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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 25, 2011

Friendly Fires to indulge pop pleasures on tour

Friendly Fires are happy to finally be back on home turf. It's no wonder, the year has been predominantly spent living out the tale of their song "Hawaiian Air," the highlight of second album "Pala" that typifies the trio's dance-pop vision while bemoaning the monotony of tour travel. Consequently, drummer...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2011

Ichihashi book on life on lam to be made into flick

A movie based on the book written by Tatsuya Ichihashi, whose slaying of a British English teacher in 2007 set off a nationwide manhunt, will debut next year, the publisher and film producer said Thursday.
Reader Mail
Nov 24, 2011

The myth of an aesthetic sense

Jevon Allen's Nov. 17 letter "Cleaning up after the natives" exposes at least two things about Japanese culture. First, the in-group/out-group thing, which might explain a lax attitude toward littering the beaches, the countryside, woods and mountains — places for which people feel responsibility in...
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Nov 24, 2011

Late-night dancing should not be a crime in Japan

Imagine a town where playing rock music is under a curfew and police crack down on unlicensed late-night dancing. Are you thinking of the town from the film "Footloose"? Or are you thinking of Fukuoka? Kumamoto? Yokohama?
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 20, 2011

The B-class-food boom reveals true Japanese cuisine

Two weeks ago, an advisory panel to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries recommended it apply to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for recognition of Japanese cuisine as an intangible cultural asset. The panel made its suggestion after UNESCO granted...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 19, 2011

Blatter's remark on racism utterly unacceptable

It was not a slip of the tongue. He was not, as he claimed, misunderstood. Sepp Blatter, who sadly is still the president of FIFA, does not make such mistakes. Despite coming out with the ramblings of an idiot, Blatter is intelligent, a former lawyer who re-invented football politics.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2011

Cookouts along Tama drawing flak

For the people of Tokyo, the wide banks of the Tama River are among the most popular places to have a barbecue.
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2011

Cesium fallout widespread

Radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant probably reached as far as Hokkaido, Shikoku and the Chugoku region in the west, according to a recent simulation by an international research team based on data after March 20, a week after the hydrogen explosions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 18, 2011

"The Ossu! Shugeibu and Hideki Toyoshima Jiga Daizessan: My Artwork Amazes Me"

The Ossu! Shugeibu arts club was founded by artist Shoichi Ishizawa to promote the belief that creativity should be spontaneous and not governed by rules. The seven members of The Ossu! Shugeibu, who are handicrafts people with no training, are showing their work in an event space designed by Hideki...
EDITORIALS
Nov 17, 2011

Elections in disaster-hit areas

Local elections were held Nov. 13 in Miyagi Prefecture and will be held Nov. 20 in Fukushima Prefecture. In Iwate Prefecture, local elections, including the gubernatorial and prefectural assembly elections, were held in September.
LIFE / Lifestyle / Japan Pulse
Nov 16, 2011

Fun for one, online and off

One is a lonely number, especially when you're at the dinner table, but of course ... there's an app for that.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2011

Fukushima No. 1 tour an eye-opener

"Now 1,000 microsieverts (per hour)!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 13, 2011

Kyuyoh's monochrome masterpieces

The highly intricate ink flows that grace archaic clerical scripts and decorative art, the illuminated plates of medieval European manuscripts, may be aesthetically pleasing, but are essentially skillfully beautified elaborations of simplistic lettering.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2011

Five myths about global population

The world's population hit 7 billion people at the end of last month, according to United Nations estimates, launching another round of debates about "overpopulation," the environment and whether more people means more poverty.
Japan Times
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Nov 10, 2011

Home comforts in short supply as Japan aims for final round

Tajikistan and North Korea might not be the strongest of opponents, but conditions away from home will certainly make Japan's bid to secure an early place in the final round of World Cup qualifiers difficult over the coming week.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Nov 7, 2011

The more, the thriftier: guests indispensable for expensive weddings

There's an economic rationale for big weddings in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2011

The population disaster looms mostly for Africa

According to the United Nations, the world's population passed the 7 billion mark at the end of October. We can expect much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be 10 billion by the end of the century, but almost nobody will have the temerity to point out that this is almost...
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Nov 6, 2011

Witnessing ways to make Japan's wasted woodlands pay

Ialways found it hard to think of single-species conifer plantations as real forests, but over the 32 years I have lived in the Shinshu area of northern Nagano Prefecture, that feeling has become even stronger.
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2011

Seven billion and counting

The United Nations has identified Danica May Camacho, born just before midnight Oct. 30 in a Philippine hospital, as the 7 billionth inhabitant of our planet. According to the United Nations Population Division, the Earth was to welcome its 7 billionth person on Oct. 31.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 6, 2011

Penny-pinching on pensions threatens to raid retirees' nest eggs

Much of the global media's attention this week was turned toward the possibility of Greece's default. Its direct effect on Japan is difficult to foresee. On the one hand, the approximately ¥1 trillion in national bonds Japan holds from the fiscally ailing countries that are referred to collectively...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 6, 2011

Kiyoshi Nakabayashi: Ex-Tokyo cop speaks out on a life fighting gangs — and what you can do

Kiyoshi Nakabayashi well remembers how, when he was a high school student in the late 1950s and early '60s, newspapers were full of stories of violent gang wars being fought out openly on the streets of Tokyo.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 5, 2011

Refusal, disposal, separation . . . exasperation

Japan is fond of buzzwords and perhaps one of the buzziest of the last two years has been the term "danshari."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 4, 2011

Les Chanterelles: Mushrooms and much more in Moto-Yoyogi

Poets may talk all they like about mist and mellow fruitfulness, but for us, autumn is above all mushroom season. And this year we have a new favorite place in which to indulge our fondness for fungi: Les Chanterelles.
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Nov 1, 2011

More ways to try before you buy

Not sure if you're ready to Roomba? Trial offers let you take just about anything for a spin.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 1, 2011

Schizophrenic Constitution leaves foreigners' rights mired in confusion

Pop quiz: Who live in palatial homes in fashionable Tokyo neighborhoods but are subject to various forms of discrimination, have no family registry, can't vote and have limited constitutional rights?
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 31, 2011

Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older

The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to very different outcomes: liberation for the Libyans and stagnation...

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan