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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 21, 2014

Blackstone to acquire GE Japan's apartment unit for $1.61 billion

Blackstone Group LP agreed to buy GE Japan Corp.'s residential property business for more than ¥190 billion to expand its apartment holdings in Japan.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 15, 2014

Creative crooks stay one step ahead

The "Ore, ore" ("It's me") fraudsters and their ilk, who telephone elderly people and pretend to be a relative in need of money to help them out of a jam, keep coming up with new scams.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2014

Japan's 3/11 tsunami evacuees caught in $30 billion money trap

Some ¥3.28 trillion in funding for roads, bridges and thousands of new homes in areas devastated by the tsunami in Tohoku 3½ years ago is still languishing unspent in the bank. That means Keiko Abe is heading into a fourth winter of subzero temperatures in a cramped, temporary dwelling that is succumbing...
Japan Times
JAPAN / HOTEL SPECIAL 2014
Oct 24, 2014

Renovating an iconic hotel

One of Japan's — if not the world's — most iconic hotels, and a member of the select luxury hotel collection, The Leading Hotels of the World, the venerable Hotel Okura Tokyo will from September 2015 embark on a renovation of its main building with completion of the new facilities scheduled for spring...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 23, 2014

Seafood a sweet spot in Japanese exports as yen weakens

Seafood is a sweet spot in Japanese exports this year that is pushing sales of food abroad to a record and gaining strength as the yen weakens.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Oct 19, 2014

Abe's inner circle sprouting horns over next tax bump

A major battle appears to be brewing between the office of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Finance Ministry — the most powerful bureaucracy in Japan — over whether to raise the consumption tax from the current 8 percent to 10 percent next fall.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 7, 2014

Tragic wake-up call as Abe pushes reactor restarts

The tragic eruption at Mount Ontake is a timely reminder that Japan is more blessed than cursed when it comes to natural resources. It possesses an enviable mix of water, wind and, most importantly, geothermal resources to fulfill its energy needs. It still has a chance to change course from the risky nuclear-energy road.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 4, 2014

Tourists may not warm to Japan's welcome

A former colleague of mine always made it a point to tell people coming to Japan for a visit to bring lots of handkerchiefs because the public restrooms didn't have towel dispensers. I always took a more positive view and emphasized that public restrooms in Japan were everywhere and open to everyone,...
EDITORIALS
Sep 24, 2014

Checkered land-price spread

Reports of continued declines in land prices suggest that the benefits of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's fight against deflation have yet to reach many of Japan's rural economies.
EDITORIALS
Sep 19, 2014

Liberalizing the power market

Legislation enacted in June will end the decades-long monopoly of Japan's regional utility companies by liberalizing the retail sale of electricity to households in 2016.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 12, 2014

Women's work culture under fire

One morning in February, the government personnel department began an experiment in a nondescript building in a Tokyo residential area that could end up rewriting the rules of the nation's powerful bureaucracy.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 9, 2014

Rakuten to acquire Ebates in Japan's biggest e-commerce deal

Rakuten Inc. has agreed to buy U.S. rebates website Ebates Inc. in Japan's largest-ever e-commerce deal as the operator of the country's biggest online mall seeks overseas growth through acquisitions.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 12, 2014

USJ touts wizardry of Harry Potter to win Japan casino partners

As Japan edges toward legalizing gambling resorts, USJ Co. is counting on its cachet turning around its Universal Studios theme park to win a partnership with a foreign casino operator.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2014

Japan's massive pachinko industry bets on casinos amid popularity decline

"Welcome!" two young women in shorts and Hawaiian shirts chime over the clatter of pinballs and J-pop music at the Million pachinko parlor in the Tokyo residential area of Suginami.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 9, 2014

Yahoo cyberattacks reveal gaping holes in Japan Inc.'s hacking shield

Shortly after the alert sounded at 9:10 p.m., Yahoo Japan Corp.'s risk team knew it had a problem. More than 20 million usernames and passwords belonging to its customers were being dumped into a file, primed to be stolen.
Reader Mail
May 31, 2014

An urban gem that deserves reassessment

I don't know if any other Japan Times readers have recently been to the sides of the Kanda and Zenpukuji rivers below Omiya Hachiman Shrine, but it is quite shocking what civil engineers are doing to the environment in the middle of Tokyo.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 21, 2014

Retailers scrambling to empty fat foreign wallets

In graying Japan, retailers are waking up to a hot new demographic: foreign visitors.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 20, 2014

Foreign domestics seen as aiding working mothers

Noriko Hitotsumatsu, a bilingual research pharmacologist with a master's from Cambridge University, considers herself lucky to have a part-time job in a Tokyo pharmacy after shelving her career to raise two daughters in one of the world's most work-oriented countries.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 24, 2014

Skin divers turn to tourism to stem the tide

At the Sea People restaurant in Shima, a coastal hamlet in Mie Prefecture, sea diver Machiyo Yamashita wants a piece of a tourism industry dominated by the cities that sapped her town's vitality by luring away its youth.
BUSINESS
Apr 16, 2014

Koto Ward mulls Olympic cable car

A study is underway for the possible construction of a cable car linking 2020 Tokyo Olympic venues with a business area near the Ginza shopping district, a municipal government official has said.
JAPAN
Apr 16, 2014

'Japanese Only' sign sparks bigotry debate

For nearly two decades, Shunji Usui has been a fixture at Urawa Red Diamonds matches at Saitama Stadium in the suburbs of Tokyo, a face in the crowd among the most avid — and sometimes rabid — fans of any Japanese soccer club.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Mar 15, 2014

JBA reveals plan for pro hoops circuit, restructuring for 2016-17 season

In 2016, the Japan Basketball Association will launch a new professional men's basketball league, it announced on Saturday evening.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Mar 14, 2014

Dahl still drawing on the joys and absurdities of expat life

For over 20 years, Roger Dahl has been making Japan Times readers laugh — and think — with his Opinion Page political cartoons and “Zero Gravity” comic strip, which pokes gentle fun at the foreign experience in this country.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 11, 2014

Japanese jingoism won't help Fukushima's refugees

The Abe government's inability to handle its crisis at home belies its global ambitions.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan