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JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 12, 2009

Between a rock and a hard place

The islands of Okinawa offer subtropical resorts, original delicacies and a distinct culture.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 11, 2009

Ozawa weighs next move

The attention of many political observers appears to be focused on when and how, rather than if, Ichiro Ozawa will step down as the leader of the No. 1 opposition Democratic Party of Japan before the next general election due to take place no later than September.
EDITORIALS
May 11, 2009

New health-pension card

A panel of the health and welfare ministry has written a basic plan to introduce a social security card, an IC card that will integrate the functions of the pension booklet, health insurance card and nursing care insurance card. The ministry hopes to introduce the card in fiscal 2011, with demonstration...
JAPAN
May 11, 2009

Kawasaki woman cleared of swine flu

KAWASAKI (Kyodo) A Kawasaki woman in her 30s who was suspected of having swine flu instead has a seasonal flu, city officials said Sunday.
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Compassionate priorities misplaced

Isn't it interesting how selective liberals are in their condemnation of pain and cruelty? Their compassion for the "victims" of the Bush-Cheney interrogation practices — only three people were waterboarded — is interesting in light of their absolute silence on abortion. The interrogation techniques...
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Washing with soap has benefits

For all the talk about preventing the spread of influenza, Japan has not learned the lessons of SARS. The other day, after taking a train, I went to the washroom in a JR station. As always, there was no soap. Telling people to wash their hands won't do much good until soap is in common use.
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Obama should not visit Hiroshima

Regarding Hiroshi Noro's April 26 letter, "Coexisting or co-perishing": While I fully agree with the writer that world leaders should take all necessary steps to ban nuclear weapons to save Earth, I do not believe that U.S. President Barack Obama should visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the leader of the...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

Petty torture rules played on sense of duty

PARIS — The top-secret memorandums released by the Obama administration concerning torture practices in CIA prisons shed new light on a fundamental question: How is it that people acting in the name of the United States government could so easily accept the idea of torturing detainees in their charge?...
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Spare us the tabloid shots, please

When did The Japan Times become a tabloid rag? On the morning of May 2, I turned over my copy of the paper to see a shocking, quarter-page photo titled "QUEEN'S DAY KILLINGS" on the front page. In it you can clearly see three victims being tossed through the air by a speeding car. Luckily my elementary...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

The audacity of optimism in the Middle East

SINGAPORE — The world will be enveloped in a heavy cloud of gloom and doom this year. Economies will sputter, governments will fall and companies will fail. But the biggest danger of all is a sense of hopelessness. Preventing this requires resolving some large and apparently intractable problem. Closing...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
May 10, 2009

Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo worth a visit

One of the items on my "bucket list" is a trip to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Nope, despite being from the East Coast, I have never been there but hope to make the trek to (what I hear is) the picturesque village in upstate New York.
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Torture necessary in some cases

The April 27 editorial "We don't torture" made me feel sick. Especially disgusting was the sentence "Torture is always wrong." Sure, it would be wrong to torture a petty thief, but one must not forget that the free, democratic countries have been, and will be, fighting a war against fanatic terrorists...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 10, 2009

'Insect crazy tour,' Rubicon decisons and comedian Edo Harumi's early days

The title character of "Dora the Explorer," the American animated TV series, is a bilingual Latina girl who often takes the time to teach Spanish phrases to the viewing audience. In the Japanese version (TV Tokyo, Mon., 6 p.m.), Dora and her monkey sidekick Boots speak Japanese and teach English when...
LIFE
May 10, 2009

Playing the party odds for love

In Japan, women are traditionally subservient to men and — like children in the West — have long been schooled to be "seen and not heard." But in matters of the heart and homemaking, and in these times of increasing sexual equality, Japan's females — who were formerly hunted romantically — are...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 10, 2009

Kawasaki risen from the grit with plenty to offer

Back in December 1972, having just taken a job with a Japan Airlines subsidiary, I moved into the company's bachelors dormitory at Miyauchi 2-chome in Kawasaki's Nakahara Ward.
Japan Times
LIFE
May 10, 2009

Men bid to cook up love

Takashi smiled as he held up his mobile phone and photographed the slightly shriveled piece of tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet). "At today's lesson I made another awful-looking dish," he tapped out in an e-mail to send with the photo to a friend.
JAPAN
May 9, 2009

Lawmakers urged to act now to revise organ transplant law

People in need of organ transplants and their supporters urged lawmakers Friday to revise the transplant law during the current Diet session, despite the World Health Organization's decision to delay until next year enacting a resolution to restrict overseas travel for transplants.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2009

No place left to go after exiting Guantanamo

GUANTANAMO BAY — I write this from the U.S. Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, where I have been held without charge for almost seven years.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 9, 2009

Speculators turn to shaky Iraqi currency

For Daisuke Taniguchi, the Iraqi dinar is like a lottery ticket. At least that's the way he advertises his sales of the currency.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 9, 2009

Chelsea again incapable of accepting defeat

LONDON — It should have been no surprise that Chelsea accepted its Champions League knockout by Barcelona with all the grace of a pack of hyenas.
LIFE / Food & Drink
May 8, 2009

Sweet wines starting to trickle out of Romania

Since ancient times, wave upon wave of foreign conquests have washed over Romania, changing — sometimes obliterating — parts of the region's cultural identity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2009

'Yomei Ikkagetsu no Hanayome'

Films commonly target one sex more than the other. Akira Kurosawa made them mainly for men and Yasujiro Ozu, mainly for women, but today both directors are regarded as masters by critics of both sexes, targeting be damned.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 8, 2009

The Horrors "Primary Colours"

The big hair, the mascara, the emaciated frames, the all-black get-ups, the BELT BUCKLES! It's difficult to take The Horrors seriously on any level because it's impossible not to receive their visual gestalt as some sort of bad joke that they themselves don't get. Even the name is hilariously obvious....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2009

Cubism remixed at a European crossroads

Cubism, as it emerged from the experiments of the painters Pablo Picasso and George Braque, was for some a necessary but limited artistic investigation in the 20th century. For others, though, it offered a blueprint for a new language, as in that part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that became Czechoslovakia,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2009

'W.'

Some things don't require a lot of explanation. If I were to tell you I was planning a barbecue in my kitchen, filled my sink with kerosene and reached for a lighter, you wouldn't need to stick around to guess what happens.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 8, 2009

Tokyo International Singers to perform for cancer charity

The Tokyo International Singers (TIS) are fervently hoping they will be performing before a big audience on May 9. And for once, it won't be entirely about the music, as good as that promises to be. This time, the ensemble is hoping for a full house because its contribution to the Japan Foundation for...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes