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Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 29, 2013

So much for nau: What will we say next?

The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on what is, was and will be. With regard to language, one of the most stimulating things I have recently read in this respect was from an article in the journal Nihongogaku (日本語学) about a study in which Japanese university students were asked...
CULTURE / Music
Dec 10, 2013

London Grammar takes a road less traveled in 2013

The big music story of 2013 hasn't been the emergence of a bright new artist or genre. When people look back on this year they'll think of Robin Thicke's creepy uncle routine, Miley Cyrus giving oral pleasure to builders' hardware or Kanye West's Nietzschean rants about his fiancée's bottom. This was...
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 5, 2013

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships —...
WORLD
Nov 25, 2013

Marathon bargaining that led to Iran agreement was a wild ride at times

At 2:04 a.m. Sunday, a one-word email message flashed suddenly on the phones of weary State Department staffers working the corridors of Geneva's InterContinental Hotel.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ADVANCES IN PROGRESS
Nov 11, 2013

Fujitsu labs in touch, ahead of the curve on the tech road

Whether in stores, schools or cars, futuristic and convenient technologies made by Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. are just around the corner.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 22, 2013

A Japanese word-processing primer for beginners

Even a u5165u9580u8005 (nyu016bmonsha, entry-level learner) of Japanese can use a personal computer to his or her advantage, as a supplementary learning tool.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2013

'Reading Cinema, Finding Words: Art after Marcel Broodthaers'

Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) was a man of many talents — a poet, filmmaker and artist — whose cerebral and witty approach to art often resulted in unusual and amusing works. He used found objects, everyday items, photography and text to create visual puns in collages and installations.
BUSINESS / BALANCING INTERESTS
Jul 22, 2013

Farmers stealing TPP spotlight from other key issues

While a great deal of political and media attention is focusing on what the Trans-Pacific Partnership might mean for Japan's agricultural sector, less is being devoted to how it could impact investor-state disputes and copyright laws, two controversial areas that present a growing challenge to forging...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 11, 2013

Experiments in the wild

Ten years ago, when a new cultural facility opened in the western Japan city of Yamaguchi, its founders sought to fulfill a role quite different from those museums in the countryside.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: TECH
Jun 18, 2013

Apps to keep track of everything, Acer's new tablet and a better way to make presentations

Keeping track of your assets
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 16, 2013

Thaemlitz's mix tackles antidancing law

It's fitting that I should be meeting Terre Thaemlitz on May 1, International Workers' Day — she wryly refers to herself as a "feminist Marxist" before we begin our interview in proper.
BUSINESS / Tech
Apr 30, 2013

Emergency hoaxes fool authorities

Police in Montgomery County, Maryland, received an urgent message about 6:25 p.m. Saturday saying someone had been shot at Wolf Blitzer's home in Bethesda. Officers streamed toward the CNN host's residence near Congressional Country Club. They set up a perimeter.
LIFE / Digital
Mar 27, 2013

Technology that works for prose is still a curse for verse

Washington poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller insists there is a difference between his poem "Before Hip Hop" when it is shown like this:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 24, 2013

Zen master indulges Japanese sword myth

'The one who kills is empty, his sword is empty, and the one who is attacked is empty, too. Thus the one who attacks is not a person. And the sword that strikes is not a sword. For the one who is attacked, it is just like cleaving in a lightning flash the breeze blowing in the spring sky.'
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 25, 2013

The Japanese traffic light blues: Stop on red, go on what?

Road traffic in Japan is a complicated affair. Apart from those narrow, crooked streets that sometimes end without warning, you have to get used to unclear right-of-way rules and the national fetish for backward parking.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 22, 2013

Already a huge hit, Line aims for SNS market

The instant messaging app Line is already dominating the lives of young smartphone users in Japan and has spread rapidly elsewhere in the world, but its developer is eyeing even more aggressive growth.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 22, 2013

Fixing the much-admired, reviled Constitution — by breaking it

With Shinzo Abe having called Japan's current Constitution "pathetic" (mittomonai) just a few days before taking charge of a government established under it, constitutional amendment seems likely to be on the agenda of his second go as prime minister. This should not surprise anyone, since "fixing" the...
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 6, 2013

Supreme Court to hear emotive adoption case

The Supreme Court added an emotional case to its docket Friday, agreeing to review a lower court's decision that federal law requires a couple to return the child they cared for since birth to her Native American father.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 6, 2013

Supreme Court to hear emotive adoption case

The Supreme Court added an emotional case to its docket Friday, agreeing to review a lower court's decision that federal law requires a couple to return the child they cared for since birth to her Native American father.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 6, 2012

What lies behind Ben Shahn's lines of the times

When an artist feels compelled to incorporate words and poetry into many of his artworks, we get a sense that he may have taken up the wrong profession. This feeling of being unsettled in his art is something that comes up again and again with the career of the left-wing 20th-century American artist...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 28, 2012

Shaken, stirred puzzle that fits

SUBDUCTION, by Todd Shimoda, illustrated by L.J.C. Shimoda. Chin Music Press, 2012, 279 pp., $25 (hardcover) How to adequately describe "Subduction," the new work by husband and wife team Todd and L.J.C. Shimoda? A psychological thriller framed by gorgeous artwork? A beautifully bound collection of abstract,...
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2012

Response from the Philippines

In his Aug. 2 letter, "Clarification from Cambodia," my colleague Ambassador Hor Monirath sought to explain the 45th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting's (AMM) lamentable and unprecedented nonissuance of the traditional Joint Communique.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2012

Marx: the return of the giant

If an author's eternal youth consists of his capacity to keep stimulating new ideas, then it may be said that Karl Marx has without question remained young.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 13, 2012

Miraikan turns comic-book fantasies into high-tech reality

When you were a kid, did you dream of having marvelous tools and supernatural powers like the characters in comics had? If so, your dream might be about to come true. Welcome to "Experience Manga Through Science," a new exhibition at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 17, 2012

There is trouble on Kafka's shore

Seventy-six-year-old theater director Yukio Ninagawa is famed and honored the world over for his magnificently visualized stagings of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek tragedies — as well as modern Japanese plays.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.