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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2011

Global coordination task falls to French schmoozer

HONG KONG — Pity French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and be careful what you wish for. Sarkozy has taken over as the president of the once-cozy Group of Eight developed economic powers as well as the Group of 20 countries, which combines the club of old economic powers with the up and coming new ones....
EDITORIALS
Jan 14, 2011

Social welfare unraveling

Personal consumption, which accounts for more than half the nation's gross domestic product and is an important locomotive of the economy, has been sluggish. Short-term factors behind the sluggish consumption are the termination of subsidies for the purchase of eco-friendly cars and the scaling down...
BUSINESS
Jan 13, 2011

Toyota finds cachet hard to regain

After owning several Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles over the past 17 years, Randy Sterling traded in his Tacoma pickup this month for Ford Motor Co.'s F-150 truck. "The recent problems with Toyota caused me to have a closer look at Ford," said Sterling, a contractor in Blenheim, Ontario, referring to record...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2011

Woman makes it a ritual to sleep under stars in Tokyo

Chiaki Kato has slept outdoors about three times a month for the last decade, regardless of the season or weather.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2011

Take a new tack on Iran

WASHINGTON — Throughout 2010, the pattern for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program held to form. With just about every diplomatic effort failing to yield results, international efforts had increasingly given way to discussions about sanctions — and what mix of them would be needed to bring Iran...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Jan 11, 2011

Absence makes couple grow fonder

Long-distance relationships are no longer rare in today's global village. But how long can a couple last without actually seeing each other? Fukuoka residents Naoko Yufu, 28, and 26-year-old Xie Guosong from China have been apart for about four of the five years of their relationship.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 9, 2011

Japan's year of triumph in space

So, it's goodbye to 2010, the Year of the Tiger, and hello to 2011, the Year of the Rabbit.
BASKETBALL
Jan 8, 2011

Injuries sideline Golden Kings duo

Ryukyu Golden Kings forward David Palmer (dislocated left shoulder) and All-Star big man Jeff Newton (torn meniscus on left knee) sustained injuries against the Kyoto Hannaryz earlier this week, the team announced on Friday. It's unknown how long they will be sidelined.
COMMENTARY
Jan 7, 2011

China shows signs of recognizing its limits

HONG KONG — After behaving in an assertive, sometimes arrogant, fashion through most of 2010, when it at various times took on the United States, Europe and Japan, both Beijing and the people of China appear to recognize the need for greater caution and restraint in the coming year. For one thing,...
JAPAN / AT JAPAN'S EXPENSE
Jan 6, 2011

Japan far behind in global language of business

Last in a series
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Jan 6, 2011

Apache prepare for tough homecoming schedule

After an awkward start to the season with more practice time than game time since mid-October, the Tokyo Apache now begin the full-scale busy portion of their nonsensical 2010-11 bj-league campaign.
EDITORIALS
Jan 5, 2011

'Predictable' verdict in Moscow

Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a difficult man to like. He is a Russian tycoon, a multibillionaire who got rich during the fire sale of Russian national assets during the kleptocratic years of the Yeltsin era. But being unlikable does not make him a criminal, and neither does daring to challenge Russian...
JAPAN / AT JAPAN'S EXPENSE
Jan 4, 2011

Emerging carmakers put mainstays in panic

Third in a series
JAPAN / AT JAPAN'S EXPENSE
Jan 3, 2011

Japan not alone in demographic conundrum

Second in a series
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2011

Setting a new democratic agenda for Russia

MOSCOW — When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev delivered his annual address to the Federal Assembly, I was struck by the fact that his speech seemed intended for an advanced, prosperous country, not the real Russia of today.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2010

DPJ's diplomatic weakness all too evident

2010 was a tough year in foreign relations for Prime Minister Naoto Kan and the Democratic Party of Japan as they scrambled to deal with one problem after another, including territorial disputes with China and Russia.
BASKETBALL
Dec 30, 2010

Hokuriku High captures All-Japan basketball title

After the game-ending buzzer, every single Hokuriku High School player raised his arms high in the air, and other teammates trotted onto the floor with huge smiles and tears on their faces.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 30, 2010

Mad knitters take to Tokyo's streets

This November, people strolling through a park in Ebisu, Tokyo, were baffled: Several benches there had been covered with colorful knitwear, many wildly curling around the wooden poles of backrests and armrests. Next to the benches, more wondrous knitted entities were hanging from the branches of a tree....
COMMENTARY
Dec 29, 2010

Troubling China-India ties

NEW DELHI — The already fraught China-India relationship appears headed for more turbulent times as a result of the two giants' failure to make progress on resolving any of the issues that divide them. Earlier this month, during the first visit in more than four years of a Chinese leader to India,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 29, 2010

Ex-bureaucrats bent on reform

A few years before the end of the Edo Period in 1865, prominent samurai Sakamoto Ryoma founded a private navy and the Kameyama Shachu trading company in Nagasaki and led the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 28, 2010

Kabuki going strong, 400 years on

The media frenzy over kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo's drunken midnight brawl in Tokyo last month may be a testament to how, 400 years after its birth, the genre remains a highly popular form of entertainment integral to Japanese culture.

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