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COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2009

North Korea's way of trying to break the ice

LOS ANGELES — You will never get anything of significance done with North Korea unless you go right to the top. The essence of its political culture is a feral fusion of Asian family values ("father knows best") with rigid communist hierarchy.
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2009

Quit patronizing the lay judges

Regarding the Aug. 4 article "Language in court to be simple" (about the start of the first trial in Japan under the new lay judge system): I heard similar statements on television several times on Monday, the day of the first trial — "We'll be careful so that the 'people' can understand what we are...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2009

20th-century legacy of confrontation lives on

MOSCOW — This November will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the end of confrontation in Europe may be proving only temporary. One year after last summer's war in Georgia, old divisions seem to be re-emerging in a different form. Although the Cold War in Europe was declared...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Aug 8, 2009

Goalkeeper Foster set for World Cup audition

LONDON — Carlo Ancelotti takes charge of Chelsea in a senior game for the first time on Sunday when it plays Manchester United in the Community Shield at Wembley.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2009

Choosing the slow lane en route to free trade

LONDON, INTERNATIONAL POLICY NETWORK — This week India and South Korea sign an agreement that they say will reduce barriers and boost trade between our two important economies. But the reality of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership (CEPA) is in the fine print.
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2009

Citizens stepped up, fulfilled new court duty

With the Thursday close of the first lay judge trial, Japan has joined the ranks of some 80 countries whose citizens participate in criminal trials.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 7, 2009

English teachers photographed in anthropologically minded study

If aliens were to arrive in Tokyo wanting to document its inhabitants, they might end up taking photos like those now on show at The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Aug 7, 2009

Kamei's play forces Giants to alter plans

Yomiuri Giants outfielder Yoshiyuki Kamei made one thing clear with his two-homer day against the Hiroshima Carp on Tuesday in Asahikawa, Hokkaido.
BUSINESS
Aug 7, 2009

Sapporo sex shops count: BOJ poll

The Bank of Japan is counting brothels in Hokkaido to help determine demand for services as the country battles its deepest postwar recession.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2009

Purpose of remembering

ARCATA, Calif. — The time again has come to remember the use of atomic power on Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Each year at this time, newspapers, books and a variety of media services spend time remembering the events of Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. But why do we remember these...
Reader Mail
Aug 6, 2009

Flash card learning has its limits

As an educator working hard to overcome the misplaced faith in rote memorization that has long hampered Japan's ability to effectively learn English, I was extremely disappointed to read Koichi Ko's July 29 article, " Web-based flash cards will dazzle language learners."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2009

Scholar interns at old bookstore

Students of literature often find themselves among old books in the dark reaches of a library. But Harvard University student Peter Bernard has taken another tack, spending most days for the past two months combing the antiquated works at a 106-year-old bookstore in Tokyo's Kanda Jinbocho district.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Aug 5, 2009

Heisei kids: a generation that struggles to dream

"Dad?"
JAPAN
Aug 4, 2009

First lay judge trial kicks off in Tokyo

The first trial involving lay judges kicked off Monday in the Tokyo District Court with Katsuyoshi Fujii, 72, pleading guilty to murdering his neighbor, Mun Chun Ja, 66, in May.
COMMENTARY
Aug 4, 2009

Drawing down the nuclear stock

Conflicts of interest dividing Moscow and Washington have overshadowed a more positive development — real progress in nuclear arms cuts between the two powers that together hold 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Aug 4, 2009

Spontaneous Japanese TV keeps Dave Spector on his toes

Michael Jackson's death meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For Japanese television celebrity Dave Spector, it meant being woken on the morning of June 26 at 6 a.m. and spending most of the next two weeks either studying or commenting on the performer for the benefit of Japanese...
EDITORIALS
Aug 3, 2009

Highway politics

Only four months since the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry froze the planned construction of 18 sections of national highways that it directly manages, it has reversed the decision and opted to begin construction on 17 of the 18 sections.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 2, 2009

My 'honey trap' sauna

In the little woods just behind my house I have a big wooden outdoor bath and a sauna, with lockers beside the sauna door for people to put their towels and clothes in.
COMMENTARY
Aug 1, 2009

Tough times for politicians

Democratic governments everywhere are in trouble. In Britain, the Labour government is tottering. In Japan, defeat looms for Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party. In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is clinging on amid a sea of scandal. In France, hyperactive President Nicolas Sarkozy...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 1, 2009

Baseball expert lines up new book on mobsters in Japan

Robert Whiting is best known as an expert on baseball. But he's much more than that. He's also an expert on mobsters in Japan and the sound a radar site makes when it is "spotted" by a U2 spy plane.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 31, 2009

'Coco Chanel'

Simone de Beauvoir may have given us feminism, but Coco Chanel gave us the L.B.D. (Little Black Dress), which is, let's face it, a much more viable survival tool.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 31, 2009

Running around the many stages

If you want to get a sense of the sprawling possibilities at Fuji Rock, just look at Rafven's schedule. The former street band from Gothenburg, Sweden, managed to play no less than nine times during the festival, bringing their exuberant brand of gypsy-style revelry to a string of different stages both...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 31, 2009

Sake returns to its organic roots

The sake world is looking greener as an increasing number of producers invest more time and resources in developing organic lines. In 2004, Niigata-based giant Kikusui attracted attention for opening the Sake Culture Institute, an immaculate facility dedicated to organic sake research, and small producers...
COMMENTARY
Jul 31, 2009

Gay ruling takes Delhi back to where it was

CHENNAI, India — The Delhi High Court's recent ruling that decriminalized sex between two consenting men or women is widely seen in India as a move toward a healthier sexual climate. Though confined to Delhi now, the law could eventually be adopted by the country's other regions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 31, 2009

'Yamagata Scream'

Japanese horror movies, under the label J-Horror, were once quite the international thing. Hollywood remade the shockers "Ring" (1998) and "Juon" ("The Grudge," 2002), while foreign video labels snapped up rights to the originals. All that is now a distant memory, though. Fantastic film festivals in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 31, 2009

Escape from propaganda

Artist, architect, designer, photographer, curator, writer, editor, activist — Ai Weiwei is many things. This multiplicity of means all serve a united end that centers on the existential question: What does human freedom mean in China today?
Japan Times
JAPAN / ALSO OUT THERE
Jul 31, 2009

The eyes have it — false lashes catch on big with Japan's women

Long, thick, perfectly curled eyelashes are pretty much the desire of every Japanese woman.

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