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BUSINESS
Aug 10, 2010

Yen hurting Toyota's low-cost exports to U.S.

Toyota Motor Corp., the biggest exporter of autos to the U.S., is trying to cut production costs for Yaris and Corolla cars as the rising yen makes it unprofitable to build economy cars in Japan for sale abroad.
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Aug 10, 2010

Annual Yokosuka Navy Friendship Day draws 60,000

Fireworks, pizza and smoothies make a hot and humid summer day more endurable and enjoyable. With the temperature skyrocketing past 30 degrees, the 34th Annual Navy Friendship Day, an open house event of the U.S. Yokosuka Naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture, saw almost 60,000 visitors Saturday.
JAPAN / History
Aug 8, 2010

Kanagawa Allied POW cemetery rites held

To commemorate soldiers who died as prisoners of war in Japan during World War II, about 130 people attended the 16th annual memorial service Saturday at the British Commonwealth War Cemetery in Hodogaya, Kanagawa Prefecture, where 1,873 Allied service members are buried.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2010

Salvaging Britain's failed rights revolution

LONDON — The budget-cutting austerity program of Britain's new coalition government has been claiming all the headlines, but David Cameron's Cabinet is breaking with its Labour predecessor in another key area as well: human rights. Indeed, the human rights experiment that Tony Blair's Labour government...
COMMENTARY
Aug 8, 2010

Interesting times on Asia's south-east seas

LOS ANGELES — The Obama administration is raising the U.S. profile in the South China Sea and in the newly troubled seas around the Korean Peninsula. Its decisions are sound enough, and they have been put forth carefully and with proportionality, but they do entail risks and may test the China-U.S....
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 8, 2010

Shock tests reveal rodent intelligence

I once became obsessed with following the Shibuya River as far as I could through central Tokyo. It's hard to explain the fascination, as the river is merely a concrete channel — little more than an ugly drain — and is mostly built over. But that was the key to my interest: The idea that there was...
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2010

The NPT's uncertain future

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's coming into force. Despite its central role in shaping the global nuclear order, the NPT's future looks anything but promising.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2010

Cities scrambling to find centenarians

It all began last week when a mummified corpse was found at a house in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. If the man, Sogen Kato, were still alive he would have been 111 years old.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2010

Coming of age with Hiroshima's mourning

GREENVILLE, Calif. — I arrived in Hiroshima looking for a party on Aug. 6. I was 23 and starved for American jokes, American English, American company. For the past year I had been living with a Japanese family and teaching English in Wakayama, where the only other American women I knew of were an...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010

Masudore to take postrock melodies to Rock In Japan

Formed in Kobe in 2002, Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs are a postrock band with a difference: melody. Oh sure, the trio's brutal live shows leave packed audiences around Japan with jaws agape — but they're also one of those precious few hard-edged live acts that also sound great on CD, charting highly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2010

'No One Knows About Persian Cats'

Persian cats may be the next cool thing, but don't be misled: We're not talking about the feline kind.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2010

Die-hard hikers assault Fuji from the coast

It was a 22-hour hike from the sea to the top of Japan's highest peak, starting out in scorching summer heat and ending with the temperature near zero.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 5, 2010

Bonds makes donation to NABJ

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The charitable foundation created and controlled by Barry Bonds has donated $20,000 to a black journalists group, and the gift is not sitting well with some members.
EDITORIALS
Aug 4, 2010

BOJ's plan to boost business

The Bank of Japan has announced a new lending plan to back up the government's economic growth strategy. It will lend a total of ¥3 trillion at an annual interesting rate of 0.1 percent — the same rate as the central bank's key interest rate — to banks, which will then lend the money to enterprises...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Aug 4, 2010

Ai to kiratta — love and hate in equal measure

You just what, Peter? You just what?"
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2010

$1 trillion wasted on wars

HONG KONG — The calculator busily counting out how much money the United States has spent on wars since 2001 has raced past $1 trillion — $1,024 billion plus at the start of August. There is little point in trying to give a more refined figure since the clock ticks remorselessly on, mesmerizingly...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2010

China's economic pride

HONG KONG — In international business and finance, no less than in politics, diplomacy, defense and control of tiny strategic islands and islets in the seas around it, China is showing an increasingly assertive tendency with the clear message that it will not allow itself to be pushed around by anyone....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 3, 2010

Karate teacher has worldwide allure

On first seeing him, it's hard to understand why people cross continents to meet this diminutive 65-year-old wiry gray-haired man, shaking his head in dismay as some of his karate students struggle to get a grip on the art of fighting with sticks.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2010

Haneda offers glimpse of international hub

Tokyo's Haneda airport unveiled a new passenger terminal Monday that will handle international flights once its fourth runway becomes operational Oct. 21.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 3, 2010

Dying to work: Japan Inc.'s foreign trainees

"The Industrial Trainees and Technical Interns program often fuels demand for exploitative cheap labor under conditions that constitute violations of the right to physical and mental health, physical integrity, freedom of expression and movement of foreign trainees and interns, and that in some cases...
COMMENTARY
Aug 2, 2010

Go past Koizumi's reforms to restore the Meiji spirit

LONDON — "Japan has lost its place in world, no longer serious economic power."
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / WORLD UNIVERSITY BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
Aug 1, 2010

Japan clobbers China in college tournament

Blowouts have been the theme of the early stages of the 5th World University Baseball Championship, and the host nation wasn't about to be left out of the fun.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 1, 2010

TV examines the morals of the story

The new Hollywood spy thriller "Salt" has received good reviews, even if a sizable portion of them admit that the plot is preposterous. What critics appreciate is the protagonist's uncertain nature as a hero. Angelina Jolie is a CIA operative outed by a Russian defector as a sleeper agent. The question...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 1, 2010

Old Japan lives on at Ikaho Spa

The ways are various in Japan for having one's sense of local pride bolstered by recognition on some official list.

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