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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
May 27, 2012

Junko Tabei : The first woman atop the world

Almost exactly 37 years ago, on the morning of May 16, 1975, then 35-year-old Junko Tabei and her Sherpa guide Ang Tshering reached the 8,763-meter South Summit of Mount Everest — their final halt before pushing on to the 8,848-meter peak itself.
BUSINESS
May 26, 2012

Japan Tobacco buys Belgium's Gryson

Japan Tobacco Inc. agreed to pay €475 million ($597 million) for Belgium-based Gryson NV to boost growth in Europe's roll-your-own cigarette market in the biggest purchase by a tobacco company since 2009.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 25, 2012

'Mada, Ningen (Still Human Beings)'

Young indie filmmakers have it tough everywhere, but in Japan the hurdles they face are only getting higher. The so-called mini theaters (art houses) that once screened domestic indie films have been closing their doors or changing their programming to more populist fare. Meanwhile, a growing number...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2012

New JICA chief wants aid profile lift

If Japan wants to maintain its international influence, it should increase, not pare, official development assistance because South Korea, China and other countries are boosting economic aid to key developing states, the new Japan International Cooperation Agency chief says.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 22, 2012

Once one and only, Sony seeks to regain that status

Despite reporting a record ¥457 billion annual loss last year, Sony Corp. earlier this month said it would return to the black in fiscal 2012 with a ¥30 billion profit.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 20, 2012

Poverty stalks the land — and its long-term victims will be today's young

Open any Japanese newspaper, listen to the radio, watch television or keep tabs on any other form of media, social or otherwise, and you are bound to find references to this country's "rapidly aging society."
CULTURE / Music
May 18, 2012

Will the world soon wake up to the scent of Perfume?

When the Nippon Budokan was built in 1964, its architects probably never envisaged it one day resembling a massive nightclub filled with hundreds of laser beams in every shade of neon as three women in lightup minidresses danced like finely tuned robots to the sound of the bassiest bombast imaginable....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
May 17, 2012

I'm too sexy for my sutras

Monks gone wild? Not quite, but Buddhism is indeed trying out new ways to reach the next generation.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
May 15, 2012

Supreme Court knocks down discipline of mentally ill employee

Can a company discipline an employee for taking absence without leave if that worker could be suffering from mental illness? Just a few weeks ago, on April 27, the Supreme Court ruled against Hewlett-Packard Japan Ltd. in a case that posed precisely this question. The verdict illustrates the courts'...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 13, 2012

Born of disaster, modern architecture is itself now an ongoing disaster

In the French writer-director Jacques Tati's superb 1967 film "Play Time," people are like prisoners condemned to roam about in and amid the glass cages of high-rise office blocks. They are lost, both to the world and themselves. In the world of Tati, who died in 1982 aged 75, all cities look alike;...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 13, 2012

Beware not the loud girls, but the plain ones

No one who remembers the ganguro (black-face) girls of the mid to late 1990s will be shocked by Friday magazine's little article on the hadeko (loud kids) of today, but it all gives rise to a bemusing question: How did the age-old quest for beauty become transmuted into a quest for weirdness?
EDITORIALS
May 12, 2012

The return of President Putin

After serving as prime minister for four years, Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency Monday to begin his third term, as outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev was appointed prime minister for the second time, thus continuing their governing partnership.
COMMENTARY
May 11, 2012

Chance to improve public health in Myanmar

In 1998, the publication Burma Debate included my article "The Health of Burma's Women and Children," which was a critical assessment of the health situation in the country. It was a groundbreaking article in that as soon as it was published I received a midnight call from UNICEF's representative in...
BUSINESS
May 11, 2012

Sony profit projections lower than expected

Sony Corp. on Thursday predicted profit below analysts' estimates amid slumping TV and game-console sales and worsening earnings from the mobile-phone unit.
EDITORIALS
May 10, 2012

A tour bus tragedy

None of the passengers who boarded a chartered tour bus at 10 p.m., April 28, at JT Kanazawa Station imagined the tragedy that lay ahead. The bus, bound for Tokyo Disneyland Resort (TDR) in Chiba Prefecture, crashed into a soundproofing wall on the Kanetsu Expressway in Fujioka, Gunma Prefecture, around...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 6, 2012

Japan's women are increasingly taking the future into their own hands

Sara Blakely's story is inspirational. The 41-year-old Floridian began her working life as a door-to-door fax-machine salesperson. Then one day she looked in the mirror — but not at her face.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
May 4, 2012

Eclipse over easy, a star-studded anniversary, and bubbly pairings

Annular solar eclipse from the Park Hyatt Tokyo On May 21, for the first time in 25 years, an annular solar eclipse will be visible from large parts of Japan; for Tokyo, it is the first time in 173 years. The Park Hyatt Tokyo in Shinjuku will offer a special breakfast to observe the cosmic phenomenon...
JAPAN
May 2, 2012

Fatigue problem for bus drivers: poll

Years before Sunday's fatal highway bus crash in Gunma Prefecture killed seven, a survey conducted by the internal affairs ministry illustrated that the sector was not immune to severe accidents, especially if drivers are fatigued.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2012

Let grassroots exchange inspire reconstruction

Korean youth culture is all the rage in Southeast Asia. In January, the leading Indonesian newspaper Kompas published a front-page article on Korean culture titled: "Korean Pop Culture Launches Itself on the World."
JAPAN
Apr 22, 2012

Japan to cancel 60% of Myanmar's debt

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced Saturday that Japan will resume yen loans to Myanmar and cancel about 60 percent of the debt and overdue charges it is owed to assist the country's recent moves toward democracy.
COMMENTARY
Apr 18, 2012

Competition gives U.S. airlines a bumpy ride

From his office window, Thomas W. Horton, in his fifth month as CEO of American Airlines, can see in the distance the Manhattan-size footprint of Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where American has 85 percent market share; it also has 68 percent in Miami, gateway to South America's booming market. A few miles...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Apr 17, 2012

Retail power slow to make inroads despite nuclear crisis

Regional utilities have long dominated the power market, but companies and local governments are starting to get interested in new retailers offering much cheaper rates.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 17, 2012

Bread and becquerels: a year of living dangerously

My New Year's resolution back in January was to survive this year, and many more to come, which means keeping myself and my family as far from harm's way as possible.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Apr 17, 2012

Texan's magic transforms verandas

When you step out onto the veranda of Theodore Jennings' penthouse apartment in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, it almost feels like you're on vacation in some other location — be it New York or some European resort.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2012

Too little outcry over Palestinian censorship

A university lecturer and single mother of two, Ismat Abdul-Khaleq, was arrested in the West Bank on March 28 for criticizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook. Perhaps this is what Abbas meant when he said during a recent interview with al-Jazeera that his party, Fatah, was a political...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Apr 16, 2012

Outlet malls another American concept that may not work in Japan

The craze for auto-centered outlet malls may have stalled before it even began.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan