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COMMENTARY / Japan / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 4, 2013

Abe's 15-month reversal budget fudges cost of swapping people and butter for concrete and guns

The government of Shinzo Abe has just unveiled its budget for fiscal 2013 starting in April. Abe's stated intention was to “radically reset” spending priorities.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2013

Soul of GOP depends on immigration reform

U.S. Republicans have an existential reason to support immigration reform. The last thing Barack Obama should do now is give them cause to oppose it.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 4, 2013

Puppy Bowl grows in leaps, bounds

When reporters from The New Yorker, "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," "Good Morning America," The Associated Press and The Washington Post, have all converged upon one event, it must be important. An appearance by the president. A press conference about dignified matters, with plenty of throat-clearing...
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2013

Abe's willpower for core values

Some Japan Times staff writers, at the expense of their journalistic integrity, seem to have a penchant for the same old partisan cliche in reporting on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as we see in the Jan. 29 front-page article "Abe opens Diet, skips hawkish rhetoric," and in previous articles that either...
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 3, 2013

U.S. to Abe: Collective self-defense off agenda

Washington does not want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to bring up the issue of collective self-defense at the Japan-U.S. summit to be held later this month, diplomatic sources said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Feb 3, 2013

Hidetoshi Masunaga: making revolution through the Constitution

On Dec. 14, 2012, two days before the Lower House election in which the Democratic Party of Japan headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was eclipsed as the conservative Liberal Democratic Party swept back to power in a landslide, a one-page advert with a huge banner headline appeared in a vernacular...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 3, 2013

Escaping one's demons through an epic trek

WILD: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed. Knopf, 2012, 336 pp., $25.95 (hardcover) In this hugely entertaining book, Cheryl Strayed takes the redemptive nature of travel — a theme as old as literature itself — and makes it her own. For three months she hiked 1,100 miles...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 3, 2013

Tokyo's wilderness within

What did our cities' natural landscapes originally look like? In a sprawling metropolis such as Tokyo, with concrete encrusting almost every inch of earth, walling every riverbank and towering up to the skies, it is almost impossible to imagine.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 3, 2013

Constitutional revision may bring less freedom

Article 18 of Japan's Constitution states, "No person shall be held in bondage of any kind. Involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, is prohibited."
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 2, 2013

Somali pirate trial lay judges felt global duty

The lay judges who sentenced two Somali pirates to 10 years in prison Friday said that while they had initial qualms about a case they considered foreign, they came to believe it was their duty as part of the international community to try the defendants.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 2, 2013

Government says all single parents not created equal

A single mother finds that she doesn't qualify for a tax exemption because she was never married.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Feb 1, 2013

Six months on, U.K. schools are losing the Olympic legacy

Near the entrance of York High School in northern England, painted in large letters, are the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." It is not a bad motto, particularly for a school that prides itself on its sporting prowess. Along all the corridors and outside...
WORLD
Feb 1, 2013

Iran to install hundreds of new centrifuges

Iran has told U.N. nuclear officials that it plans to add potentially hundreds of next-generation centrifuge machines to its main uranium enrichment plant, a move that could dramatically boost its ability to produce the fuel used in nuclear power plants and — potentially — nuclear bombs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Feb 1, 2013

AKB48 member's 'penance' shows flaws in idol culture

The image of a young girl in front of a camera, her head recently shaved, sobbing into the lens is one that's guaranteed to shock. But when that girl is a key member of idol group AKB48, the reaction is bound to be stronger.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Feb 1, 2013

Who is that masked woman?

I lay in bed with a woman with a mask on her face.
EDITORIALS
Feb 1, 2013

Not the way to reform education

As for 'resuscitating' education, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears more interested in nurturing children who will help Japan achieve its national goals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2013

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson is one of those directors who, love him or hate him, has been remarkably consistent. Each film, from "Rushmore" right on down, is an artfully constructed and totally hermetic world unto itself, with flawed or absent father-figures, a closet's worth of funky-yet-chic pop-culture knickknacks...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EMBASSY AVENUE
Feb 1, 2013

Events highlight the Cote d'Ivoire of today

The Cote d'Ivoire of today is being presented during the Month of Cote d'Ivoire event at the Japan International Cooperation Agency's Global Plaza in Tokyo through Feb. 10.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 1, 2013

Cirque offshoot 7 Fingers has lofty ambitions

Since first touring its native province of Quebec in 1984, the self-styled "multifaceted creative force" that is Canada's Cirque du Soleil has become a major global phenomenon with several permanent venues.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2013

'Jiro Dreams of Sushi'

To describe "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" as a foodie film is akin to picking an English rose and calling it a flower. This documentary by New York-based David Gelb is at once a celebration of one of the world's most popular and coveted meals, and a firsthand observation of Japan's most famous sushi chef at...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Feb 1, 2013

Wagner-Verdi bicentennial celebration in Tokyo; Hakone for Valentine's, White Day; strawberry buffet in Osaka

Wagner-Verdi 200th birthday event
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 31, 2013

Firm seeking to conquer world with translation app

For non-Japanese speakers, services like Google Translate and NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s phones that provide automated translation by speaking into the devices may have made it easier to communicate while in Japan.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years