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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.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 7, 2009

NPB teams like foreign players with Japan experience

The 2009 season seems to be one where foreign players in Japanese baseball are getting a second — or third — chance to prove they can still produce.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 7, 2009

All aboard for Saitama's splendors

"Get ready!" comes the call from Kato, our river guide who is standing at his post in the stern of our wooden longboat. My gaze snaps forward, scanning the waterway.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 7, 2009

It's so cool to play an oily toad

Actors who direct and star in their own films may be motivated by something other than vanity, but they usually manage to make themselves look cool — or at least cooler than they would have if someone else had been in the director's chair.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jun 7, 2009

Anybody for chips?

In national parks, gardens, woodlands and any other places where people frequently walk in natural settings, the pathways and places where they gather pose many problems to owners, managers and anybody who is concerned with the comfort and safety of the visitors and also the integrity of the habitat....
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2009

Refugees having big impact on North society

North Korea may be a hardline communist state, but it hasn't succeeded in eliminating the public's desperate urge for Hollywood entertainment.
BASKETBALL
Jun 6, 2009

Columbia star K.J. Matsui signs with Rera Kamuy

K.J. Matsui will begin his pro hoop career with the JBL's Rera Kamuy Hokkaido.
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009

Getting a grip on Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky burst onto the scene in 1998 with "Pi," the most bizarrely original debut since David Lynch's "Eraserhead," and a film he self-funded by hitting up an extended circle of family and friends for small donations. He confirmed his talent with "Requiem For A Dream," a visually inventive...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jun 5, 2009

Ogasawara making a feast of PL pitching

Michihiro Ogasawara left the Pacific League to join the Yomiuri Giants in 2007.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 5, 2009

Green Day "21st Century Breakdown"

Green Day's latest album, 21st Century Breakdown, is an operatic three-act, three-chord suite centered on a young couple coming to grips with life in the crumbling George W. Bush era, and set amid a backdrop of modern greed, religion and change.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 5, 2009

Ireland, Japan unite for festival

Ireland and Japan are two countries with rich traditional and contemporary cultures, yet there has been only limited cultural exchange between them over the years. Yet both are island countries that have created a unique culture that has had an immense influence on the cultural development of other countries...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009

'I Come With the Rain'

Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung has a distinctive, high-contrast track record.
SUMO
Jun 4, 2009

Ozeki Kaio says harsh treatment is integral

Sumo veteran Kaio said Tuesday that harsh treatment of wrestlers in training is an integral part of Japan's ancient sport and is partially responsible for his own success.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan