Search - ads

 
 
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2004

Court halts weekly over story on Tanaka daughter

The latest issue of Shukan Bunshun was removed from newsstands Wednesday after the Tokyo District Court ordered a temporary injunction barring the sale of the Japanese-language weekly magazine.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 21, 2003

Year's top commercials 'ad' up to great Japanese TV

Anyone who reads this column regularly probably believes that I find Japanese television completely worthless. It's not true; or, at least, not completely true. I think Japanese TV commercials are very good and often more representative of the hopes and dreams of the nation than the programming is.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Nov 24, 2003

Navigating the deep Internet

MOSCOW -- There could hardly be a tougher opponent for a struggling college professor than the Internet. You ask your students to write an essay about Moscow, and you end up with the papers based on sources like www.moscow-taxi.ripoff.com and www.moscow-hotels.dump.ru. When, fuming with rage, you inform...
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2003

Horse-race tipster targeted over 300 million yen tax scam

Tax authorities have filed a criminal complaint against a Tokyo firm that provides betting tips on horse races, alleging it evaded some 300 million yen in corporate taxes on 1 billion yen in income during the 18-month period to March 2002, sources said Wednesday.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 26, 2003

JT campaign aims to blunt war on smokers

Several weeks ago this newspaper published letters from non-Japanese readers who complained about a Japan Tobacco advertising campaign that depicts Western men and women with exaggerated noses sniffing cigarette smoke out of wine glasses. Two of the writers were angered by the image itself, saying that...
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2003

Bikini 'campaign girls' exit stage left

In a move likely to disappoint aspiring actresses, many major textile firms are abolishing a decades-old advertising tool -- sexy "campaign girls" in bathing suits.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 22, 2003

Japan slowly pulls head out of sand on smoking ills

During the five years since a landmark suit against tobacco manufacturers and the government was filed, slight but steady progress has been made in regulating cigarette sales and advertising.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FRONT-RUNNERS
Oct 21, 2003

Toho to take domestic smash 'Bayside Shakedown 2' overseas

A Tokyo-based motion picture company is poised to take on Hollywood with a live-action cop film that was a hit in Japan this summer.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 14, 2003

The money hole

Kumiko Morita looked down at her cell phone as it began to ring. With reluctance she picked it up and answered it. After listening to the caller, she began to speak -- not in her usual soft-spoken way, but in a loud, forceful voice.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 10, 2003

Finding acting work, reducing phone bills and ditching old stuff

Freighter travel Judi Sullivan's daughter, who lives in Japan, sent her a Lifelines column with an enquiry from reader Lisa Beretta, who wanted info on cargo ships willing to take a passenger to Europe.
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2002

Air-cleaner maker just blowing smoke

The Fair Trade Commission has warned air-cleaner maker Tornex Inc. about misleading consumers, sources close to the case said Monday.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INDUSTRY TRENDS
Jul 11, 2002

'Happoshu' price war seen taking toll on brewers

It was just a regular Friday, but lovers of beerlike beverages found an excuse for another round as the country's major breweries marked down their versions of "happoshu."
BUSINESS
Jun 4, 2002

Listen to an ad, get a free call

Telecom venture Third Line Communications Co. said Monday it has launched a new fixed-line phone service that allows users to speak for free for about three minutes if they first listen to corporate ads for about 15 seconds.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 24, 2002

Dubya's campaign to bring tourists to America

During this past Christmas season, it became something of a joke in the United States when Americans were asked by their government to go shopping as a means of pursuing the War on Terrorism at home. The idea was that the Forces of Evil wanted nothing less than the destruction of Our Way of Life, so...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2002

METI to submit bill to regulate spam

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will submit a bill, possibly next month, proposing legal revisions to regulate unsolicited e-mail advertisements sent to consumers, ministry officials said Thursday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2001

Building-materials publishers under fire

The nation's public works projects -- notorious for their lack of transparency -- have sucked up tens of trillions of yen in taxpayers' money for decades, pushing government coffers to the brink of crisis.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 9, 2001

Drivers wary of the troll who collects the toll

With new highway construction suspended and the prime minister pledging to abolish public corporations, the business of the Japan Highway Public Corp. at the moment is anything but business-as-usual. As both the overlord of the nation's vehicle-choked intercity expressways and the troll who collects...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 9, 2001

Sharing your daze with a studyholic

My wife takes a scalpel to her schedule and carves up blocks of time. First to go are the hours she spends teaching Japanese, the hours she rides the commuter train, and then the additional hours and hours she uses for preparation.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2001

Tokyo prepares to introduce 'ad trains'

"Ad trains" may hit Tokyo as early as the fall as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government moves to lift its ban on city trains carrying exterior advertisements, it was learned Thursday.
JAPAN
Jun 5, 2001

Kubota hit with back tax for payoffs, false outlays

OSAKA — Tax authorities have determined that farm machinery maker Kubota Corp. disguised 450 million yen as legitimate expenses, including some 100 million yen in illegal payoffs to "sokaiya" corporate extortionists, over the past several years, industry sources said Monday.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 27, 2001

Cosmetics companies give themselves a makeover

Truth in advertising has never been a strong concept in Japan, but no one flouts it as boldly as the cosmetics industry, which is understandable, since makeup itself is a form of deception. One company's antiwrinkle cream is said to "prevent aging," an obvious impossibility, while the manufacturer of...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Mar 26, 2001

Russians living 'la vida loca'

This semester I am teaching a Dostoevsky course. Implausible plots, stumbling dialogues, everybody in love with everybody, romantic triangles overlap like mating frogs, passions mount, money changes hands and is thrown into the fire -- the normal Dostoevsky stuff.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 15, 2001

Soccer lottery: A tax to fund bureaucrats' whims

The worst thing about the new soccer lottery system may be its name. "Toto" is taken from the Italian word totocalcio, which is the name of a similar lottery that has been in place in Italy for more than 50 years.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 18, 2001

Meet your future friend, Mr. Roboto

One of the formative experiences of my childhood was the New York World's Fair of 1962-63, where America's great and beneficent corporations introduced consumers to the future. The memory that sticks with me most is of Bell Telephone's "picture phone," which we were told would be widely in use by the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Progress alone won't be enough

IT, shorthand for information technology, was a buzzword in Japan in 2000. Never before had computers and the Internet caused such a furor in the media. To be sure, IT had created a boom several times in the past, but its impact had been confined to the corporate sector. In contrast, the latest boom...
BUSINESS
Dec 7, 2000

DDI joins hands with Hakuhodo

The nation's second-largest telecommunications carrier DDI Corp., known as KDDI, said Wednesday it has formed a joint venture with advertising agency Hakuhodo Inc. and three other firms to run ads on its mobile-phone Internet services.
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2000

Japan sits out antismoking campaign

While attending the 11th World Conference on Tobacco or Health from Aug. 7 in Chicago, I was very impressed by the enthusiasm of participants seeking tighter controls on smoking. The first conference, hosted by the American Cancer Society, was held in New York in 1967. The latest conference was hosted...
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 3, 2000

Eco-conscious but comfortable: making environmentalism hip

Last year when advertising agencies asked Kazumi Oguro what his rival magazine was, he replied: "I wouldn't have to put out a new magazine if there was a rival."

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