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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 19, 2013

Japan's juke scene gears up to go foot to foot with Chicago

I am at Battle Train Tokyo, the first official footwork dance tournament in Japan. It's being held at Kata, a gallery in the capital's Ebisu district. Sixteen dancers have signed up in the hope of becoming Japan's footwork champion, which comes with a ¥50,000 cash prize and a small championship belt...
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 18, 2013

U.S. postal revenue up, losses linger

The U.S. Postal Service has recorded its first revenue increase in five years, but the agency still lost $5 billion in fiscal 2013, making it the seventh consecutive year of red ink.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 18, 2013

USPS revenue up but losses linger as overhaul bill appears to stall

The U.S. Postal Service recorded its first revenue increase in five years, but the agency still lost $5 billion in fiscal 2013, making it the seventh consecutive year of red ink, according to figures released Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2013

Turkey's cleavage crackdown goes to college

The paranoid secularists who for a decade have been saying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan harbored a secret agenda are being proved right.
Japan Times
JAPAN / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Nov 17, 2013

Abe's 'third arrow' of structural reform being deflected by vested interests

So far, so good. This is exactly how the global community and the Japanese public felt about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's deflation-busting economic program dubbed "Abenomics" — until a few months ago.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
Nov 16, 2013

New rules needed for posting system

Masahiro Tanaka will probably end up in the majors next year, thanks in no small part to the terms NPB players seem to be willing to accept in regards to the posting system.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Nov 15, 2013

Japan spikers triumph over Thailand

Japan defeated Thailand 3-0 (25-20, 29-27, 25-22) in a thrilling evening match on the third day of the FIVB Women's Grand Champions Cup at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium on Friday.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 15, 2013

Last shipment is sent under U.S.-Russian uranium deal

Take a canister, fill it with down-blended uranium worth $2.5 million, secure it and 39 others to the deck of a container ship, send it off toward Baltimore, and you have nearly completed a deal that provided commercial uses in America for the remains of 20,000 dismantled Russian nuclear bombs.
JAPAN / Politics
Nov 14, 2013

Ruling bloc may yield on state secrets bill

Eager to see its state secrecy bill passed by the Lower House next week, the ruling coalition is showing signs of giving ground on the controversial legislation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 13, 2013

An audience with Sylvie Guillem

There are many wonderful ballet dancers the world over, but Sylvie Guillem is undoubtedly in a category of her own — and not only because of her famously self-willed ways.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 12, 2013

John Kerry's Mideast dream world

Imagine a world in which the Mideast is not descending into chaos but is on the brink of a monumental series of breakthroughs. This is the magical world of the U.S. secretary of state.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 9, 2013

Pan-Asian dreams: The Greater East Asia Conference

Seventy years ago, on Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, 1943, Japan hosted a meeting of Asian leaders in Tokyo, hub of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere — the name it gave its wartime empire under the guise of Pan-Asian liberation.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 7, 2013

Kerry works to keep Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on track

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tried Wednesday to steady wavering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, amid visible cracks in the 3-month-old negotiations.
Reader Mail
Nov 6, 2013

Living costs drift relatively lower

Regarding William Pesek's Oct. 29 article, "The lust beneath Japan's sex drought": I agree with Pesek's myth-busting analysis that Japan's low birthrate is the result of the economy — not the lack of sexual desire. That said, I would like Pesek to reconsider another myth: that the cost of living in...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2013

Foley tribute has important lessons for Congress

The U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall last week became a lecture room for some lawmakers to learn about the secret of 'old school' success in bipartisan House leadership.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices
Nov 4, 2013

No safe country for foreign women: the debate

Holly Lanasolyluna's article published Oct. 23 attracted an unprecedented number of online comments. More than 5,000 people also answered the accompanying poll about safety in Japan. Here are just some of the mails and comments.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Nov 4, 2013

Warming up for the winter chill

In 2000 we moved into an apartment in Tokyo run by the semi-public housing corporation UR. It was new and had a natural-gas heating system. Unlike other gas systems we'd used in the past, however, this one heated water that was then circulated to outlets in different rooms in the apartment. Direct gas...
WORLD / FOCUS
Nov 2, 2013

U.S. Supreme Court to hear new case on public prayer

The chairman of the local Baha'i congregation concluded his prayer with "Allah-u-Abha," which loosely translates to "God the All-Glorious." A Jew offered a prayer speaking of "the songs of David, your servant." And a Wiccan priestess, mindful of her venue in the town of Greece, New York, thought that...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2013

U.S. Mideast policy based on fantasy

In his zeal to extract his administration from what he sees as a regional quagmire, Barack Obama has adopted a narrow and high-altitude approach to a complex set of Mideast conflicts.
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 31, 2013

Wages slide for 16th month despite Abe's pleas

Salaries extend their longest slide since 2010, even as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urges companies to raise wages as part of his bid to reflate the world's third-largest economy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 30, 2013

Voices of Syria's war set to haunt Tokyo stage

The war in Syria has been making headlines for more than two years now, but it's made very little impact on the theater world in Japan. Next month, though, that's set to change with the Tokyo staging of "The Fear of Breathing," a hard-hitting British documentary drama about that ongoing multi-pronged...
Reader Mail
Oct 30, 2013

Word 'peace' raises a red flag

I agree with most of the points raised in the Oct. 17 editorial "Policy speech overlooks key issues." But allow me to comment on the prime minister's use of the expression "proactive pacifism" during his speech at the opening of the extraordinary Diet session.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 30, 2013

Japan can learn from British experience on reform

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe can learn from Britain's experience of economic reform in order to ensure Abenomics takes Japan on a course to long-term growth, four journalists from British media organizations said at a recent symposium in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2013

Flawed assumptions plague latest deficit panel

A false premise of the public, and some budget-cutting politicians, is that the U.S. deficit is spiraling out of control. In fact, the deficit is less than half the $1.55 trillion it was in 2009.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb