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BUSINESS
Jun 17, 2004

DoCoMo to release smart cell phones

NTT DoCoMo Inc. announced Wednesday it will release next month smart cell phones with debit card, membership card and train ticket functions.
BUSINESS
Jun 16, 2004

MMC may cut employees' bonuses

Scandal-ridden Mitsubishi Motors Corp. might cut employees' annual bonuses for the current business year, sources said Tuesday.
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Signs of life

Divorce is up; population growth is down. Spitting on the street: in; holding the door: out. Politicians waver back and forth on policy, their party platforms neither here nor there.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 13, 2004

An 'outsider' finds insight into Japan's bad-loan crisis

Just 33 years old when she headed the Tokyo Bureau of the Financial Times, Gillian Tett took an unusual route to the heart of Japan's business world.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 13, 2004

Murakami's job guide for teens lights the pipe of dreams

In mid-May, NHK's nightly news feature "Closeup Gendai" looked at the current post-university recruitment situation from the viewpoint of the recruit. For the past decade, the main story with regard to this issue has been the difficulty of finding work as more and more companies restructured along nontraditional...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 12, 2004

The one-man national yacht movement

On my planet, the U.S., people change things at the grassroots level. In Japan, the root of the blade is often an "obaa-san" or "ojii-san," a single person out to change things. You can find these individuals all over Japan, conjuring up their own ways of making a difference in this country. I ran into...
BUSINESS
Jun 11, 2004

Sales of used vehicles down 14%

Sales of used motor vehicles in Japan in May dropped 14 percent from a year earlier to 379,706 units, logging the biggest year-on-year fall on record, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Jun 11, 2004

Wholesale prices rise 1.1% in biggest increase since '97

Wholesale prices in Japan rose 1.1 percent in May from the previous year, marking the highest rise in about 6 1/2 years, the Bank of Japan said in a preliminary report Thursday.
BUSINESS
Jun 10, 2004

Simmons to offer upmarket sofas

Furniture importer Simmons Co. announced Wednesday that the firm will start selling sofas and reclining chairs made by two Northern European furniture makers in August.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 10, 2004

Kicking up a storm over climate change

For those who cannot decide whether to see "The Day After Tomorrow," I sympathize. This recent Hollywood thriller that offers an apocalyptic portrayal of global climate change has me at odds with myself. I am torn between the desire to wallow in mindless hyperbole, and the fear of seeing an audience...
BUSINESS
Jun 10, 2004

Japan, China reveal mail target

Japan Post and China's State Postal Bureau have agreed to aim to double mail services between the two countries in the next three years, Japan Post said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 10, 2004

Australians sense vulnerability

SYDNEY -- How safe is sleepy Australia from terror within? Very unsafe, it seems, from the belated jailing of the first person convicted under Canberra's new antiterror laws. Moreover, if it takes four years after Australian police were warned about him to catch this convert to Islam and would-be bomber,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2004

Washington is now free to give up on its East Asian allies

The United States recently announced that it will soon send to Iraq one of the two brigades of the Second Infantry Division (2ID) currently stationed in South Korea. There was virtually no consultation with Seoul, and the Pentagon is making no promises that these troops will ever go back. Now unconfirmed...
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 8, 2004

Power of LDP support groups waning

About 5,000 people gathered in Sapporo on May 23 to attend a convention of the national association of special post office chiefs, a longtime supporter of and the biggest vote-gathering machine for the Liberal Democratic Party.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 8, 2004

Hidden plight of detainees

'What did I do to the Japanese people," asks Merdem Yousif. "I came to Japan because I thought the people would be warm-hearted. It was my big mistake. I should have gone to another country."
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 7, 2004

Kanebo's rescue: cosmetic surgery or a new lease on 'beautiful life'?

"Kanebo, for beautiful human life."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 6, 2004

Village Vignettes: Insiders seen from the outside

VILLAGE VIGNETTES, by Michael Smithies, illustrations by Uthai-Traisiwakul. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2004, 168 pp, $17.99 (paper). Michael Smithies, the well-known scholar and eminent historian of 17th-century Siam, lives in northeast Thailand, near the village that he describes in these sketches of its...
EDITORIALS
Jun 5, 2004

Haze of perpetual highway debt

The Diet has approved controversial legislation for privatizing the nation's deficit-ridden highway system. The need for privatization is widely recognized, yet doubts remain about the ways and means of achieving it. The fundamental question is whether the new system will really serve the purpose of...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 5, 2004

Roger McDonald

A man of many parts, Roger McDonald wove the different threads of his life together when he became a freelance curator. He said: "One of the triggers for me was helping organize an exhibition as part of UK98 at Kiyosato. I brought over some fiery young artists from England, and that experience showed...
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2004

Badawi: A kinder Mahathir?

KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is proving to be a kinder, gentler, but no less candid, thoughtful and thought-provoking version of his mercurial predecessor.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 4, 2004

Mourinho not lacking in confidence and not afraid to show it

LONDON -- On the face of it English football should be delighted that the coaches of the Champions League and UEFA Cup winner are coming to the Premiership.
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2004

Copyright ethics for the digital age

As a result of rapid advances in the digitization and networking of information, the environment surrounding copyrights is undergoing dramatic change. Unfortunately, understanding of copyrights in Japan is far from adequate. Culture won't be nurtured unless the ethics exist in which the beneficiaries...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 3, 2004

Foreigners dominate used-vehicle export trade in Japan

KOSHIGAYA, Saitama Pref. -- There is a bleep, pictures of cars pop up on two big screens, and meters show prices rising.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 2, 2004

ETFs gain popularity with individual investors

With the stock market picking up, exchange traded funds, investment trusts linked to stock market indexes, are gaining popularity, especially among stock investment beginners and some brokerage houses who have begun to market overseas ETFs.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2004

China threatens Hong Kong's freedoms

When China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 after 150 years of British rule, the "one country, two systems" formula for this special administrative region of China promised that Beijing would leave Hong Kong's free-wheeling capitalist way of life untouched for at least 50 years.
BUSINESS
Jun 1, 2004

Over 15 million use high-speed Net services

There were more than 15 million subscribers to high-speed broadband Internet connection services in Japan as of the end of April, a preliminary government report showed Monday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 1, 2004

'No sex please, you're teachers'

"I feel offended that anyone would tell me who I can or can't hang out with," says Brendan (not his real name), one of 6,000 foreign language instructors employed by Nova Corp. in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jun 1, 2004

What's your opinion of Nova's ban on teachers dating students?

Jonas Kirkegaard Student, 28 I would suspect some students would come there to see teachers, and also outside of school. Sounds like a moral choice to me. Personally, I wouldn't do it.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear