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Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2009

Some taxi firms go that extra mile

Aya Ito takes a taxi every day to bring her twin 1-year-old boys to a nursery at her workplace thanks to a cab company that is friendly to mothers and the elderly.
OLYMPICS
Oct 2, 2009

Mills: IOC voters face difficult choice for 2016 Olympic bid

Running legend Billy Mills, a tireless ambassador for the Olympic movement and one of the world's greatest motivational speakers, took time out of his busy schedule to offer his thoughts on the 2016 Summer Olympics bid.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Oct 2, 2009

Lakestars excited about adding Joho

The Shiga Lakestars made a bold move this week, acquiring Masashi Joho from the Tokyo Apache for forward Reina Itakura.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 2, 2009

Various Artists "Yes We Can! Obama Classics"

"Yes We Can! Obama Classics" is an album that sets excerpts of U.S. President Barak Obama's famous speeches to classical music, simple as that. Conceptually it's an interesting idea — harnessing the emotion of Obama's memorable words and setting them to powerful orchestration. The execution is not...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 2, 2009

Little Boots serves pop a remedy

"I don't know what it is about my music that appeals to the Japanese," says Victoria Hesketh, the British pop sensation better known as Little Boots. "A lot of people in England miss the point, and they're like, 'Oh, it's just pop music.' And the whole point is that I was trying to do something simple...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 2, 2009

Festival celebrates butoh founder Ohno

Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno are recognized as the founders of the influential dance genre known as butoh (originally called ankoku butoh, "the dance of darkness"), which has become an important worldwide dance form. While Hijikata passed away in 1986, Ohno, now 102, has enjoyed incredible longevity...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 2, 2009

Hawaiian sounds wash ashore

George Kahumoku Jr., apart from being a master slack-key guitar player, has a talent for storytelling.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Oct 1, 2009

Motherhouse: beyond Fair Trade

By cutting out the middlemen, Tokyo-based Motherhouse has found a way to make the Fair Trade system work like it's supposed to.
COMMENTARY
Oct 1, 2009

Washington should not forget its Asian allies

The United States has scaled back plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. While that decision reflects a new assessment of the Iranian threat to Europe, most attention is being paid to its impact on relations with Russia. But the decision has equally important implications for Asia,...
TENNIS
Sep 30, 2009

Sharapova cruises into third round with straight-sets victory

Maria Sharapova easily beat Samantha Stosur of Australia 6-0, 6-1 Tuesday in the second round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open.
EDITORIALS
Sep 29, 2009

Funding drama yet to play out

When an extraordinary session of the Diet opens in October, the issue of money in politics will be reignited. The Liberal Democratic Party, now in opposition, will surely assail Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa over dubious political donations....
EDITORIALS
Sep 28, 2009

Grayer population

In its Respect for the Aged Day (Sep. 21) report, the internal affairs ministry made public its information about the population n Japan. As of Sept. 15, Japan's population stood at 127.56 million, down 120,000 from a year before. People aged 65 or over numbered 28.98 million (12.39 million men and 16.59...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2009

'Cove' debut draws mixed reactions

"The Cove," a film about dolphin slaughters in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, drew a mixed response from an audience of 150 that included foreign journalists in Tokyo on Friday evening, the first time the award-winning movie has been screened in Japan.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 27, 2009

Denied bear necessities of life

About a week ago, while browsing the Internet, I came across a headline at the BBC Web site that made me pause: "Bear injures 9 at bus terminal." The first thought that crossed my mind was, "Why was a bear waiting for a bus?"
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 27, 2009

Let's Bike!

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama could have made a stronger impact at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in New York last week had he trumpeted another environmentally laudable proposal in addition to his declared goal of Japan cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 27, 2009

Inner life of a giant revealed

REFLECTIONS IN A GLASS DOOR: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Soseki, by Marvin Marcus. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2009, 268 pp., $49 (hardcover) Author of a well-received study of the biographical writings of Mori Ogai ("Paragons of the Ordinary," 1993), Marvin Marcus...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Sep 27, 2009

Source says JBL teams in trouble, league not viable in long term

Japanese basketball is suffering from an identity crisis. Besides Yuta Tabuse, the average citizen cannot name a handful of other top-level Japanese players. Indeed, this is problem No. 1.
COMMUNITY
Sep 26, 2009

Look for the 'mounted knights' at undo-kai

It could be any weekend in September or October, in any town across Japan. Excitement hitches onto every breeze as teams face off against each other, brightly colored headbands proclaiming allegiance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 26, 2009

Reaching young people with music

When someone asks his age, Michael Di Stasio sometimes responds that it is the same as the late king of pop, Michael Jackson: "May he rest in peace."
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2009

Observing the pieces of a fragmented self

From an overwhelming slew of art, literature, music, cinema and theater references, there seems to emerge a provisional feel for order in William Kentridge's filmic worlds: worlds created between the artist and spectators' activity in constructing narratives from discrete fragments. How this materializes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2009

On the pleasure of self-deception

William Kentridge is known for his hand-drawn animations that evoke the quaint charms of the silent film era while unflinchingly observing the brutality of contemporary society, with many of his works drawing from the context of his native South Africa.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years