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BUSINESS
Feb 4, 2012

TSE glitch no payday for platforms

Japan's alternative trading platforms missed out on a potential payday as regulators stopped them from fielding orders when a computer error caused the biggest trading disruption in six years Thursday at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Feb 3, 2012

Hilton Osaka offers Valentine's menu

To make the occasion a memorable one, the Hilton Osaka will offer a special Valentine's Day dinner course in the Windows on the World lounge on the hotel's topmost 35th floor from Feb. 10 to 14.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 3, 2012

Exam forces students to cram irrelevant facts

I have been studying academic juku (for-profit supplementary schooling) for many years and have visited over 50 individually operated juku throughout Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / Japan Pulse
Feb 2, 2012

The bags that came from another dimension

Stay creative and carry bags that push the boundaries of perception. You're guaranteed to turn a few heads.
Reader Mail
Feb 2, 2012

Ability to deal with uncertainty

Sawa Takamitsu, in his Jan. 24 article "More crucial than English," makes a number of interesting points that have to do with research budgets and even the involvement of business people in deciding the course of studies at Japanese universities. While I agree with everything the author says regarding...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 2, 2012

Tokyo Jihen "Color Bars"

Tokyo Jihen's first five albums have titles relating to types of television programming, "Sports" or "Variety" or "Adult." The Shiina-Ringo-led group's sixth album, though, is titled "Color Bars," after the rainbow lines that grace the TV screen during technical difficulties or dead-air time. It's a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 2, 2012

Warner's Ishizaka says 'exterminate' illegal downloads

Not many music-business executives compare themselves to Oda Nobunaga or Napoleon Bonaparte.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2012

Hamilton: U.K. has lost sight of the public benefits of higher education

Professor Andrew Hamilton became the first vice chancellor of Oxford never to have been educated at the university when he took the job in 2009. He is English, educated at Exeter University and Cambridge, but for the previous 28 years had lived in America, the last 13 of them at Yale University, as professor...
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2012

Fukui nuclear plants key issue in Kyoto mayor race

With one of the world's largest clusters of nuclear plants just some 60 km to the north, the Fukushima crisis is looking to be a major campaign issue in Kyoto's Feb. 5 mayoral election.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jan 31, 2012

Facing up to alcoholism in foreign land can help or hinder recovery

A reader has a query about alcoholism in Japan: "How is it generally perceived and what kind of help is available for foreign alcoholics who speak little to no Japanese?"
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 31, 2012

A winter's tale: cold homes, poor lives in wealthy Japan

Question: What am I doing outside my home at 6 a.m. with a gas can, a pump, and stalactites under my nose?
EDITORIALS
Jan 31, 2012

A worrisome trade deficit

Japan's trade balance went into the red in 2011 — the first since 1980 when soaring oil prices caused a trade deficit. But the current account balance is still in the black thanks to income generated by Japan's overseas net assets amounting to some ¥250 trillion. This money is reinvested overseas...
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2012

Hefty yen helps cut energy costs: Koo

Japan should limit intervention aimed at weakening the yen because a strong currency will pare the cost of fuel imports as the nation's nuclear capacity dwindles, said Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY
Jan 30, 2012

Economic crisis exacting tolls on public health

The deteriorating global economic outlook is increasing worries among health experts on the effects that the economic crises will have on people's health.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jan 30, 2012

Royal challenge awaits Noda

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda appears strongly committed to revising the Imperial Household Law to let female members of the Imperial family remain in the royal family even if they marry commoners. The Imperial family is the oldest royal family in the world and Chapter 1 of the Japanese Constitution...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jan 30, 2012

Japanese coaches soaking up NFL experience during Pro Bowl week

Though the NFL players and coaches at the Pro Bowl are in relaxed mode with their season wrapped up, a pair of Japanese coaches are as serious as can be, trying to absorb every moment of this valuable opportunity.
Reader Mail
Jan 29, 2012

Symptoms of classroom collapse

Amen to Willie Taylor's Jan. 26 letter, "Can't defend a broken system." What of stressed out teachers who dread entering a classroom? It's sort of like the First World War soldier in the British trenches going "over the top" to face the enemy! A modern teacher has to be something of a lion tamer, a drill...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 29, 2012

Disaster adds tension to year-in-the-life TV

Fuji TV's Sunday afternoon documentary series "The Non-Fiction" usually covers individuals over long periods of time. "The Old Man and Radiation," aired in two parts on Jan. 15 and 22, was about Toshihiko Kawamoto, an 80-year-old former carpenter who moved from Tokyo to the wilds of Fukushima Prefecture...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 29, 2012

In disparity-ridden Japan, don't mind the gaps — just get out of them

This is a nation of gaps.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 29, 2012

Unconventional thinking is the way forward for Japan

Yubari, Hokkaido, claims several distinctions, few of them enviable. It is Japan's only bankrupt city, and also its most elderly. Forty-one percent of its sagging population of 13,000 (down from 117,000 50 years ago) is aged 65 or over. That's of nationwide significance because within 40 years, Japan,...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jan 29, 2012

Tsunami lessons for Tohoku from Tamil Nadu

On Dec. 26, 2004, a massive tsunami blasted across the Indian Ocean, cutting a swath of destruction through communities in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India that claimed a staggering 230,000 lives.
EDITORIALS
Jan 29, 2012

Smoking deaths

The health ministry is drawing up a plan to halve the smoking rate in Japan from 23.4 percent in 2009 to 10 percent. Unfortunately, the plan is tucked into a long-range health promotion plan from 2013 to 2022.
EDITORIALS
Jan 29, 2012

A victory for women

Voters in Otsu, Shiga elected Japan's youngest-ever female mayor last week. Congratulations go out to Ms. Naomi Koshi, who is only 36, almost half the age of the outgoing mayor, Mr. Makoto Mekata, 70. Mr. Mekata held the post for two terms supported by the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito. Ms. Koshi...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2012

Veteran of two wars — in two different armies

Minoru Ohye, 86, is a rare veteran: He served in both the Imperial Japanese Army, fighting the Soviet Red Army during World War II, and in the U.S. military during the Korean War.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan