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EDITORIALS
Mar 2, 2010

A promise the DPJ should forget

The Hatoyama administration has decided to abolish tolls for 50 sections of 37 expressways in Japan on a trial basis. This experiment, which covers some 18 percent of the nation's expressway network, will last from June to the end of March 2011. Making the nation's expressways toll-free was one of the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Mar 2, 2010

What will you remember about the Vancouver Olympics?

BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 1, 2010

Message for Hatoyama from his patron saint

Saint Thomas More is the patron saint of politicians. As a Catholic myself I should have known this before, but the information actually came to me quite recently via the Mainichi Shimbun. So many thanks to the newspaper for this piece of religious education.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 28, 2010

Three LatAm capitals and the Tokyo of 1964

NEW YORK — While visiting three capitals in Latin America on a lecture tour earlier this month, I wondered if Tokyo looked or felt like any of these cities to someone visiting it from New York or a large European city half a century ago.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 28, 2010

The illusion of powerlessness

Robin LeBlanc is doing a tricky dance. She's clearly a serious academic devoted to the study of politics, and she does her damnedest to do right by that world. But she's such a good writer that her prose is accessible, even entrancing, to mere mortals. In fact, sometimes her prose is funny and even beautiful....
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 28, 2010

Is the Atsugi tragedy finally drawing to a close?

During the 18 years I have been writing this column, few stories have haunted me as much as that about the Japanese-owned incinerator that, for more than a decade, fumigated the U.S. Naval Air Facility at Atsugi in the Kanagawa Prefecture cities of Yamato and Ayase.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Feb 28, 2010

Bulking up in Bush Warbler Valley

I'd like to improve my grip on sumo wrestling, so when a friend invites me to watch the big boys tussle through a morning practice, I jump at the chance. I get off at Uguisudani (Bush Warbler Valley) Station on the Yamanote Line, where the station-identity jingle is of this warbler's mellifluous chortle...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Feb 27, 2010

Terry, injuries concern for Capello

LONDON — What a mess.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2010

Toyoda's tears win over Japan

He hasn't bowed in apology. He hasn't resigned. But this week Toyota President Akio Toyoda did perform one of the typical rituals of a Japanese executive under attack: He wept publicly.
EDITORIALS
Feb 27, 2010

Shifting plans for Japan Post

The government plans to modify the process of privatizing Japan Post group, meaning people must continue to wait to find out how the services they rely on will be affected.
EDITORIALS
Feb 26, 2010

Central control over bureaucrats

The Hatoyama Cabinet on Feb. 19 endorsed a bill to revise the law governing national public servants and submitted it to the Diet. It aims to enable the Prime Minister's Office to centralize control of personnel affairs related to high-ranking bureaucrats. The administration hopes to implement the new...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 26, 2010

A receptacle for the respectable

I ordered a shot of George T. Stagg's fiery Hazmat III in Shot Bar Bourbon, a tiny subterranean bourbon paradise in Ginza, and the bartender served it in a wine glass. I asked why. "For the flavor," he said, and to demonstrate, he tipped my drink into a shot glass. The bourbon lost its aroma and half...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 26, 2010

The coupe gave way to the flute, but now it's swansong time for that venerated Champagne vessel

In the early 20th century, when society types in England and the United States pranced around drinking pink Champagne, they loved the coupe. The saucerlike glass showed off the colorful bubbly and came with a naughty, but probably apocryphal, story that it was modeled on Marie-Antoinette's left bosom....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 26, 2010

One of a kind

Theater programs the world over list the writer, director, cast members, designers, lighting specialists and such in their credits. Lately in Japan, though, a new role has begun to appear in among those credits — that of "dramaturge."
BUSINESS
Feb 26, 2010

Osaka's Royal Hotel expects profit rebound to pre-Lehman levels

Royal Hotel Ltd., which operates inns in eight Japanese cities, expects earnings next year to recover to levels seen before the "Lehman shock" of 2008 and last year's swine flu scare. Room bookings plunged following the financial crisis fueled by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy, while the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 26, 2010

New dimensions in a chain

What makes the exhibition in two stages of Yoshio Kitayama's works at the MEM gallery in Osaka all the more surprising is that they are paintings — not the sculpture/installations for which the artist is conventionally known.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji