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Reader Mail
Apr 8, 2012

Sunny pipe dream in the storm

Regarding the April 5 front-page Kyodo article "Softbank plans huge Hokkaido solar plant": This project sounds wonderful in theory. In reality, the promised minimum output won't be under Softbank's control; it will depend 100 percent on weather conditions. And Hokkaido really isn't suitable for the project....
CULTURE / Books
Apr 8, 2012

Purity and pollution in Japan

TROUBLED NATURES: Waste, Environment, Japan, by Peter Wynn Kirby. University of Hawaii Press, 2011, 250 pp., $49.00 (hardcover) Japan "is enmired in waste." Naturally — what industrialized or industrializing nation isn't? It's a ubiquitous problem urgently demanding an elusive solution, studied accordingly...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 25, 2012

Harvard visitors get eye-opener in Tohoku, meet Noda, key officials

Some Japanese are pessimistic about the country's future and its declining presence in the world, but political science students from Harvard University who recently visited the Tohoku region saw strong signs of society regrouping after last March's calamities.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2012

Children taught radiation studies

A group of elementary school students in Koriyama, about 60 km from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant, may only be 10 years old, but they possibly know more about radiation than fourth-graders anywhere in the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 24, 2012

Emmert shares beauty, power of noh dramas with a wider audience

Richard Emmert has endeavored for decades to share the beauty and power of noh with English-speaking audiences and performers through "English noh."
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Mar 17, 2012

Aging pipes lurk under Nagoya

On Jan. 26, a sinkhole formed under the sidewalk running in front of the Mitsukoshi Sakae department store in Naka Ward, Nagoya.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 17, 2012

Expat writer explores the fantastical

The first short story Thersa Matsuura ever wrote in Japan, "Sand Walls, Paper Doors," introduces the fantastical nonhuman characters of Japanese folklore, from the pillow-swapping trickster to the ghostly children who frolic through human dreams.
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2012

Fukushima soil fallout far short of Chernobyl

In terms of soil contamination, the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant is only about an eighth as severe as the meltdown at the Chernobyl plant, in what is now Ukraine, in 1986, according to a report by the science ministry released Tuesday.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 11, 2012

Young hopes bloom eternal

The first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake is a time to commemorate the victims of that terrible tragedy. But it is also an opportunity to look to the future.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 4, 2012

Taro Yamamoto: Actor in the spotlight of Japan's antinuke movement

On a rainy midwinter day, Taro Yamamoto stood with a small group of people in front of Shimokitazawa Station in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward and addressed passers-by in that artsy youth-culture hub.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2012

Colombian foreign minister voices optimism over inking bilateral EPA

Following a meeting last September with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda referred to the South American country as "a neighbor" of Japan only separated by the Pacific.
JAPAN
Feb 26, 2012

Skepticism grows over scientists quake forecasts

When two University of Tokyo seismologists recently released a study forecasting that a major earthquake would strike the capital and its 13 million inhabitants sometime in the next four years, they made front-page headlines.
COMMENTARY
Feb 22, 2012

Amazing GRACE can measure world's ice loss

One of the main climate change concerns for Japan and other Asian countries with valuable and densely-populated low-lying coastal land is how much of their land may be threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges as the century advances.
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2012

New leads emerge in battle against Alzheimer's

Dementia is a general term that describes the decline in mental activity severe enough to interfere with daily activities. Of several types of dementia, Alzheimer's disease is the most common type, accounting for an estimated 60 to 80 percent of cases.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 19, 2012

Japanese in remote locations; drama about dying at home; CM of the week: Kirin

The subject of "Sekai no Hate no Nihonjin" ("Japanese at the Ends of the World"; TBS, Thurs., 7 p.m.) is Japanese people who live in remote areas outside of Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 18, 2012

Tireless volunteer Fukuda makes a difference in the lives she touches

Julie Fukuda, 75, is a giver — not financially, but physically — who has tirelessly volunteered for various organizations in her community for nearly 50 years in Japan.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2012

Reform means the world for Todai

When Japan's leading university announced in January that it intends to shift undergraduate enrollment from spring to autumn in line with colleges worldwide, the plan created waves far beyond the academic world.
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2012

Higher wages for nursing care

The government will increase payments awarded to nursing care services for the elderly by an average 1.2 percent beginning in fiscal 2012 (from April). These payments will go directly to entities providing the services — not to the individual care workers themselves. Still, the main purpose of the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Feb 5, 2012

Our woods may be home to a 'new ' spider species

An apparently new species of spider has been found in our woods, even though the creature has probably been around since long before humans came to Japan.
EDITORIALS
Feb 5, 2012

Students' retreat from English

Arecent education ministry survey of third-year middle school students nationwide found most students have an ambivalent and contradictory attitude toward English. Of the 3,225 students surveyed, most felt English was important to study, but few wanted a job requiring English. The disjuncture between...
COMMENTARY
Feb 2, 2012

Eventually not a drop of groundwater to drink?

The world is in the midst of a boom in groundwater use. The rate of extraction from aquifers more than doubled in the 40 years to 2000. It has continued to soar since then.
EDITORIALS
Jan 29, 2012

Smoking deaths

The health ministry is drawing up a plan to halve the smoking rate in Japan from 23.4 percent in 2009 to 10 percent. Unfortunately, the plan is tucked into a long-range health promotion plan from 2013 to 2022.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 28, 2012

Kyoto-based Italian physicist blazes trail for foreign academics

Professor Giuseppe Pezzotti, 51, a materials scientist at Kyoto Institute of Technology, effortlessly switches from a newspaper interview in English to discuss research collaboration with a colleague in fluent Japanese. Even sartorially, he straddles East and West: While his torso is clad in button-down...
COMMENTARY
Jan 23, 2012

Typecast 'vulture capitalist' has work cut out

For Mitt Romney, it's the best of times and the worst of times. While his New Hampshire win brings him closer to the Republican nomination, his campaign narrative against President Barack Obama may be unraveling.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan