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BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2006

Suntory revives nostalgic blend for retiring baby boomers

For businesses from banks to high-end stereo makers, the expected mass retirement of the baby boomer generation beginning next year represents the birth of a huge consumer base with relatively deep pockets and a lot of free time.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jan 22, 2006

Yokohama: model city for the nation?

'Change Japan -- from Yokohama."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jan 20, 2006

Psychedelic radar 01.20

Saturday, Jan. 21
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 19, 2006

"Stuff Happens" : So what do you think about it?

The night I got back home from the premiere of "Stuff Happens," the BBC World television news led off with a report on a further mess in Iraq -- the chief judge in the trial of deposed president Saddam Hussein had resigned following criticism of his "soft attitude" toward the defendant. I felt strongly...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 15, 2006

Spreading the word on popular literature

THE BAMBOO SWORD AND OTHER SAMURAI TALES by Shuhei Fujisawa, translated by Gavin Frew. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005, 254 pp., 2,400 yen (cloth). Japanese critics have long made a distinction between taishu bungaku, "popular literature," which is simple entertainment, and jun bungaku, "pure literature,"...
JAPAN
Jan 14, 2006

U.S. presents detailed plans on realignment of military

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Japan and the United States ended a two-day senior working-level meeting Thursday with the U.S. side presenting detailed plans for implementing an agreement made in October on the realignment of the U.S. military presence in Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 13, 2006

Aichi Prefecture shows the glory of culture, industry -- past and present

Aichi Prefecture, internationally better known as the venue of the 2005 Aichi World Expo, which was successfully held for six months last year, is located near the center of Japan and has prospered as a corridor between the east, west, north and south with a long history.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 13, 2006

The Gamban 5th Anniversary

Shibuya's finest and funnest import record store, Ganban, will celebrate five years of giving pop people exactly what they want with a special all-night party Jan. 13 at the Ageha complex at Studio Coast in Shin Kiba Tokyo. Given the amount of entertainment firepower that will be filling the three venues...
COMMENTARY
Jan 10, 2006

Legions of bloggers, not so many readers

MANILA -- Hardly any other industry has developed as dynamically in recent years as the media sector. The impact of the so-called digital revolution is particularly evident in the way we communicate. Sending and receiving digitized data has become faster and faster; at the same time the costs have fallen...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 30, 2005

On and off the charts

Cast an eye over those charts that list the top-selling Japanese pop albums of the year and three musical trends come out on top: There were loose-limbed hip-hop party grooves aplenty (Def Tech and Ketsumeishi); American-influenced punk pop (Ellegarden, Ken Yokoyama and scores of others with Orange County-inflected...
BUSINESS
Dec 28, 2005

Household spending climbed 0.9% in November

Spending by wage-earning households expanded a real 0.9 percent in November from a year earlier to 307,309 yen for the second straight monthly rise, the government said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2005

High-tech TVs putting ads on defensive

Nippon Television Network Corp. has been skillfully inserting commercials into the late-night drama "Wonder Tours" that began broadcasting in September.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 21, 2005

Soaking up surprises while out birding in the buff

Was it really just the other morning that I opened my eyes to behold a thick frost on the ground around me beside Lake Kussharo in the Akan National Park of eastern Hokkaido? It already seems an age ago.
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2005

'Korean wave' sweeps the Philippines

MANILA -- The political alliance between the Philippines and South Korea has a long tradition. During the Cold War, both countries were staunch supporters of the United States. The government in Manila was among the first to send troops to the Korean Peninsula to defend the South against the invasion...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 18, 2005

What did you read about Asia this year?

Donald Richie THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE, edited by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel (Columbia University Press) This new take on Japanese modern classics -- old standbys and lots of recent writing as well -- is big (864 pages and it's only the first volume). It includes examples...
Features
Dec 11, 2005

The 'undigested other': Koreans in Japan

Few parents would voluntarily send a son to live in North Korea; Kongsun Yang sent all three of his. In the early 1970s, Yang waved goodbye to his young Osaka-born boys, who later married and started families in Pyongyang. Poor and unhappy, the sons survive today only thanks to support from their parents...
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Discordant history mars neighbors' friendship overtures

Japanese actress Yoshino Kimura was the lone main guest at the Chuo Kokaido Hall in Osaka in October. She appeared without her Korean counterpart in the opening ceremony to celebrate this year's 40th anniversary of the 1965 Japan-South Korean Treaty that normalized Tokyo-Seoul relations.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 4, 2005

Japan's show-biz hacks fail to raise ante 24 / 7

Last Monday was a pretty busy day for Tokyo's entertainment reporters. At 11 a.m. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, fresh from spending Thanksgiving in Pakistan, held a press conference in Shinjuku to promote their movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"; and then at 2 p.m. across town at the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2005

Engineers, pop singers feted at Innovator Awards

Painless syringes, therapeutic planetariums, cards embedded with IC chips that allow cashless payments, and a singing duo who inspired a U.S. cartoon were among the products and people winning honors Wednesday for innovation.
BUSINESS
Nov 25, 2005

GameCube fall halves Nintendo profit

Nintendo Co. said Thursday its group operating profit for the six months to Sept. 30 dived 51.0 percent on smaller sales of its GameCube video console and ballooning development costs for its next-generation Revolution console.
LIFE / Language
Nov 22, 2005

TV shows confront decline of Japanese language

Beginning this fall, four of the major commercial television networks began broadcasting variety programs aimed at rehabilitating Japanese television viewers' inability to correctly utilize their native language. Why the sudden flood of kokugo (national language) programs?
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2005

Revealing times on a girls' night out

The bare back of a man shines like a beacon in a dark empty street below an expressway in Tokyo's Tamachi district. The brightly lit mural points the way inside to one of the only male strip shows in town catering to women.
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2005

TBS expected to reject merger with Rakuten

Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., a TV and radio broadcaster, will reject a proposal by Rakuten Inc. to integrate their managements under a holding company, sources have said.
EDITORIALS
Nov 15, 2005

Braking illicit drug use

Police statistics show that the number of people taken into police custody on narcotics-related charges is on the decrease. Still, optimism about drug use in Japan is not warranted, as recent arrests or indictments have involved a former lawmaker and members of the Self-Defense Forces.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 12, 2005

Satoya apologizes for incident

Nagano Olympic moguls gold-medalist Tae Satoya apologized to Japanese skiing officials Friday for her role in a nightclub brawl and pledged to focus more on her career as an active athlete. Satoya, who also won bronze at the Salt Lake City Olympics four years later, visited the Ski Association of Japan...

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past