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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...
EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2001

Freedom worth fighting for

Ten years ago, the Soviet government mounted the last furious defense of its crumbling empire. As Lithuanian citizens set up a vigil outside the television tower of Vilnius, the nation's capital, Soviet forces moved to break up the protests with tanks and troops. Fourteen people died on the night of...
EDITORIALS
Jan 10, 2001

Behind the quest for more babies

The continuing precipitous decline in Japan's birthrate -- in 1999 it was at the all-time low of 1.34 births per woman during her lifetime -- has long troubled planners in both the government and the private sector. Now Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has put himself at the center of the issue by calling...
BUSINESS
Jan 10, 2001

November spending fell by 1.3%

Average household spending in Japan fell a real 1.3 percent in November to 296,439 yen, marking the second straight year-on-year decrease, the Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said Tuesday in a preliminary report.
BUSINESS
Jan 8, 2001

Microsoft shows off the Xbox

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Attendees at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show on Saturday were given the first public viewing of Xbox, the new 128-bit video game console being developed by computer software giant Microsoft.
COMMUNITY
Jan 7, 2001

Good manners make comfortable relations

In Japan, there has been much discussion of late of both morals and manners. Indeed, one national newspaper on Jan. 1, in a section devoted to scrutinizing how Japanese have changed in recent years, devoted a whole page to the question: Are good manners a thing of the past?
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Jan 6, 2001

Japanese music gets support from New Year's tradition

New Year's in Japan is a period when Japanese suddenly seem to "rediscover" their traditional music. Radio and television stations, which, except for NHK, practically ignore traditional music for most of the year, get into the seasonal spirit and air programs of the classical performing and theatrical...
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2001

Asahi, IHT to jointly publish daily

Major national newspaper Asahi Shimbun Co. will jointly publish an English-language newspaper in Japan with the International Herald Tribune, the Japanese daily said Thursday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 1, 2001

Eye-openers for the new year

GREETINGS FROM EROS!: Hokusai and the Erotic Calendar-Print. Richard Lane, bilingual (Japanese/English) text. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2000. Unpaginated, profusely illustrated -- color plates, b/w photos, 3,800 yen. Sending calendar prints as New Year salutations was one of the amenities of traditional...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Dec 31, 2000

Minoru Akimoto

"For a college kid in a provincial town in the early 50s, there were not many options for learning English. My teachers were Hollywood movies. I memorized a script and then sat in a movie theater all day, watching and listening to the same movie time and again."
BUSINESS
Dec 30, 2000

Haggling, fast turnover key to new fashion market

Young women browse through vogue clothes, leather jackets, accessories, wigs and colorful lingerie displayed at about 50 booths in Tondemun Sijan, a new fashion market in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward.
JAPAN
Dec 29, 2000

Police report Obara-Blackman link

Hair found in a condominium belonging to accused rapist Joji Obara may be that of missing Briton Lucie Blackman, a flight attendant-turned bar hostess who disappeared in July, police said Thursday.
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2000

Teen in shop-bombing faces charge of attempted murder

Police on Monday served a fresh arrest warrant on a 17-year-old boy from Tochigi Prefecture arrested earlier this month over an explosion caused by a homemade bomb at a video shop in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, suspecting him of attempted murder.
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2000

Universal leads Kinki tourism boom

OSAKA -- With construction work on Universal Studio Japan nearing completion, expectations are running high that the Hollywood theme park will attract hordes of visitors and revitalize a hitherto drab industrial site.
JAPAN
Dec 18, 2000

Societal barriers facing disabled may prove the most formidable

As deputy chief of the Japanese delegation at the Sydney Paralympic Games this summer, Tsunenobu Wakana was impressed with the handicapped-friendly facilities and transportation system.
CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2000

A true match made in heaven

Wiener Philharmoniker Nov. 16, Seiji Ozawa conducting in Suntory Hall -- Symphony No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 90; Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (Johannes Brahms, 1833-97)
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2000

Obara pleads innocent to rape

The man police say may be connected to a high-profile hostess-abduction case pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of drugging and raping two other foreign women.
JAPAN
Dec 7, 2000

Video shop bomber sent to prosecutors

Police turned over to public prosecutors Wednesday the case of a 17-year-old boy from Tochigi Prefecture who was arrested on charges of bombing a video shop in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2000

Video shop bomber 'wanted to destroy people'

The 17-year-old boy who was arrested Monday evening after claiming responsibility for an explosion at a video shop in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward has told police that he "wanted to destroy people" at random.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 4, 2000

Judging history's 'single most violent act'

At a midtown bar, Wolcott Wheeler, whom I call a historian without portfolio, tells me a story about Robert Oppenheimer: how the physicist, meeting President Harry Truman in the Oval Office, said, "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands."
CULTURE / Art
Dec 3, 2000

Art to help heal the soul

Artists Without Borders and its offspring, Kids Without Borders, are devoted to providing humanitarian relief to the victims of war and ethnic strife. As such, they share obvious connections with Doctors Without Borders.
COMMUNITY
Nov 30, 2000

1,000 yen shops offer customers discount-shopping thrills

In response to the continuing economic slump, 100 yen shops have popped up everywhere in the last few years, but their popularity may soon be overshadowed by the emergence of 1,000 yen shops.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Nov 29, 2000

Exploring deepest, darkest New Jersey

New York is New York, and Manhattan is, 24 hours a day, full throttle, unquestionably, Manhattan. What we wanted after two weeks of both was a place that was neither.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 23, 2000

A night at the culinary opera

Let it be stated unequivocably and from the outset: The Food File is not a great fan of gastrodomes and flashy new mega-restaurants where style outweighs substance and quality is sacrificed at the altar of fleeting fashion. Nor are we enamored of restaurant chains, where menus -- no matter how titillatingly...
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2000

Public angered by Kato's flip-flop on no-confidence motion

People around the country expressed disappointment and anger Tuesday over the anticlimactic end to Koichi Kato's closely watched revolt against his Liberal Democratic Party colleague, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

Longform

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