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JAPAN
Jan 4, 2006

Pet businesses going to the dogs -- to their owners' delight

Two-year-old Melon slept on a small bed at one of the many beauty salons in Tokyo's Daikanyama shopping district, under a mist of negatively charged ions that reputedly reduces stress.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Dec 31, 2005

Gen Okamoto

Gen Okamoto sees himself as an illustrator rather than a fine artist. For that reason, in his printmaking he uses different techniques to produce "tones and softer shadows, a kind of texture," which he is looking for as the most desirable for his kind of creative expression. Sometimes people ask him...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 30, 2005

On and off the charts

Cast an eye over those charts that list the top-selling Japanese pop albums of the year and three musical trends come out on top: There were loose-limbed hip-hop party grooves aplenty (Def Tech and Ketsumeishi); American-influenced punk pop (Ellegarden, Ken Yokoyama and scores of others with Orange County-inflected...
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Dec 30, 2005

Psychedelic radar 12.30

The question of where to be for Countdown 2006 is proving drastically tough to answer with no major venue booked by any large trance organizer in Tokyo. There are plenty of choices, just no "one place to be," and unfamiliar limits on crowd sizes.
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2005

Cabinet endorses basic plan to promote gender equality

A basic plan to achieve gender equality was endorsed at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday and features the goal of raising the rate at which woman are recruited for the top-level career track in the central government.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Dec 28, 2005

Ichimonji bitterling

* Japanese name: Ichimonji-tanago * Scientific name: Acheilognathus cyanostigma * Description: The bitterling is a small fish, growing to around 70 mm in length. Adults are fairly deep-bodied, with a similar body shape to goldfish. In the breeding season, males become much more brightly colored than...
Features
Dec 25, 2005

The stuff of legend

She was named after the capital of Japan's first court. She was said by her crew to be more beautiful than a woman. She was the largest battleship in the world. She was the Yamato.
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2005

Media reports on China, South Korea hit

turns toward South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao looks away after a group photo at the East Asia Summit on Dec. 14.
Japan Times
Features
Dec 18, 2005

Festive fun with forgotten Futa

It's 9:58 on a chilly Wednesday morning, and it looks like I am the first of the day's visitors to Chiba Zoological Park.
Japan Times
Features
Dec 18, 2005

New chief puts paradise on map

Many dream of traveling the world and setting themselves up in a tropical paradise, but very few people make it happen. Even fewer get themselves appointed village chief of a remote Melanesian island in the process. But that's exactly what has happened to entrepreneur and art collector Ofer Shagan.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 18, 2005

TBS's quiz show "Sekai Baribari Value" looks at being rich and female and more

Many of the topical words that dominated the media this year described certain kinds of women, like makeinu ("loser dogs" -- a term for unmarried women past 30 -- and cerebu, women who, for some reason or another, are loaded. TBS's guess-the-price quiz show "Sekai Baribari Value (World's Exciting Values)"...
Japan Times
Features
Dec 18, 2005

Legal loner courts controversy every day

Any weekday, if you happen to drop by the Tokyo District/High/Summary Court building in Kasumigasaki, among all the besuited lawyers and the like you'll likely spy a blond, bearded young man leafing through the day's schedules in the first-floor lobby, or shuffling in and out of courtrooms big and small....
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2005

Road deaths near 50-year low

The number of traffic accident deaths for the 11 months to November fell by 394 from the same period last year to 6,200, with the annual figure expected to remain below 7,000 for the first time since 1956 if the current pace persists for the rest of the year, the National Police Agency said Thursday....
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Dec 16, 2005

Another jewel in the Cartier crown

Venerated as the royalty of jewelers and the jewelers of royalty, Cartier is by far the largest brand of its kind in the world. With its illustrious history and client list including countless kings, queens and princes, it is little wonder that the brand's double C logo and distinctive red packaging...
MORE SPORTS
Dec 15, 2005

Pullouts weaken men's G.P. field

This year's figure skating Grand Prix Final will feature only five competitors in the men's event after a series of withdrawals, the Japan Skating Federation said Wednesday.
MORE SPORTS
Dec 15, 2005

JLPGA to add three events

The Japan LPGA tour will add three tournaments to its schedule in 2006, taking total prize money to a record level as a new generation of players continue to boost interest in women's golf in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 15, 2005

Proving it to the people

While waiting for the news conference to begin for "Sayuri" at the Imperial Hotel on Nov. 28, two Japanese women were discussing Zhang Ziyi, the Chinese actress who plays the title role of a geisha during the years leading up to and immediately following World War II.
JAPAN
Dec 14, 2005

Tougher adult business law takes effect May 1

The revised adult entertainment control law will go into force May 1 featuring measures designed to crack down on human trafficking, the government decided Tuesday.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Dec 14, 2005

Common Buzzard

* Japanese name: Nosuri * Scientific name: Buteo buteo * Description: Buzzards are fairly common raptors in Japan, where they are among the larger of the birds of prey, typically growing to between 51-57 cm in length with a 110-130-cm wingspan. They are chunky birds with broad, blunt-ended wings and...
Japan Times
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Japan's new Wave

Japan and South Korea are like an old, bickering couple: Though they may want to part ways at times, their shared history and interdependency compel them to work things out. That, and they've got no place else to go.
Features
Dec 11, 2005

The 'undigested other': Koreans in Japan

Few parents would voluntarily send a son to live in North Korea; Kongsun Yang sent all three of his. In the early 1970s, Yang waved goodbye to his young Osaka-born boys, who later married and started families in Pyongyang. Poor and unhappy, the sons survive today only thanks to support from their parents...
Japan Times
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Korean school strives to keep its homeland culture alive

When I first laid eyes on Tokyo Chosen Dai-Ni Shokyu Gakko (Tokyo Korean No.2 Elementary School) in the downtown Edagawa district of Koto Ward, it looked like any other school in Japan.
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Discordant history mars neighbors' friendship overtures

Japanese actress Yoshino Kimura was the lone main guest at the Chuo Kokaido Hall in Osaka in October. She appeared without her Korean counterpart in the opening ceremony to celebrate this year's 40th anniversary of the 1965 Japan-South Korean Treaty that normalized Tokyo-Seoul relations.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 11, 2005

Judicial execution: the way to a better world?

The most gruesome photograph of people that I have ever seen in a newspaper is that of convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg just before their execution in the electric chair on June 19, 1953.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 10, 2005

Of countries big and small

"It's a big country," rings an oft-repeated line from a 1958 Gregory Peck-Burl Ives Western about love, honor and territory in the old West, a film appropriately titled "The Big Country."
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 1, 2005

Global robot exhibition gets under way

The 2005 International Robot Exhibition, one of the world's largest of its kind, opened Wednesday at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, also known as Tokyo Big Sight, for a four-day run through Saturday.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami