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LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Sep 26, 2011

Some four-kanji idioms are even officially child's play

Now that summer fireworks have ended and beach toys have been stored away, it's time for jukensei (受験生 entrance examination-takers) throughout the land to burn the midnight oil in earnest. High school seniors and third-year junior high students moving on to higher education — as well as elementary...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES
Sep 25, 2011

Discoveries to delight on the very doorstep of The Japan Times

There's an expression in Japanese — Todai moto kurashi (The base of the lighthouse is dark) — which occurs to me as I leave the headquarters of The Japan Times in Shibaura. Though I regularly dock here, I realize I'm in the dark about the surrounding area, Minato Ward's manmade flatlands in Tokyo's...
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 25, 2011

Students' skills help to forge a new Tohoku

In late July, when the students of Osaka Institute of Technology's Department of Architecture first arrived at the tiny port of Oharahama, an air of negativity hung over the conversation of the locals.
SOCCER / J. League
Sep 24, 2011

Tashiro, Antlers not ready to relinquish J. League crown

Kashima Antlers would need a miracle to end the season with their fourth J. League title in five years, but that does not mean striker Yuzo Tashiro is prepared to write the campaign off as a bust just yet.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 23, 2011

Forage your way into mushroom season

Edible mushrooms are a feature of the fall season in temperate climates worldwide, and Japan is no exception. The humid climate lends itself to the growth of all kinds of fungi, so it's easy to assume that mushrooms (or kinoko in Japanese) of all kinds have been included in the daily meals of the Japanese...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2011

Where we all should mind our own business

One of the more regressive proposals in this still-young U.S. presidential election season comes not from a candidate but, rather, from a journalist, specifically Bill Keller, the departing executive editor of the New York Times. In a recent column, Keller asserted that candidates should be subjected...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2011

Osama bin Laden made news, not history

Ten years after 9/11, the instant history is being written. In the French newspaper Le Monde, a highly intelligent commemorative supplement dubbed the period "The Decade of Bin Laden." But is that right?
EDITORIALS
Sep 17, 2011

Accelerate reconstruction

Six months after the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku Pacific coastal areas on March 11, people there are continuing to rebuild together their lives. In Fukushima Prefecture, people have suffered not only from the natural disasters but also from the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2011

Will the real Dick Cheney please stand up?

He's been called Darth Vader, feared or derided as a trigger-happy, torture-loving puppet master who called the shots over the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency. And now, with the publication of his memoir, "In My Time," Dick Cheney has once again grabbed the media spotlight. But what about...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 13, 2011

Eriko Hiratsuka

Eriko Hiratsuka, 26, received her master's degree from Waseda University's Graduate School of Law in 2010. That's no small achievement for anyone, but for Eriko, who has severe hearing loss in both ears, reaching her goals has always required extra effort. Although she can only hear sounds above 80 decibels...
JAPAN
Sep 11, 2011

Six months on, few signs of recovery

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami destroyed everything from houses to street lights, the town of Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, has been so dark and quiet at night it's unnerving.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 11, 2011

The annual Kerala festival in Tokyo

This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 11, 2011

Implacable merger of aesthetic and political

"Trespasses" may be a puzzling term (if you grew up with the Lord's Prayer), but in a foreword to this selection of writings by Masao Miyoshi (1928-2009), Frederic Jameson speaks of the "Victorianist who turns into a Japanologist" and of the "implacable unification of the aesthetic and the political"...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 11, 2011

Taro Yashima: an unsung beacon for all against 'evil on this Earth'

First of two parts
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 11, 2011

God's own country

Everywhere around Kerala in southwest India there are signs emblazoned with the state motto: "God's Own Country" — and certainly no supreme deity could have chosen a better place to call home.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 10, 2011

Swiss tries to bring foreign tourists back to Japan, a step at a time

The undulating sea observes the solitary walker. A triangular bamboo farmer's hat shades his face as the infinite horizon stretches ahead, marking out his path.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 9, 2011

Sendai to hold jazz festival

In times of trouble music can soothe the soul. And if anyone's souls needed soothing, it would be the people of Sendai.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Sep 9, 2011

Seasonal tea with flavors of autumn

The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzan-so is offering its popular Harvest Afternoon Tea set at its lobby lounge, Le Jardin, until Nov. 14.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Shockwaves from the West

A nervous calm has returned to the streets of England after last month's widespread riots, arson and looting across London and other cities sent shockwaves around the world. As far away as Japan people were asking if Britain was safe any more, and one German politician suggested moving next year's Olympic...
COMMENTARY
Sep 5, 2011

Revolution no boon to the Copts

Ugly reality has dashed the high hopes of the "Arab Spring." In Egypt the fall of Hosni Mubarak has encouraged religious intolerance and persecution, especially against the Coptic Christian community.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 4, 2011

Alfons Deeken: Priest-philosopher makes death his life's work

On Friday, July 22, as the stifling heat and humidity of summer relented for just a fleeting few days, hundreds of people filled a hall at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, to listen to a lecture by philosophy scholar Alfons Deeken.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Sep 4, 2011

Children — and their children — must be saved from Nature Deficit Disorder

When I first settled down to live here in Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture, I wrote an essay about what I considered to be an endangered species.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 2, 2011

Wine-tasting event will have your conscience feeling a buzz

For those who don't know their Merlot from their Chardonnay, the Three Country Premium Wine Tasting double event may provide the perfect opportunity to discover the difference. Pay a mere ¥2,000 on entry and you will have access to more than 100 wines. While your liver may not forgive you the morning...
EDITORIALS
Sep 1, 2011

Rampancy of child-porn files

Photos and moving images of sexually abused children are spreading over the Internet. In the first half of 2011, the police unearthed 649 child-porn cases, an increase of 9.1 percent from a year before and either arrested or sent papers to the prosecution on 455 people (a 9.4 percent increase).
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Sep 1, 2011

Zaccheroni must build upon strong start, be wary of rivals

Alberto Zaccheroni's first year as national team manager could hardly have been more successful, but that does not mean the Italian can expect to stroll through Japan's opening World Cup qualifying fixtures starting this week.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 30, 2011

Winning: 'The Alien': readers remember life in '90s Japan

The following are a selection of the winning submissions in response to last month's Zeit Gist competition to win copies of "The Very Best of Neil Garscadden's Alien Humor," a collection of many of the pieces Garscadden wrote while editor of the humor section of The Alien magazine.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan