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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 6, 2013

Awakening the desire for a home with personality

Bored with run-of-the-mill suburban Japanese apartments? Perhaps putting the grand piano in the center of the living room would improve the situation.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 3, 2013

A visit to Usa, the Japanese city that knows how to win

It is the time of the year when many people get nervous about winning and losing. Students are cramming hard to pass entrance exams to get into the high schools and colleges of their dreams.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / CHUBU CONNECTION
Mar 2, 2013

Russia meteor explosion shines light on Aichi's 'cape of stars'

The second-oldest meteorite in Japan, the Minamino, is housed in Yobitsugi Shrine in Nagoya.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 2, 2013

Nissan's new car to test mood in China

After protests erupted across China last year over the Senkaku Islands, sales of Japanese-branded cars there plummeted. Nissan Motor Co.'s prescription for winning back Chinese drivers: a quieter ride and better gas mileage.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013

Fifth Okinawa fest celebrates community films

Since its start in 2009, the Okinawa International Movie Festival has been more than its name implies. It has the usual competition sections: one called Laugh for comedies and another called Peace for dramas, though not all the films fit neatly into these two bins. But it has also been a promo event...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 24, 2013

Japan's vegetarians stay in the closet

Last week, entertainment-related media in the U.S. reported that the American Broadcasting Corporation had rejected an advertisement the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wanted to air during the Academy Awards ceremony, which takes place early tomorrow morning Tokyo time.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 23, 2013

Women see, touch war-era paper again

Three former students who were involved in making paper balloon bombs at a Nagoya school during the war saw and touched the "washi" (traditional Japanese paper) used to make the balloons for the first time in 68 years on Feb. 16.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 23, 2013

What's next for Toto? More toilet humor

What is the next logical toilet model for Toto? After one has invented a toilet that welcomes you by lifting it's lid automatically when you walk into the bathroom, cuddles you with a heated toilet seat, washes and dries your bum after you've done the dirty deed, disinfects the toilet, then automatically...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Feb 22, 2013

InterContinental to open in Osaka; haute cuisine at Mercedes-Benz Connection; White Day gifts at Cerulean Tower

InterContinental to open in Osaka
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Feb 22, 2013

Foodie Media 101: Eat all about it

Every Monday night at 7, Japanese TV viewers are treated to the sight of comedians being locked inside a fast-food restaurant. Formica tables take the place of iron bars, and instead of three square meals a day the cast is fed a steady diet of the shop's specialties — tonkatsu breaded pork cutlets,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2013

'Yokomichi Yonosuke'

Plenty of Japanese directors make films about socially awkward or marginal guys: Given all the on-screen examples (as well as their many real-life inspirations), it seems that the onetime country of the samurai has become the land of the otaku and freeter (unemployed or underemployed), clasping to emotional...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 21, 2013

TV firms' hopes ride on 4K shift to 'bigger, smarter'

Japanese TV makers are desperately seeking new strategies to revive their flagging operations, and some of the key points include expanding screen sizes, boosting image quality and making them "smarter" and more user-friendly.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 21, 2013

Domestic violence blights South Africa

Oscar Pistorius was the perfect South African sports hero because victory over his disability made him a universally admired figure in a still-divided society. The profoundly macho culture he grew up in spans racial groups and provides some explanation for the country's shocking rates of domestic violence....
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Celebrate Japan's diverse look

Regarding the Feb. 28, 2008, article "Why's Japan grown so ugly?": I was struck by how amazingly naive this article seems; this approach to town planning is part of why I fled Britain.
LIFE / Travel / TRAVEL INSIDER
Feb 20, 2013

British Airways' high tea; Cathay Pacific's new lounge; Singapore Airlines' new video games

Taking tea to new highs
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Feb 20, 2013

Freeware has animators dancing to the Hatsune Miku beat

If you search for the acronym MMD on Niconico or YouTube — the two most popular video-sharing sites in Japan — the resulting list will have over 100,000 anime videos, most of which have 3-D anime-style girl characters singing and dancing to electronic J-pop music. What's surprising is that these...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 18, 2013

Third branch of Abenomics

Fiscal and monetary policies will do little to stimulate economic growth in Japan. So, it is time for a strategy to encourage private-sector investments.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Feb 17, 2013

Tracing time's passing through faces of Tokyo

Petri Artturi Asikainen would regularly accost strangers in Tokyo, on the streets, in parks or bars and on trains. With a high-end Nikon D3 digital SLR in his hands, the lanky and bespectacled Finn would ask — somewhat timidly summoning one of the few Japanese phrases he had memorized: "Can I take...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Feb 17, 2013

Tokyo Station nears completion, Hitler lauds Japan, high-schools surge, Constitution to keep Article 9, PM declares

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 17, 2013

Warm memories of an Aizu winterlude

It starts to snow soon after the train leaves Koriyama, and further inland at Aizu Wakamatsu the snow is knee deep. My hosts, Nobuyuki and Mikiko, are waiting at the station. I'm relieved to see they've brought boots for me.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 16, 2013

Exhibition to honor '01 school massacre dead

Twelve years ago, Ami Kifushi was a sixth-grader at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture when a knife-wielding intruder entered the premises, killed eight students and wounded several others.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 16, 2013

Will new 'golden rice' revolutionize the world?

Scientists say they have seen the future of genetically modified foods and have concluded that it is orange or, more precisely, golden.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 15, 2013

Teuchisoba Narutomi: Soba and tempura make for a classic combination

Tempura and soba: Separately, they're two essential elements of traditional Japanese food culture. Put them together side by side on the table and they add up to one of the all-time classic dishes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2013

Breathing life into the forgotten and neglected

Painter Daisuke Fukunaga (b.1981) states: "If the world is the stage of a theater, I want to paint the bustle of the things waiting behind the blackout curtain rather than the heroine." His motifs are of things forgotten and neglected, but unlike his earlier works of 2007, which realistically depicted...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Feb 13, 2013

Three gadgets from CES that you can take on the road.

Among the many products released at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each year there are often some that stand out for being particularly innovative, and this year's CES was no disappointment.
Japan Times
TENNIS
Feb 11, 2013

Strong field assembles for Qatar Total Open

Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams headline a strong field for the WTA's Qatar Total Open that features 17 of the top 18 players in the world beginning here on Monday.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami