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JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 23, 2008

You'd have to be drunk to be fooled by Japan's booze commercials

A few weeks ago the Asahi Shimbun printed a letter from a 59-year-old man who complained about a TV commercial for Kirin's Tanrei, one of those beerlike beverages known as happoshu. In the spot, world-famous alpinist Ken Noguchi is seen climbing a mountain, the Gipsy Kings howling away on the soundtrack....
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Mar 23, 2008

Ortiz, Youkilis spark BoSox past pesky Tigers

The Boston Red Sox came to Japan to give their Japanese fans a good show and they didn't disappoint. But neither did the Hanshin Tigers.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 23, 2008

Oh what an extravaganza

Even the heavens were smiling on Tokyo Girls Collection. Balmy 19-degree temperatures — the year's highest up until then — provided the perfect setting last Saturday for the Spring/Summer edition of this hugely popular fashion-show-cum-showbiz extravaganza, allowing most of the 22,000 teenage and...
Reader Mail
Mar 23, 2008

No selective approach to terrorism

It is regrettable that The Japan Times chose to reprint The Washington Post article "A rocky terrain for Kurdish guerrillas" for the March 20 Focus page. The article is misguided and misleading in many ways. It only serves to legitimize and even attempts to glorify an organization that has been recognized...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 22, 2008

Red Sox, Athletics arrive for MLB season opener

After a few tense hours on Thursday, the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's finally arrived in Japan. More importantly for the Japanese fans, Daisuke Matsuzaka was present and accounted for.
COMMUNITY
Mar 22, 2008

Gallery brings Vietnamese art to Tokyo

Karen Thomas' Thai housekeeper is apologetic. "Karen" is down in the garage basement, unpacking a shipment. So down we go from the Bird-Thomas household on the sixth floor and find a tiny dynamic powerhouse, power tool in hand, tackling large flat wooden crates of art, flown in by Fedex from Vietnam....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 22, 2008

Here they are once again — The Cherry Blossoms!

Nothing excites Japanese people the way cherry blossoms do. Cherry blossoms are something the Japanese are so proud of, they can't help but smile when someone mentions the magic word: o-hanami.
BUSINESS
Mar 22, 2008

Japan, Rosneft ink agreement on oil exploration, production

Japan and OAO Rosneft, Russia's biggest oil producer, signed an initial agreement to cooperate in crude oil exploration and production, part of Japan's efforts to win better access to overseas reserves.
COMMENTARY
Mar 21, 2008

Tibet and Olympic Games

Events in Tibet have turned ugly. Once again we see the harm caused by Beijing's heavy-handed bureaucracy, and its panicky, untrained soldiers used for crowd control. But even when combined with all of Beijing's other alleged sins — Darfur, pollution, human rights and other issues — does Tibet justify...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 21, 2008

Then there were ghosts

Uraga Station, on the Keikyu Line, deposits passengers at the end of a narrow valley. The road ahead bifurcates.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 21, 2008

Folk music lights traditional tales

Takeharu Kunimoto's entry into the music world was via the mandolin, which he took up in 1974 while he was still in junior high school. But it wasn't the lure of traditional European tunes that attracted him to the ancient instrument; it was the twangy rhythms of the blues- and jazz-fusion American...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 21, 2008

'Memo'

Some directors put their own neuroses on the screen, with attitudes ranging from the dramatically self-lacerating (Ingmar Bergman) to the comically self-deprecating (Woody Allen). Where actor-turned-director Jiro Sato departs from the messed-up norm in "Memo," his first feature film, is in the rawness...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 21, 2008

'My Blueberry Nights'

What in the world has happened to Wong Kar-wai? The freshest, most effortlessly cool man in cinema since the mid-1990s, Wong seems to be floundering at the moment. For a director whose style once seemed all about being free, off-the-cuff, jammed out, and playful, his most recent flicks show every sign...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / MY PLAYLIST
Mar 21, 2008

MY PLAYLIST: Cornelius

Keigo Oyamada stopped writing hits a long time ago. Not playing the pop star suits him just fine. It gives Oyamada — formerly of Flipper's Guitar but better known since 1993 as avant-pop boffin Cornelius — more time to indulge his multimedia fantasies to the full, as captured on two new DVDs released...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2008

The final days of revolutionary struggle in Japan

The West sees the turbulent era of the late 1960s and early '70s principally through the lens of its own protesters and radicals, with America's war in Vietnam the focal point of activist anger. If it thinks about East Asia in this period at all, it is usually the China of Mao and the Red Guards, who...
JAPAN
Mar 20, 2008

Fukuda's coalition finds itself trapped

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is stuck.
Reader Mail
Mar 20, 2008

Media's tendency to sensationalize

Regarding Yoshio Shimoji's March 16 letter, "Wrong answers to angry questions," which was a response to Billy Fanska's March 9 letter, "Negative rhetoric defeats everyone": I don't think Fanska was minimizing the crimes committed by the U.S. military against Japanese citizens. Crime rates are meaningless...
BUSINESS
Mar 20, 2008

Denso plans new Fukushima factory

Denso Corp., the world's largest publicly traded auto-parts maker, will spend ¥16 billon to build a new air conditioning systems factory to meet growing demand in Japan.
BUSINESS
Mar 20, 2008

'08 domestic car sales to rise a bit

Domestic car sales may rise for the first time in two years in the next business year as new models by Nissan Motor Co. and Daihatsu Motor Co. spur demand in the world's third-largest auto market.
EDITORIALS
Mar 19, 2008

Litmus test for Mr. Hu

Around the time when anti-Chinese protests took place in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa last week, Mr. Hu Jintao, who calls for establishment of a harmonious society in China, was re-elected president of the country at a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing. How he will handle Tibetan...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight