a former navy friend.
JAPAN / U.S. FORCES IN JAPAN
Oct 14, 2010

Suddenly, U.S. alliance is back in vogue

Only a few months ago, the Japan-U.S. military alliance — considered by both nations as the "cornerstone" of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region — was in crisis.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Oct 14, 2010

Fashion retailer Choichiro Motoyama

Choichiro Motoyama, 89, is a pioneering Japanese retailer who has brought some of the most famous European fashion brands to the Far East. In the 1960s, he was the first to import Gucci, Hermes, Loewe, Ferragamo, and then later Etro, to Japan. Through constant study and travels, Motoyama developed an...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2010

Homelessness declines despite global crisis

MIAMI — Many Americans were shocked last month when the U.S. Census Bureau announced that poverty was at a 15-year high in this country, with 44 million people lacking income to sufficiently secure basic resources. Some would probably be even more surprised to learn that Japan, with its image of equality...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2010

India grappling with the China syndrome

LONDON — A two-week standoff between China and Japan over a boat collision has once again underlined the communist state's penchant for bullying its neighbors, and might have done more harm than good for the emergence of China as the leader in the region over the long term.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 13, 2010

Hawks, Marines poised for intriguing showdown in PLCS second stage

The Chiba Lotte Marines almost didn't make the playoffs. Now they've got their sights set on reaching the Japan Series.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2010

Don't count Thai Prime Minister Abhisit out

BANGKOK — For a man who has faced seemingly endless efforts to oust him by both parliamentary ballot and by bullet, by the slippery devious machinations that are meat and drink to Thai politicians and by street protesters who took over the commercial heart of Bangkok for more than two months, Prime...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 11, 2010

Satozaki times return to perfection

TOKOROZAWA, Saitama Pref. — Baseball is a sport of repetition. You can easily lose your knack for the game if you don't swing the bat or throw the ball for a while.
EDITORIALS
Oct 10, 2010

Freeze the settlements

Only a month after peace talks resumed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, they face their first crisis. Palestinians are demanding that Israel extend the self-imposed freeze on the construction on settlements in the West Bank; failure to do so would mean Palestinian withdrawal from the talks....
CULTURE / Books
Oct 10, 2010

S. Korea riding a cinematic wave

Anyone who has been watching for the last decade or so has witnessed the rapid growth and blockbusterization of South Korean cinema and its transformation from what was a marginal pop-cultural backwater into local success story gaining increasing attention from audiences across Asia and even in the West....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 10, 2010

Polls highlight dark times perchance prior to Japan's new dawn

Second of two parts
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 10, 2010

Standing up for the right to sit down in public

A quick story about me, public seating and Japan: It's 1994. I've been in Tokyo less than a week and this is my first time in Shinjuku. Lunchtime comes and my student thriftiness and Australian love of the outdoors beget a plan: I'll grab something at a department-store food counter and eat it on a seat...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 10, 2010

Weeklies, tabloids hawkish over China

On Saturday, Oct. 2, over 2,670 demonstrators carrying Hinomaru Japanese flags marched in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park to protest the Kan government's soft handling of a long-running territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands (known in Chinese as Diaoyutai), which was rekindled on Sept. 7 when the...

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