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Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Mar 4, 2011

Playoff battle intense in competitive West

A gripping drama is about to commence in March and April as the bj-league's top seven Western Conference teams vie for six playoff spots. What's more, the seven teams are within seven games of each other in the standings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 4, 2011

Showing art can be a load of rubbish

How are Africans seen by the rest of the world? Often as victims of tragedy, requiring our pity and charity, as I discovered when I showed a class of students a photo of the respected Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. The picture — in the catalog for his exhibition now on at the Museum of Modern Art, Hayama...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 4, 2011

Kuriyama trades her blades for a song

She's died on screen almost as many times as she's killed. Western movie fans will know her as Gogo Yubari, the spiked-ball-and-chain-wielding schoolgirl who disembowels men for fun before crying tears of blood in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 1." In Japan, she's been an actress since the age...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Mar 1, 2011

Foreignness, nationality and naturalization: readers' views

A selection of responses to "Naturalized Japanese: foreigners no more" by Debito Arudou (Just Be Cause, Feb. 1):
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Feb 26, 2011

Foreign sumo fans have their say on yaocho

In reaction to the yaocho (bout fixing) fracas enveloping sumo at present, many journalists in Japan and overseas have recently jumped on the sumo coverage bandwagon. Many have criticized the sumo association, the participants and their lifestyle and called for punishments, suspended basho and the like,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 25, 2011

Artist-curated festival sets new rules

"It's Auschwitz with good music," jokes Nick Cave at the start of "All Tomorrow's Parties," a 2009 documentary released to mark the 10th anniversary of the music festival of the same name. It's a tasteless description for an impeccably tasteful event, one that has become a bastion for left-of-center...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 23, 2011

West's son provides insight into legend's life

One of the things I loved most about my father was him being unafraid to show me his faults once we became coworkers.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 21, 2011

JGBs, credit and 'that kind of thing': Kan's known unknowns

T he credit rating company Standard & Poor's downgraded Japanese sovereign debt late last month. With an AA- rating, we are now a notch below Spain, whose possibly looming debt crisis has been unnerving EU financial authorities for some time.
EDITORIALS
Feb 20, 2011

Adaptation to globalization

Recently there has been much debate in Japan over whether the "Galapagos syndrome" — development in splendid isolation from the rest of the world — fits Japan. Galapago-ists argue that Japan should embrace its falling position in the world, adjust to diminished expectations, and find contentment...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 17, 2011

Planned school will offer diversity in the classroom

Lin Kobayashi explains that in the high school that she attended in Canada, in the early 1990s, there were 86 different nationalities represented in her year alone. Needless to say, Japan has no schools that could compete in terms of diversity, even today. But, if the 36-year-old Tokyo native gets her...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 16, 2011

In Japan the language of rabu is English

Words pertaining to love, romance and sex inhabit a region of the Japanese language fraught with peril.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 16, 2011

Sloan went out on his own terms after 22 years

NEW YORK — Apparently, there was a pact all along . . . Jerry Sloan came in around the same time with Hosni Mubarak, and damned if he isn't going out with him.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 13, 2011

Etsuko Komiya's leisurely walk; Kanpei Hazama's grueling journey; CM of the week: Daihatsu

Announcer Etsuko Komiya occupies a hallowed place in the annals of Japanese broadcasting. In 1985, she became the female sidekick to anchorman Hiroshi Kume when TV Asahi's groundbreaking nightly news program "News Station" premiered. She was considered as important to the show's popularity as the colorful...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's favorite mushrooms spark a quest far away

Author Stieg Larsson, the second biggest-selling novelist in the world in 2008 (behind Khaled Hosseini), left three-quarters of an unfinished book on his laptop when he died in 2004.
COMMENTARY
Feb 13, 2011

How does Japan start to cope with fewer births, longer lives?

Economic growth depends on the rates of population increase and technological evolution, among other factors. Technological evolution relies on the capacities of human beings. So its kernel factor is human power.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Feb 11, 2011

Golden Kings are first team with radio deal

Kudos to the Ryukyu Golden Kings for taking a big step forward, partnering with Radio Okinawa (864 AM) to offer live broadcasts of the team's 12 remaining home games this season.
SOCCER / J. League
Feb 7, 2011

Striker Juninho making lasting impression with Frontale

KAWASAKI — A lot of things have changed at Kawasaki Frontale over the past six months, but Brazilian striker Juninho's desire to help the club win its first J. League title is not one of them.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Feb 6, 2011

Steelers trainer Iso believes family atmosphere big part of team's success

Ariko Iso, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Japanese athletic trainer, wasn't quite sure what sort of differences she notices when comparing the last two Super Bowls she experienced while with the team.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Feb 6, 2011

Threatening media not a wise move for league needing exposure

"I may be getting older but I refuse to grow up," someone once said.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Feb 4, 2011

Anime's late, late show

A sea gull arcs through the clouds and swoops over a house perched high on a clifftop. The sound of waves can be heard breaking far below as a young boy sits down for breakfast across from two robots who, it turns out, are doppelgangers of his parents. In the future, he later informs us, "you can get...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Feb 2, 2011

Can their young love survive the reality of life?

"Kimi to kekkon shitai (君と結婚したい, I want to marry you). Hontō ni (本当に, really)."
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Jan 30, 2011

Miyazaki's Shimizu enjoying leading new team in his hometown

The Japan Times features periodical interviews with players in the bj-league. Taishiro Shimizu of the Miyazaki Shining Suns is the subject of this week's profile.
JAPAN
Jan 29, 2011

FCCJ retools to remain relevant

With the Internet pressing down on traditional media and interest in news from Japan apparently in decline, many foreign journalists say reporting with a Tokyo dateline is increasingly becoming a challenge.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 28, 2011

Greed is good again in 'Wall Street' sequel

BEVERLY HILLS, California — After having announced a week earlier that he had beaten cancer, Michael Douglas took the stage at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 16 and was greeted with a warm round of applause.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 27, 2011

Champion itasha drivers Rei and Cloud

Rei Densetsu and his sister Cloud are champion itasha (decorated car) drivers. At the 2010 Fuji Speedway itasha event, where Japan's best-decorated cars are judged on their designs, Cloud won the Impact Prize and Rei received the Special Award for their outrageously decked-out vehicles. The term "itasha"...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 25, 2011

Waiting for the WikiLeak dam to break

Like a giant dose of salts to a bloated and constipated patient, "Cablegate" has scoured its way through the post-9/11 United States empire, exposing its internal workings to merciless scrutiny: In Iraq, U.S. forces and their Iraqi subordinates kill civilians and journalists while their commanders turn...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jan 24, 2011

Ishizaki impresses bj-league peers

OSAKA — Shimane Susanoo Magic point guard Takumi Ishizaki has made a terrific impression in his short time in the bj-league.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 23, 2011

Mystery at a crossroads of continents

By the time I reached the small town of Palmyra, way out in the middle of the Syrian desert, I had become somewhat accustomed to the ways of the locals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 21, 2011

The Mornings reveal new depths on debut

"I was in a mosh pit at (Tokyo concert venue) Koiwa Bushbash when Shingo landed on top of me and dislocated my shoulder."

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers