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JAPAN
Feb 23, 2006

Schools revisit Saturday classes amid college worries

Just four years ago, the high-pressure public school system moved to lighten the burden on young students by eliminating Saturday classes and going to a five-day schedule.
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2006

Champion chef spreads Naples pizza culture here

Makoto Onishi, the winner of the title of best pizza maker at the annual Naples pizza festival in 2003, busied himself kneading dough and topping pizzas with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2006

It's not right for the West and Israel to isolate Hamas, the Palestinians' best hope

NEW YORK -- As the son of a Lebanese pacifist, I am dismayed by the widening gap between Palestinians and Israelis that make a possible solution to the con- flict between them seem even more distant.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 22, 2006

S. Korean wetland faces doom

For those readers long ago numbed to the fraud, waste and environmental abuse that accompanies public works projects in Japan, here's one that might jump-start your ire: A project by the South Korean government to landfill and develop 40,100 hectares (almost 100,000 acres) of coastal waters and wetlands...
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2006

Aso now calls honey trap allegation hypothetical

Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Monday backed away from an earlier claim that China lured a consular official with a female spy, saying he offered the account only as a possible scenario.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Feb 21, 2006

Party round-up: Chloe, Maison Martin Margiela, Bernhard Willhelm, Alexander Lee-Chang . . .

It's been a busy month for the Tokyo style scene, with a flurry of high-profile store openings culminating in an unveiling of the monumental Omotesando Hills that coincided with extravagant 100th anniversary bashes for luxury pen brand Mont Blanc and jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels. All this meant a punishing...
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2006

New demands, more delays

Japan and North Korea made little progress toward solving their problems in five days of bilateral talks that ended early this month in Beijing. The only agreement was to continue to talk.
EDITORIALS
Feb 20, 2006

Travails of Mr. Thaksin

Thailand's prime minister, Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra, is a survivor. Since taking office five years ago, he has weathered allegations of corruption and malfeasance, charges of nepotism, an insurgency in Thailand's southern provinces and even a public rebuke by the king. Yet, he has bested every challenge...
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2006

The 'freedom' to disrespect

LONDON -- The furor over cartoons published in a Danish paper last September mocking Islam has not yet ended. One was of the prophet Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb, implying that Islam was a terrorist organization. Muslims were outraged because they saw a false image of Islam conveyed...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 19, 2006

Tuffy Rhodes: the best ever foreign player in Japan

The 10-year Japan career of Tuffy Rhodes has apparently come to an end with the announcement last week he had signed a contract with his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Feb 19, 2006

On your own in the Ice Age

MOSCOW -- If scientists are bent on calling the overall weather mayhem of the past few years "global warming," more power to them, but this winter the term looked like a huge misnomer to the population of Eurasia -- from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 19, 2006

Careful planning helps to preserve male-succession mind-set

The morning after it broke, news that Princess Kiko is expecting a baby in September was greeted with predictably meaningless blather on the TV wide shows. Commentators made a connection between the pregnancy and that ceremony the princess and her husband, Prince Akishino, attended in September of last...
Japan Times
Features
Feb 19, 2006

Back in time with a legend reborn

Fifty years ago this week -- when Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama was reopening diplomatic relations with Moscow; bullet trains or expressways had yet to be built; and a bank staffer's monthly pay was about 25,000 yen -- Tokyo publisher Shinchosha launched the weekly Shukan Shincho, priced at 30 yen....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 19, 2006

Decades of peace have yet to heal Vietnam's wounds

VIET NAM AT PEACE, by Philip Jones Griffiths. London: Trolley, 2005, 312 pp., £39.95 (cloth). This is the final volume in Philip Jones Griffiths' epoch trilogy on Vietnam spanning 40 years. His classic "Vietnam, Inc" (1971) and "Agent Orange" (2003) focus on war and its consequences. Here, we are given...
Japan Times
Features
Feb 19, 2006

An innocent abroad brings his twisted genius to Japan

I first heard about Momus, the alter-ego of the Scottish musical maverick Nick Currie, in 2002, when a writer friend directed me to an article that Currie had written on the coolness of Tokyo's up-and-coming Nakameguro district.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 19, 2006

Women writers opened window on Heian life

OBJECTS OF DISCOURSE: Memoirs of Women of Heian Japan, by John R. Wallace. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005, 326 pp., with VII illustrations, $65 (cloth). The four major court memoirs written in the late 10th and early 11th century are the "Kagero nikki" (translated...
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2006

GSDF troops to start Iraq exit in March

Japan will start pulling out its Ground Self-Defense Force troops from the southern Iraq city of Samawah in March and complete the withdrawal by the end of May, Foreign Ministry officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2006

Traditional prewar houses finding favor with manufactured home-weary

Architect Jun Hirai, 35, lives and works in a refurbished traditional "minka" house built during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) in Obama, Fukui Prefecture.

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