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BASKETBALL
Jun 16, 2009

South Korea tops Japan for East Asia title

The South Korea men's national team defeated Japan 68-58 in the East Asia Basketball Championship title game on Sunday in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture.
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Jun 16, 2009

Racing dragon boats in Yokohama

At 8:15 on a drizzly, windy Saturday morning at the end of May, cheerful shouting could be heard coming from Yokohama's seaside Yamashita Park. Even at the early hour, people had already gathered to participate in the 16th Yokohama Dragon Boat Race, spanning four days over two successive weekends.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 16, 2009

'Discontinuous minds' block progress on discrimination

On the final day of the Golden Week holiday this year, I found myself face to face with a young Japanese man who had let himself into my apartment, presumably with the intention of robbing the place. The intruder, who was standing in my living room looking around, fled when disturbed. A chase ensued,...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Jun 16, 2009

Endo's absence highlights value of Japan's passing game

National team manager Takeshi Okada was hoping to use Japan's final two World Cup qualifiers to learn more about the fringe members of his squad. But the first of those games, last Wednesday's 1-1 draw with Qatar, will have told him more about a player who will not take part in either.
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2009

Double standard in investigations

First of all, I would like to correct a factual error in the June 8 editorial, "What price victory?" The U.N. high commissioner for human rights is in fact a woman and not a man. I do hope that this was just a typo, but the fact that the U.N. high commissioner (UNHCR) was addressed as "Mr." and then...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 14, 2009

Brewers' Macha making most of second shot managing in majors

Take a look at the standings in the various divisions in Major League Baseball, and you will find the usual high-profile, big-market teams at or near the top.
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 14, 2009

Scholars worldwide react to planned National Center for Media Arts

Proponents of the National Center for Media Arts argue that it will help foreign researchers examining Japan's popular culture. The Japan Times asked prominent scholars from overseas their thoughts on the proposed facility.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 14, 2009

What lit the fuse of culture?

In this month's column, we solve the mystery of the emergence of modern human culture. As a bonus, there's a bit of good news for Tokyoites — and for those of us who may worry that success is solely down to brainpower.
BUSINESS
Jun 12, 2009

Half of economists see moderate recovery: poll

Even though the economy posted a record 14.2 percent contraction in the three months to March, Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano has suggested the worst may be over, while the Nikkei stock average briefly topped the 10,000 mark Thursday.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 12, 2009

Riesling with Japanese food makes for a marvelous match

With their high acidity and sugar levels, Rieslings are the perfect wines to pair with Japanese cuisine. Mami Whelehan, a manager at public-relations firm Pieroth Japan, who regularly lectures in Japan on wine-food matching, spoke to The Japan Times about how to combine Rieslings with Japanese food....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 12, 2009

Kool Keith & 54-71 "Idea of a Master Piece"

There's no harm in asking, right? Tokyo indie rock quartet 54-71 can attest to this. Big fans of seminal New York MC Kool Keith, they e-mailed him to inquire about collaborating. Receiving a somewhat surprising "yes" reply, 54-71 flew to the U.S. in April and the two parties banged out 10 well-rounded...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009

'Terminator Salvation'/'Almaz Black Box'

"Terminator Salvation," the fourth installment in the sci-fi franchise that began way back in 1984, has just about everything you'd expect from a "Terminator" film: gleaming metal robot exoskeletons that implacably pursue their human prey, human-looking robots sent to infiltrate mankind's domain. . ....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 12, 2009

Nomura fuses science, mysticism in artworks

If Pythagoras, Aristotle or any of the other axial luminaries of the Classical World were alive today, they might just be working as conceptual artists in the mold of Hitoshi Nomura, rather than philosophers and scientists. This is because the science and philosophy that these intellectual giants practiced...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009

Soda takes a pop at taboos

Kazuhiro Soda made his name with his first documentary film "Campaign," which follows the director's former classmate Kazuhiko Yamauchi as he campaigns for a city-council seat in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. The film was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007, broadcast on TV in around 200 countries...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 12, 2009

Play portrays Afghanistan's 30 tragic years

A play about the history of Afghanistan inspired by former Afghan ambassador to Japan Haron Amin will be staged on June 16 and 17 at Space Zero in Shinjuku.
Reader Mail
Jun 11, 2009

Background of a couple's tragedy

Regarding the June 4 "Couple leap to death in Britain with dead kid": This terrible story was given wide coverage by the British tabloids, and I don't think the (Kyodo) article that appeared in The Japan Times did it justice. Kazumi Puttick met her British husband, Neil, when they were undergraduates...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 11, 2009

Bangladeshi minister pushes for investment

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hashina's special envoy, Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud, called on Japan Wednesday to increase direct investment in his country, which is aiming to emerge as a midlevel developed country by 2021.
JAPAN
Jun 11, 2009

Emissions goal draws fire from all sides

OSAKA — Prime Minister Taro Aso's announcement Wednesday that Japan will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 appears to have pleased nobody.
Reader Mail
Jun 11, 2009

Taiwan's Chinese characteristics

In her June 4 letter, "Careful whom you call 'Chinese,'" June Dreyer contradicted the claim in my May 27 article, "Cross-strait gap narrows," that most Taiwanese think Chinese, speak Chinese and are Chinese like any other Chinese people.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 11, 2009

Nakai eager to make impact for Yomiuri

Daisuke Nakai's Yomiuri Giants career started with three ugly strikeouts.
COMMENTARY
Jun 11, 2009

Sri Lanka and Tiananmen: Time to accept the truth

It used to be said the first casualty of war is the truth. But today we do not even need wars to see truth destroyed. Even domestic conflicts in distant countries can do the job, with a flood of black information and news distortions produced, some causing enormous harm. The distorted interpretation...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jun 10, 2009

'Random' drug tests make JSA look bad

What a joke.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 10, 2009

The scent of poverty must be just so in Japan

When times are tough, the Japanese get going, or something to that effect. My grandfather always held that as a nation, we were much better at being poor than being rich — "Nihonjinga kane wo motsuto rokunakotoni naranai日本人が金をもつとろくなことにならない, Nothing good comes...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Jun 10, 2009

Just Hungry, Just Bento

The kitchen has long been used as a portal to distant places and times, and Just Hungry and Just Bento are two blogs by Makiko Itoh that put all the wonders of Japanese cuisine within a cutting-board's reach. For Makiko, cooking has been a way to re-create comfort foods from Japan while living abroad...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 9, 2009

Rumpus on campus

Illegal arrests, forced expulsions, "kidnappings" by security police and beatings by hired thugs. No, it's not another dispatch from a violent banana republic. Those accusations come from the leafy back-streets of Ichigaya, Tokyo, home to a branch campus of the prestigious Hosei University.
Reader Mail
Jun 7, 2009

Slogging to a license in Kanagawa

I can only construe the process of changing over to a Japanese driver's license from a foreign one in Kanagawa Prefecture as discriminatory. Holding a valid foreign driver's license plus an international driver's permit allows most people to drive legally in Japan when visiting this country. For foreigners...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 7, 2009

Keeping the faith in globalization

CHICAGO — As governments do more to try to coax the world economy out of recession, the danger of protectionism is becoming more real. It is emerging in ways that were unforeseen by those who founded our existing global institutions.

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