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EDITORIALS
Oct 13, 2012

Tehran feels the squeeze

Iran is hurting. Economic sanctions imposed by Western governments designed to push Tehran back into nuclear negotiations have triggered a virtual collapse of Iran's currency, and the effects are being felt throughout the entire economy. While there are reasons to be concerned about the impact of sanctions...
BUSINESS
Oct 13, 2012

Lexus U.S. sales off target amid BMW challenge

Toyota Motor Corp. said its Lexus model, dethroned in 2011 as the best-selling luxury auto brand in the United States, may miss its U.S. sales target this year amid fierce competition from BMW AG.
BUSINESS
Oct 13, 2012

China boycott ups firm's bond risk

Toyota Motor Corp.'s two-year reign as a better credit than the Japanese government has ended as violent protests over the Senkaku Islands dispute with China hurt its sales in the world's biggest car market.
JAPAN / IMF-WORLD BANK IN TOKYO
Oct 12, 2012

Kajima develops technologies to cope with disasters

As a way to demonstrate its commitment to the growing corporate and social requirements for business continuity plans (BCP), Kajima Corp., Japan's leading general contractor, conducted a large-scale anti-disaster drill on Aug. 30. It was conducted on the assumption that a magnitude 7.3 earthquake with...
BUSINESS
Oct 12, 2012

Tokyo fills in G-7 on fiscal crisis control, yen worries

At a meeting in Tokyo of finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, Japan detailed its ongoing efforts to defuse the nation's looming fiscal crisis and raised concerns about the yen, which it considers stubbornly overvalued, Finance Minister Koriki Jojima told reporters Thursday....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 12, 2012

Treasures from China's rich tapestry of cultures

"China" has always been something of a simplification. This is because it is an idea that has been used to encapsulate a vast heterogeneous portion of the World's population. With current relations with Japan tense, the idea of China as a monolithic giant with a single purpose, bringing its weight to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Oct 12, 2012

Hunting for Tokyo's real bagel heads

By now, everyone has likely heard of — and been baffled by — the recent "bagel head" phenomenon. Last month, a video clip that showed three people in Tokyo undergoing a beauty treatment that involved saline injections into their foreheads went viral on the Internet. The clip, taken from the program...
EDITORIALS
Oct 12, 2012

Mr. Chavez wins again

It was supposed to be a close vote; some even believed that an upset was in the works. But when the dust settled, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had won another election. This time, however, his margin of victory was considerably reduced, from 25 percentage points six years ago to about 10 percentage...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 12, 2012

Aircraft show to offer visitors close-up tour

The Japan International Aerospace Exhibition in Nagoya this weekend offers a special opportunity for the general public to view a variety of airplanes up close.
Reader Mail
Oct 11, 2012

The working class is to blame

Regarding Joseph Jaworski's Oct. 4 letter, "Laws of economics and physics": He asserts quite correctly that wealth has already been distributed. What he fails to appreciate is the reality of how that has been achieved and how it continues to be achieved.
Reader Mail
Oct 11, 2012

Responsibility for economics

A return thank you to Joseph Jaworski for his Oct. 4 letter, "Laws of economics and physics" (which was a response to my Sept. 27 letter, "Why do producers finish last?"). I am a little baffled, though, as to why most of the response was an effort to argue semantics. I don't think most readers of The...
BUSINESS
Oct 11, 2012

Global debt woes said increasing

Bleak assessments of the global economy continued to emerge at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Tokyo Wednesday, with the IMF's Global Financial Stability report warning that market players' confidence remains fragile.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 11, 2012

Lapalux, Taquwami tap into a West Coast sound

It's early on a Saturday evening at the 1-2-3-4 Shoreditch festival in London and Lapalux is taking the stage. He's only armed with a laptop, a MIDI controller and some select software, but the hundreds in the audience haven't shown up expecting a flashy light show; the music is more than enough to hold...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 11, 2012

Yamamoto named Japan's manager for WBC

Without a captain, a boat can't depart from port.
BUSINESS
Oct 11, 2012

French banker says Europe on track

The eurozone is properly addressing the cause of its financial crisis, though weaknesses persist and challenges remain, Bank of France Gov. Christian Noyer said Wednesday in Tokyo.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 11, 2012

Visiting finance officials inspect Panasonic eco tech

Nine delegates from three countries at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank checked out cutting-edge developments by one of Japan's electronics giants Wednesday, including energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 11, 2012

Magical Mistakes goes all natural on new album, 'Everything Uncertain'

Shiga Prefecture-based musician Erik Luebs, who works under the moniker Magical Mistakes, wanted to record the majority of sounds on his new album, "Everything Uncertain," by himself. Save for a few vocal snippets and 808 bass drums, his newest full-length leans heavily on natural sounds from the world...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 11, 2012

Taking a nostalgic train of thought

Train travel inspires nostalgia. There's no escaping it. It conjures up memories of childhood — playing beside the rail track at the bottom of the garden or with a miniature railway at home. However, politics and societal change have influenced and produced more controversial images of rail travel...
BUSINESS
Oct 10, 2012

Currency swap expansion will lapse

Tokyo and Seoul agreed Tuesday not to extend their expanded currency swap accord amid heightened territorial tensions.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Oct 9, 2012

Parco puts the spotlight on Shibuya's evolving youth culture

Department store Parco is aiming to fill the vacuum created by the rapidly declining gyaru (gal) culture that used to define the Shibuya area of Tokyo. By taking aspects of the otaku (geek) culture of Akihabara and re-imagining them through art and fashion in the context of a popular shopping district,...
EDITORIALS
Oct 8, 2012

Nuclear industry steamrolls on

The government's Sept. 14 new long-term energy policy of "mobilizing all available policy resources to reach 'zero operation' of nuclear power plants in the 2030s" contains various contradictions, including the continuation of efforts toward an operational fuel cycle that makes new nuclear fuel from...
Reader Mail
Oct 7, 2012

Tolerance for hurt feelings

Jack Durutti's Oct. 4 letter, "'Tolerance' is a two-way street" (in reply to Muhammad Abu Yousuf's Sept. 30 letter, "Article that showcases tolerance"), was spot-on. Setting up a shopping-mall prayer room for Muslims is indeed an act of tolerance to which no decent person would object.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2012

Exploring the garden of absolute infinities

Tenryu-Ji: Life and Spirit of a Kyoto Garden, by Norris Brock Johnson. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 368 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) If the Western garden is bulging with organic matter, the Japanese one is animate with deities, allegory, symbolism and mythology, hinting at a greater depth, a place of divine...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 7, 2012

Summer in the city's Todoroki Valley wilderness

Where does an expatriate living in Okinawa go for a two-week summer holiday? Why, to Tokyo, of course — if it's a working holiday — as there's no better place in Japan to make good money than the Big Mikan.

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