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LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Sep 2, 2009

Kohjinsha monitors get moving; Sony hits Blu-ray potential

Now screening: Netbooks too often are like a range of cars. The varying bodywork makes them look deceptively different from each other, but turn the key and you find that where they count, under the hood, the differences are all but nonexistent. Maybe the engineers at Kohjinsha are into motorcycles....
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2009

Activist against dolphin slaughter visits Taiji to show its nice side

OSAKA — The central figure in "The Cove," a controversial and shocking documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, is back in Taiji on the first day of the annual dolphin hunt with a film crew.
EDITORIALS
Sep 1, 2009

When cops drink and drive

Aug. 25 marked the third anniversary of a tragic traffic accident in the city of Fukuoka that caught nationwide attention. On that night in 2006, a car driven by a drunken Fukuoka city government worker rear-ended a sports utility vehicle carrying a family of five — a couple and their three children...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Sep 1, 2009

Meet Mr. James, gaijin clown

If you want to sell stuff, it helps to have a recognizable mascot representing your company. Disney has Mickey Mouse, Sanrio Hello Kitty, Studio Ghibli Totoro. These imaginary characters grace many a product and ad campaign.
JAPAN
Sep 1, 2009

Interest high among foreign media in 'historic' election

The Democratic Party of Japan's landslide victory election has stirred interest among foreign media, who generally view the ousting of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled almost without interruption for 54 years, as a positive sign of change.
Reader Mail
Aug 30, 2009

'Trainees' a burden in these times

In response to the Aug. 25 Views From the Street question ("What would you do if you were prime minister of Japan?"): If I were the prime minister, I would stop trainees from coming to Japan. Because of these trainees, no more jobs are available. Actually they are not "training" but are a source of...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 30, 2009

Avian killing fields of lotus

Earlier this year it was reported that one of the 10 Crested ibises reintroduced to the wild on Sado Island last autumn had turned up in Fukushima Prefecture, in central Honshu. The islanders worried that Nipponia nippon, which had come to represent their Japan Sea home, had abandoned them.
LIFE
Aug 30, 2009

Family lore tells a remarkable tale of the charmed life lived by a young survivor of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923

Just before noon on Sept. 1, 1923, after severe shaking in a small wooden house in Kyobashi, an old Tokyo district east of the Imperial Palace, my father-in-law, then a 6-month old baby — along with a steaming pot of rice — was scooped up by my father-in- law's mother as she dashed into the street....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Aug 30, 2009

A textiles tour to dye for

A landlocked train stop named Hikifune (Tugboat) begs a question. Two such stations in Tokyo's downtown Sumida Ward — the other is nearby Keisei Hikifune — suggest there should be some answers.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 30, 2009

no night to be alone

The typhoon swept into Okinawa, bringing rain and cannon-shot thunder, sheets of lightning almost low enough to sear the TV antennas on the blue-tiled roofs. The winds ripped branches from palm trees and left them flapping in the mud like broken-backed seagulls. Even the American helicopters on the nearby...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2009

Jumbo SMAP ad pro-LDP?

SMAP, the pop group that has dominated the nation's music scene for more than two decades, urged voters to support incumbent politicians as the ruling party faces likely defeat in Sunday's Lower House election.
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2009

U.S. should engage Burma

By rendering its sanctions instrument blunt through overuse, Washington has dissipated its leverage against Burma, North Korea and Iran, and run out of viable options. The Obama administration, therefore, has wisely sought to open lines of communication with these countries and review policy options....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 29, 2009

Corporate exec puts the planet's needs on par with the bottom line

The church that Bill Werlin attended as a child had no walls. "I grew up in the mountains. People would ask me where my church was and I would point out the window and say, 'right there,' " he says.
BUSINESS
Aug 29, 2009

Bonds may fall if DPJ wins: insurer

Government bonds may fall on concern that a landslide win by the Democratic Party of Japan in Sunday's election will lead to an increase in spending on social programs, according to Mitsui Sumitomo Kirameki Life Insurance Co.
BUSINESS
Aug 29, 2009

In 'sinking world,' geisha turn barmaids

In the stifling summer heat at the roadside Yebisu Beer stall in Kyoto's Gion district, Sakiko, dressed in a thick floral kimono, face plastered in white makeup, looks flustered as two foreign tourists photograph her. "Pouring beer here is different but fun," said Sakiko, one of about 90 apprentice geisha,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 28, 2009

Sadao Watanabe

Age is just a number, but for 76-year-old alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe, some numbers matter. September sees Watanabe — fans and admirers refer to him as "Nabesada" — celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sadao's Club, his yearly concert series. Watanabe started Sadao's Club to introduce new, usually...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2009

Brazilian delegation studies Japan's cremation technology

In a country where most people are Roman Catholic, Brazilians have traditionally buried their loved ones in the ground under the doctrine of resurrection of the body.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 28, 2009

'Martyrs'

What exactly is the definition of a horror film these days? The genre seems to have moved from its traditional goal of scaring the viewer to a more decadent phase in which extreme depictions of brutality and degradation seem to be its raison d'etre. Suspense and fright have been replaced by torture and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 28, 2009

Arctic Monkeys "Humbug"

Hard to believe, but it is nearly four years since Arctic Monkeys were a precociously talented teenage quartet on the cusp of releasing the fastest selling U.K. debut album in history, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2009

Bathing in timeless memories

Artist Shinro Ohtake discusses with The Japan Times "inside-out" buildings, private memories, public meanings and other inspirations underlying the "I Love Yu" bathhouse at Naoshima.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 28, 2009

'30 Days of Night'

Director David Slade, who gave the world the vein-freezing, hemoglobin-depleting "Hard Candy" four years ago, has turned his hand to making a genuine horror film — a vampire thriller that plops A-list actor Josh Hartnett in the middle of a seemingly low-rent basement production called "30 Days of Night."...

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