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Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Mar 31, 2014

Call the sitter: Parents resort to online services out of economic necessity

Most Japanese parents who use babysitters do so because of work obligations.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 30, 2014

Japan might win more friends if it just shuts up

Although there's plenty of blame to go around for the sorry state of relations between Japan and its neighbors, there's something Abe could do to ratchet down tensions: Tell people in his inner circle to clam up.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Mar 29, 2014

North Korea realty market soars

One of the world's fastest developing property markets is also in one of its least likely places: North Korea.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 29, 2014

Under the beat of the Taiko in Kyoto

Kyoto's long history has ensured that it has seen its fair share of giants. Yet few of these legends have marked the city's physical appearance to the extent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, despite the man's reputedly smallish stature.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2014

Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands

This extensive travel book by lecturer and Okinawa expert Robert Walker is billed as "the first comprehensive guide to the entire Ryukyu Island chain." With 25 years experience traveling throughout the region's 150-islands Walker has amassed a huge amount of information — condensed here into 290 pages...
Japan Times
JAPAN / SYMPOSIUM ON ASEAN AND GLOBALIZATION
Mar 28, 2014

ASEAN works to overcome challenges

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations will continue to accelerate integration while it works to overcome challenges such as disparities in the levels of development among member countries, academic experts of some ASEAN countries said at a symposium in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 27, 2014

Finding Japan's hidden punk scenes in their natural environments

Finding music in Japan can be a nightmare, and the live-music scene in particular is notoriously difficult to penetrate. Tucked away in the basements and upper floors of anonymous buildings, often in seedy parts of town, where the neighbors will be less likely to raise complaints against noise and loitering,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Mar 26, 2014

Japan's Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined

If Japan's unwritten constitution is already so flexible, why are Abe and his party so bent on amending the written one?
Japan Times
BUSINESS / NOTEBOOK
Mar 25, 2014

European design; Animation station; African Festival

exhibitions
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 24, 2014

Top NATO official warns of Russian threat to separatist Moldova region

NATO's top military commander said on Sunday that Russia had built up a "very sizable" force on its border with Ukraine and Moscow may have a region in another ex-Soviet republic — Moldova — in its sights after annexing Crimea.
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Mar 21, 2014

Have once-welcoming Urawa Reds matches changed that much?

Some responses to Debito Arudou's March 13 Just Be Cause column, 'J. League and media must show red card to racism.'
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Mar 21, 2014

Cracks in the ruling coalition

The exercise of Japan's right to collective self-defense has become Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's political creed, but ruling coalition partner New Komeito wants Abe to slow his approach, and others close to Abe have grown apprehensive about the rise of anti-American conservatism within Abe's Liberal Democratic Party. The ruling coalition is showing cracks.
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2014

Rising land prices in big cities

For 2013, the megalopolises of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka showed rises in both residential and commercial land prices for the first time in six years.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2014

Lego builds the year's first true blockbuster

Film director Phil Lord has fond childhood memories of days spent playing with Lego's colorful plastic blocks. He says he would simply dump what he had on the floor and create a huge mess.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Mar 20, 2014

Our guide to family hanami hot spots

The transition from winter to summer is just beginning, and that means something magical is about to arrive: cherry-blossom season. As winter loosens its grip, delicate pastel petals push their way out of gnarled sakura-tree branches — an early indicator of the warmth that will slowly envelop the archipelago....
COMMENTARY
Mar 20, 2014

Failure to pool information haunts saga of missing flight

The apparent failure of the emergency services of all countries to pool their information, in real time or at least within a day, haunts the saga of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
LIFE / Japan Showcase / AOMORI PREFECTURE
Mar 20, 2014

Walking among the snow monsters of the Hakkoda mountains

The cable car rumbles ominously as it carries us from the station in Towada-HachimantaiNational Park up to the peak of Mount Tamoyachi, in the northern Hakkoda mountain range. The dozens of goggled skiers and snowboarders filling the floating glass chamber hardly seem to hear it, as they eagerly approach...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 19, 2014

Deep feelings at high altitudes

The photographs, taken by artist Naoya Hatakeyama, hint at both the beauty and dangers of a mountain, as reflected in the shades of light and darkness alongside textures of soft-edged snow and sharply lined rocks.
Figure Skating / ICE TIME
Mar 18, 2014

Worlds better held before Olympics as a qualifier

Is a post-Olympic worlds really worthwhile?
WORLD / Politics
Mar 18, 2014

Ukrainians dig massive trench along border in Russian-speaking east

Ukraine's easterly Donetsk region, dominated by Russian-speakers and buffeted by rallies by pro-Russian activists, has built a defensive trench complete with concrete barriers along its long border with Russia, its governor said Monday.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 16, 2014

Will the fate of Flight MH370 ever be known?

After a week of false leads, U-turns, wild speculation and outright contradictions, experts wonder if the missing Malaysia Airlines 777 will ever be discovered.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 16, 2014

Did climate — or man — kill off megafauna?

They were some of the strangest animals to walk the Earth: wombats as big as hippos, sloths larger than bears, four-tusked elephants and an armadillo that would have dwarfed a VW Beetle. They flourished for millions of years, then vanished from our planet just as humans emerged from their African homeland....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 15, 2014

All change — for a Transition Town near you

For anyone who cares about nature — or their own future — Earth in the 21st century can be a worrying place to live. The planet is warming and climate-related disasters are growing more frequent; plants and animals are going extinct at rates not seen in 65 million years; and in many places, key resources...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 15, 2014

Olympics highlight the need for foreign blue-collar laborers

In a recent column, Tokyo Shimbun sportswriter Masaru Ogawa called on past and future Olympic athletes to come forward and talk about what he sees as the biggest problem facing the Tokyo 2020 Games: lack of construction workers. Next year, work on venues will start in earnest, but Japan is already burdened...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2014

Portrait of the assassin as a young man

Sometime in the 1970s, as more Americans began to rally against the Vietnam War, an unknown cynic parodied the U.S. Army's promotional recruitment tagline with the slogan, "Join the Army! Travel to unusual places. Meet interesting people, and kill them."

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan