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LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 20, 2001

Time to get back to the garden

Can it really be the season for beer gardens again already? Well, not really. But what's the point in waiting, when there are so many perfectly fine evenings at this time of year. Seize the night, we say. And, anyway, we were impatient to revisit our longtime favorite summer drinking spot, the wonderful...
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Mitsui posts 55% gain in group pretax profits

Major trading house Mitsui & Co. said Thursday its consolidated pretax profits for fiscal 2000 expanded 54.7 percent from the previous year to 79.63 billion yen, helped by securities sales.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Man on street more optimistic

The economic outlook of workers with jobs particularly sensitive to economic shifts showed an improvement in April for the first turnaround in three months, the Cabinet Office said Thursday.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Sentence overturned; killer to hang

The Tokyo High Court sentenced a 54-year-old former real estate agent to death Thursday for killing two people to hide a fraudulent land deal in 1989, overturning a lower court-imposed life sentence.
BUSINESS
May 8, 2001

Prepare for Koizumi failure

Stock prices have firmed up, reflecting market expectations that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will push for structural reform.
JAPAN
May 8, 2001

Prime minister's policy speech

The following is a provisional translation of the policy speech given Monday by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the 151st session of the Diet:
BUSINESS
May 5, 2001

Foreign firms vie to crack drugs, distribution markets

Despite Japan's moribund economy and stagnant consumption, many foreign firms are still keen to enter the Japanese market, with some eyeing the pharmaceutical and distribution industries.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2001

Making room for urban home companions

Keeping a pet in the big city isn't easy. With many urban residents living in rented housing, landlords as well as limited space can prove to be obstacles. Some tenants, unwilling to part with their companions, even at the risk of eviction and their pet's discomfort, "smuggle" them in and keep them in...
COMMENTARY
Apr 27, 2001

Calls for change heeded

In his year as prime minister, Yoshiro Mori caused public disillusionment with the Liberal Democratic Party through his gaffes and incompetence. The LDP's presidential election Tuesday, in which former Health and Welfare Minister Junichiro Koizumi beat former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto by a wide...
JAPAN
Apr 27, 2001

Court upholds sentence for Tokyo Sagawa chief

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday upheld the seven-year prison sentence imposed by a lower court on Hiroyasu Watanabe, former president of the now-defunct Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin Co., for aggravated breach of trust that caused the trucking company to suffer huge losses.
BUSINESS
Apr 26, 2001

Exec cites potential in Net data centers

Despite whatever attractive content it may offer, a dot-com firm is doomed to failure if it cannot provide its customers with quick and smooth access to data through its Web site.
BUSINESS
Apr 25, 2001

Business confidence plunged in latest quarter

Business confidence in Japan deteriorated sharply in the January-March quarter amid declines in share prices and the deceleration in the U.S. economy, according to a government survey released Tuesday.
LIFE / Travel
Apr 24, 2001

Conserving world heritage in Dunhuang

DUNHUANG, China -- Approaching China across the Eurasian continent, one crosses the Tianshan mountains only to be confronted by the mighty Taklamakan Desert, with its sinister epigraph: "If you go in, you won't come out." At Kashgar, the Silk Road divides into two branches, skirting the northern and...
BUSINESS
Apr 14, 2001

Bankruptcies increase 12.1%

Corporate bankruptcies in Japan rose 12.1 percent in fiscal 2000 from a year earlier to 18,926 cases, while debts left behind surged 130.7 percent to 25.98 trillion yen, a record postwar high, a private research institute said Friday.
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2001

Man guilty of selling fake cigarettes

The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday sentenced a 59-year-old company president to two years in prison, suspended for three years, for selling counterfeit Japan Tobacco Inc. brand cigarettes.
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2001

State, ruling parties at odds over timing of emergency plan

The government and the ruling coalition failed to settle the details of an emergency economic package Wednesday, remaining divided over how soon to set up a controversial share-purchasing body.
BUSINESS
Apr 4, 2001

State may help stock-buying body

The government is likely to provide 33 percent of the funds for a proposed stock-buying body at the center of plans that will help banks divest themselves from the stock market, a senior official from the Liberal Democratic Party said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Apr 3, 2001

LDP must balance fiscal, party interests

While Tokyo stocks continue to fluctuate wildly, some market participants are saying that stocks have bottomed out and have started an upward surge, following the Bank of Japan's effective return to a "zero-interest-rate" policy and commercial banks' accelerated disposal of bad loans.
BUSINESS
Apr 3, 2001

Three megabanks make debut

Three new megabank groups started their operations Monday morning, raising hopes that the presence of the new entities will further accelerate the disposal of bad loans held by Japanese banks.
COMMENTARY
Apr 2, 2001

Japan's economic 'kuroko'

For more than a decade, Japan's financial authorities have been trying to treat the growing mountain of bad loans at Japan's banks as a "kuroko" of the Japan economy.
BUSINESS
Mar 30, 2001

Mitsui Construction gets 142 billion yen debt waiver

Mitsui Construction Co. said Thursday its nine main creditors have agreed to waive 141.97 billion yen in claims on outstanding loans to the financially troubled construction company.
JAPAN
Mar 30, 2001

Heo gets 71/2 years for breach of trust

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court on Thursday sentenced former fugitive real estate executive Heo Young Joong to 71/2 years in prison and fined him 500 million yen for aggravated breach of trust and tax evasion.
COMMENTARY
Mar 29, 2001

Time to act is running out

The captain of a sinking cruise ship was trying to persuade his male passengers to let women and children board the lifeboats first. But he quickly learned he'd have to customize his pitch according to the nationalities on board. The Englishmen were easy; the captain simply appealed to their sense of...
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2001

Fukutoku Bank execs cleared

OSAKA -- The Osaka District Court found two former executives of the now-defunct Fukutoku Bank not guilty Wednesday of aggravated breach of trust in connection with some 8.2 billion yen in loans illegally extended in a bid to realize the smooth merger between the bank and another financial institution....
COMMENTARY
Mar 26, 2001

Too little too late for reform?

In a dramatic policy reversal, the Bank of Japan has shifted its priority from cutting interest rates to expanding the money supply. The shift involves changing the key target for monetary adjustment from uncollateralized call-money rates to private banks' demand-deposit balances in the central bank....
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2001

Asahi Bank faces 10 billion yen loss

Asahi Bank announced Friday that its efforts to write off 50 percent more of its nonperforming loans than initially targeted will result in a consolidated net loss of 10 billion yen for the business year ending March 31.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji