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Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Apr 3, 2013

Akita veteran guard Hasegawa to retire after season

What has been expected for many months is now official: Makoto Hasegawa is set to retire after this season, the Akita Sakigake Shimpo and other media outlets reported on Tuesday, Hasegawa's 42nd birthday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society / FOCUS
Apr 3, 2013

Egypt's fundamentalist rulers crush lives, hopes of women

The ambush came from the left, from a side street which led up the hill to Mokattam Mosque. A rush of hundreds of men running down on the march of antigovernment protesters, bringing a sudden clatter of rocks landing all around, the crack of shots fired and the whizz of tear gas canisters. Sticks, stones...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Apr 2, 2013

Tweak the immigration debate and demand an upgrade to denizen class

Crucial to any public discussion is defining the terms of debate. However, often those terms must be redefined later because they don't reflect reality.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 30, 2013

Former French president's son runs for office from America

Louis Giscard d'Estaing, a former two-term deputy representing Puy-de-Dome in the National Assembly, mayor of Chamalieres and son of former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing kicked off his latest campaign Tuesday afternoon — in Bethesda, Maryland.
Events / KANSAI: WHO & WHAT
Mar 30, 2013

Kyoto's Zuishin-in hosting dance performance

Children in pale pink traditional costumes will dance and sing in a Hanezu Odori performance in Kyoto's Zuishin-in Temple on Sunday.
LIFE / Digital
Mar 27, 2013

Technology that works for prose is still a curse for verse

Washington poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller insists there is a difference between his poem "Before Hip Hop" when it is shown like this:
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 26, 2013

If corporal punishment works, where are all the champions?

In the final scenes of Aaron Sorkin's powerfully written film "A Few Good Men," one of the U.S. Marines on trial for the murder of a fellow serviceman is bewildered as to why he has not been cleared of all charges after his commanding officer admits ordering the attack. "We did nothing wrong," cries...
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Mar 26, 2013

Consensus: Corporal punishment in sports misguided, demoralizing, backward

The following are some readers' responses to the March 12 Foreign Element column by Richard Parker headlined "Right or wrong, corporal punishment can produce winners." See many more in the comment section below the original article.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Mar 22, 2013

Running with the ramen hunters

Ramen is to Japanese food as school-girl uniforms are to porn — the animating fetish that sustains an entire industry. Helping to scratch the noodle itch is an army of bloggers whose dispatches are consumed with voyeuristic glee. The numbers are against them — with a ramen shop on nearly every street...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 19, 2013

A violent death, some justice, few answers in Furlong case

Bad guys rarely live up to their reputation, and so it was with James Blackston. Portrayed in the Irish media as a fearsome, muscle-bound rapper, in court he was a diminutive, baby-faced figure, his tattoos covered up by a cheap prison suit, mumbling his way through an incomprehensible defense for sexual...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Mar 13, 2013

Indie game developers go global at BitSummit

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Japanese independent-game scene is alive and well. Over the past weekend in Kyoto, nearly 180 game developers packed into an event hall to show off their latest self-made creations at the first BitSummit.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2013

Nuclear evacuees bide time in Kyoto but fret over future

On a cold afternoon in late February, a group of mothers and children gathered at a makeshift community center near JR Momoyama Station in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto. In one room, volunteers were setting up dolls for the Hina Matsuri doll festival as a couple of kids played, watched carefully by their parents....
EDITORIALS
Mar 5, 2013

A chance to host linear collider

The government and science community should encourate discussions on bringing the International Linear Collider to Japan as public support is indispensable for this expensive project.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 5, 2013

Juku: an unnecessary evil or vital steppingstone to success?

For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes at juku, or cram school.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Mar 5, 2013

Child's quibble with U.S. 'poverty superpower' propaganda unravels a sobering story about insular Japan

Last November, a reader in Hokkaido named Stephanie sent me an article read in Japan's elementary schools. Featured in a sixth-grader magazine called Chagurin (from "child agricultural green") dated December 2012, it was titled "Children of America, the Poverty Superpower" (hinkon taikoku Amerika no...
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 2, 2013

Remembering the day Napster set music free

In the first weeks of 2000 the founders of Napster were in their office above a bank in San Mateo, California, considering dizzying numbers. Figures scrawled on a whiteboard told how many people around the world had installed their file-sharing application and were using it to download music from each...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 23, 2013

Akiko Kuno's strength as a woman stretches back through generations

Akiko Kuno, 72, believes her destiny is tied with a red string to the United States. So she says as she speaks of her and her family's life at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, where as a child she first tasted Coca-Cola and a hamburger.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Feb 22, 2013

Foodie Media 101: Eat all about it

Every Monday night at 7, Japanese TV viewers are treated to the sight of comedians being locked inside a fast-food restaurant. Formica tables take the place of iron bars, and instead of three square meals a day the cast is fed a steady diet of the shop's specialties — tonkatsu breaded pork cutlets,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 17, 2013

Judo scandal casts doubt on Olympic bid

News stories don't exist in a vacuum. What often makes them "news" is a confluence of factors that provide a context of interest. Though the public thinks the current story about 15 female judo athletes (jūdōka) demanding fundamental changes to the way the national team is structured and run is a self-contained...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 16, 2013

War on the seabed: the Hebridean shellfishing battle

The problem with bottom-trawling is that it lacks discrimination. The gear plows through the seabed, taking or breaking nearly everything in its path.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'Zero Dark Thirty'

'Money shot' is a term that originally came from the pornographic-movie industry, referring to, ahem, a male actor fulfilling his contractual obligations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2013

'JR: Could Art Change the World?'

A self-described "photograffeur," French artist JR's artwork is based on flyposting giant photographic images in public spaces to offer a form of social commentary. In "Portrait of a Generation" (2006), he brought attention to the community in Montfermeil, France, by flyposting portraits of teens and...
EDITORIALS
Feb 13, 2013

North Korea's reckless test

North Korea apparently has carried out its third nuclear explosion test since 2006, defying international efforts to keep it from becoming a nuclear power.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2013

Consequences of teens' living for the camera

Growing up in front of a camera has planted the seeds of some seriously scary consequences for kids with regard to what they want most in life today.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Feb 4, 2013

Keep Abe's hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

On Jan. 1, The Japan Times' lead story was "Summer poll to keep Abe in check." It made the argument that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party alliance falls short of a majority in the Upper House, so until elections happen this summer he lacks a "full-fledged administration" to carry...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight