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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 25, 2015

Frenemies, screenagers, kidults — kondo your English with these trending terms

How up-to-date is your English vocabulary? New words reflect a changing society and, as a result, new words are coined every day. Reading English newspapers and media from around the world can help you keep up with the changes. Here are some words I picked up recently on my travels.
BASEBALL / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 24, 2015

Why did Matsui pick Yankees over Giants?

Former Yomiuri Giants star Hideki Matsui made news earlier this month with his decision to take a job with the New York Yankees. The move was seen as a curious one here for several reasons.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Mar 24, 2015

Single mother with disability vying for seat in Tokyo's Kita Ward

The packed room quieted down as Rie Saito took the stage. Instead of picking up the microphone, however, she smiled and silently pointed to the big screen next to her. This was the beginning of her speech — at a political rally on March 15 — which she based around a Power Point presentation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 23, 2015

Spare a thought for the Western men trapped in Japan

Japan can be the best place in the world for some, but for others it can be a trap — especially for Western men.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2015

Poll finds fictional TV presidents are more popular than Obama

Whether it's the earnest Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" or the manipulative Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," Americans prefer television presidents to their real-life POTUS, President Barack "No Drama" Obama.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 22, 2015

Gunmen strike at the heart of Tunisia's political idealism

The Tunisian government will now have to wake up and acknowledge that the enemies of constitutional democracy view the success of the Tunisian experiment as a threat to their own vision of Islamic law and governance.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2015

Public goofus Hillary vs. private gallant Hillary

If you're an American voter who evaluates presidential candidates based on how much fun they'd be to share a drink with, Hillary Clinton presents a dilemma as the news media try to dissect her private vs. public persona.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 19, 2015

Politicizing personal beliefs will invite distrust of Japan

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will invite distrust of Japan as well as create a big risk for himself if he insists on politicizing his personal beliefs.
JAPAN / History
Mar 18, 2015

Japanese historians seek revision of U.S. textbook over 'comfort women' depiction

A group of 19 Japanese historians and scholars plan to file a protest with U.S. publisher McGraw-Hill, claiming a history textbook it published in 2011 contains a number of "factual errors" on the "comfort women" issue.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Mar 18, 2015

From a minstrel no-show to a black beauty queen, in a week

From preventing a blackface TV broadcast to the nation embracing a black face as the embodiment of Japanese beauty, it's been quite a week.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2015

Why Czar Vladimir Putin is always correct

Russians have endured some of the worst despots in history, yet they have a near-apocalyptic fear of change of power.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2015

The real lesson from the Clinton email imbroglio

The flap over Hillary Clinton's use of private email reflects the tension between the drive for transparency and the instinct for privacy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 17, 2015

Taxpayers shouldn't fund war on Asahi Shimbun

The Abe administration's 'kulturekampf' against Asahi Shimbun makes it look like the Chinese Communist Party in its hostility to a free press.
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 16, 2015

Japanese activists fight against the tide to save whales and dolphins

Homegrown foes of dolphin hunts and 'research whaling' face off against a daunting array of powerful interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 15, 2015

Economic transformation creeping into Egypt

With bad news generating many of the headlines from the Middle East, it has been easy to miss the ongoing transformation of the Egyptian economy.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 14, 2015

Above the East China Sea: A Novel

Although this is supposedly Sarah Bird's "most ambitious" novel to date — and it is ambitious — it's not the novel that falls short, it's the marketing. Rather than Bird's ticket to entering the "literary elite," it is the best of young adult fiction.
EDITORIALS
Mar 14, 2015

Thoughtful or self-promoting?

It was no surprise that when writer Haruki Murakami started a temporary ask-anything website he was swamped with so many messages that he had to suspend the site. But is the forum a vehicle for self-promotion?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 13, 2015

Math enthusiasts to mark once-in-a-century Pi Day

Saturday marks Pi Day, the day to commemorate the mathematical concept of pi — which refers to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Many math scientists and students around the world celebrate pi every March 14, as its first three digits are 3, 1 and 4.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 13, 2015

It's time to punish Tepco

Four years on, it's still not clear whether Tokyo Electrip Power Co. has learned anything, or why Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has not demanded accountability from the company tht gave the world its worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2015

Sweden, Germany stand up to Saudi Arabia

Americans often criticize Europe for its lack of principle on foreign policy, but Sweden and German, at least, show that they stand up for their values with regard to military cooperation and arms exports — even to their countries' economic detriment.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 13, 2015

Scientists want DNA-changing tests on human embryos, eggs stopped

With rumors that scientists are about to announce they have modified the genes of human eggs, sperm, or embryos, five prominent researchers on Thursday called on biologists to halt such experiments due to fears about safety and eugenics.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 13, 2015

U.S. students losing interest in China as dream jobs prove elusive

American students are getting cold feet about studying Chinese in China, with many study abroad programs in the country seeing a substantial drop in enrolment over the last few years.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2015

Asian airlines are running out of trained pilots

Asia's aviation market is booming, but the supply of pilots isn't keeping pace with the demand for flights. It's time that aviation companies in the West lend Asian airlines and governments a hand.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 12, 2015

Politics intrude as cybersecurity firms hunt for spies

The $71 billion cybersecurity industry is fragmenting along geopolitical lines as firms chase after government contracts, share information with spy agencies, and market themselves as protectors against attacks by other nations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 11, 2015

Going where Terayama's rare spirit lives on

The avant-garde stage and film director, poet, critic, author and founder of the experimental theater group Tenjo Sajiki, Shuji Terayama (1935-83), influenced theater the world over with his iconoclastic plays such as "Mink Marie," "Heretics" and "Directions to Servants."
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2015

Why Nemtsov's death got pinned on Chechens

The shooting of a Putin opponent by an underling of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has probably brought the sovereign and vassal closer together.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2015

Netanyahu hit by a perfect storm

The upcoming Israeli election will almost certainly prove to be much closer than what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever imagined it would be.
Figure Skating / ICE TIME
Mar 10, 2015

Japan juniors impress with medal haul at worlds

It was another week of great success for Japan at the recent world junior championships in Tallinn, Estonia. The Hinomaru came away with three of the six singles medals on offer thanks to Shoma Uno (gold), Sota Yamamoto (bronze) and Wakaba Higuchi (bronze).
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2015

The silk glove for China's iron fist

China is trying to disguise its South Asia 'string of pearls' encirclement strategy with claims that it wants to create a 21st-century maritime Silk Road to improve trade and cultural exchange.
JAPAN
Mar 9, 2015

Fuji TV removes blackface segment after outcry

Anti-racist campaigners are celebrating a decision by Fuji TV to remove from a weekly music show a segment that purportedly showed performers sporting blackface makeup.

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