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EDITORIALS
Sep 30, 2008

Mr. Koizumi leaves the arena

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's announcement that he will not run for the next Lower House election means the departure of a decisive, bold and charismatic politician from the nation's political scene. It is symbolic that his announcement came just after Mr. Taro Aso took power. Prime Minister...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 30, 2008

N. Korea, viewed from the inside

North Koreans are aware of Kim Jong Il's reported illness and anticipating an end to his dictatorship, said a Japanese journalist who recently returned from the China-North Korea border.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Sep 30, 2008

Jitensha odantai

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Sep 30, 2008

Designer wine racks, light bulbs, place mats and more

Northern hangers
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 30, 2008

Berlitz strike grows despite naysayers

As union representative for Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto), let me set the record straight.
BUSINESS
Sep 30, 2008

DoCoMo to debut new BlackBerry in January

NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it will introduce a new model of the BlackBerry handset to woo business users.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 29, 2008

Kawamura promises to keep Aso from tripping over his own feet

As right-hand man to the prime minister, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura says his job is to make sure that Taro Aso doesn't stumble.
MORE SPORTS
Sep 29, 2008

Rossi wins Japan GP, claims MotoGP title

Italy's Valentino Rossi stormed to victory at the Grand Prix of Japan on Sunday, claiming his sixth MotoGP world championship. Rossi, riding a Yamaha, pulled ahead of defending MotoGP champion Casey Stoner of Australia with 11 laps to go and won the race with a time of 43 minutes, 09.599 seconds, 1.943...
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2008

Gaffe-prone Nakayama quits Cabinet

Prime Minister Taro Aso's Cabinet suffered a serious blow Sunday with the resignation of transport minister Nariaki Nakayama, who was under fire for several gaffes, including saying Japan is "ethnically homogenous."
COMMENTARY
Sep 28, 2008

Bush will go away as a true friend to China

HONG KONG — As the world prepares to bid farewell to U.S. President George W. Bush in a few months, his foreign policy lies in tatters. Wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, a crisis looms in Iran, relations with Russia are badly strained, and now North Korea is threatening to restart its nuclear-weapons...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 28, 2008

Ups and downs on Japan's property ladder

Foreigners and the Japanese property market — the two sound like unlikely bedfellows, but in recent years their "liaisons" have been the focus of much media attention — and not all of it positive.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 28, 2008

Talking of fanatics, careerists, cynics . . . and true believers

"We're doing the worst thing to you: We're depriving you of an enemy."
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 28, 2008

A step-by-step guide to owning a home in Japan

So you are ready to be king of your own castle in Japan. Adios to the days when you, a mere rent-paying tenant of a grotty apartment, worried about landlords taking you to the cleaners for spilling tea on the carpet or making minuscule holes in the walls to pin up framed pics.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 27, 2008

Lower House majority is minimum goal: Hosoda

The Liberal Democratic Party and its partner, New Komeito, have set their sights on securing at least a majority in the Lower House in the next general election, LDP Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda said Friday.
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2008

Tourism minister apologizes for gaffes

New tourism minister Nariaki Nakayama wasted no time putting his foot in it. The day after stating that Japanese do not like foreigners and that the country is ethnically homogeneous, Nakayama apologized Friday and retracted his statements.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 27, 2008

Primary surplus not top priority: Nakagawa

Achieving a primary surplus by fiscal 2011 is not the most important goal for Prime Minister Taro Aso's administration, finance and financial services minister Shoichi Nakagawa said in an interview Friday.
BUSINESS
Sep 27, 2008

Inpex picks Darwin for LNG site

Inpex Holdings Inc., Japan's largest energy explorer, has picked Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory as the onshore site for a $20 billion liquefied natural gas project, moving the venture closer to development.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Sep 26, 2008

Japan's mature spectators

Has democracy matured in Japan? Scholar-turned-politician Yoichi Masuzoe used to say Japan is a mature democratic nation, as its politics is led by public opinion. Recently, however, he seems to have reversed his way of thinking, as he states that Japanese citizens have become more like spectators than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2008

'Be Kind Rewind'

How much cute can a straight man generate (and we're not talking about his looks here) without getting thwacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper? If the man happens to be French filmmaker Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep") the answer is: TONS. During...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2008

'Tokyo Sonata'

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has long been filed under "horror director," though his take on the genre is anything but standard. The villain of "Cure," his deeply creepy 1997 breakout film, is not a maniac with a sharp-edged weapon but a blank-faced drifter who hypnotizes his victims into killing themselves.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 26, 2008

Which way blows the wind?

This weekend at Kawasaki Arts Center sees the keenly anticipated return of "Atomic Survivor — Vanya's Children," a powerful gem of a social-documentary drama not seen — but much talked about — since it premiered in six performances only at the 2007 Tokyo International Arts Festival.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / LIQUID CULTURE
Sep 26, 2008

Red Carpet treatment

Like Da Vinci or Mozart, every bartender wants to make something that lives on after they die," says Takahiro Watanabe of the Keio Plaza Hotel's Polestar bar. "A bartender's dream is to make a cocktail that appears on every bar's menu."
BUSINESS
Sep 26, 2008

ANA, Boeing reset 787 delivery date

All Nippon Airways said Thursday it has agreed with Boeing Co. to have the delayed 787 jet delivered in August 2009, more than a year behind schedule.
BASKETBALL
Sep 26, 2008

JBL staking future on fielding fewer foreign players

While there have been a number of Japan Basketball Association-related issues that have hurt its credibility in the past few years, it it is desperate to turn the page with new players and a new experiment.
COMMENTARY
Sep 25, 2008

Will bankers ever learn?

PARIS — For a week it looked as though banking was not "as safe as houses" (a phrase that has seemed singularly inappropriate recently), but instead would turn into a "house of cards" that might be blown down with a puff of wind.
EDITORIALS
Sep 25, 2008

Alternatives to a dam

Once a large public works project is decided on, it is very hard to stop it because of political and bureaucratic inertia. But Kumamoto Gov. Ikuo Kabashima has called on the central government to cancel its plan to build a dam on the Kawabe River, a tributary of the Kuma River, known for its rapid and...

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