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Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Relieving environmental malaise

Regarding naturalist C.W. Nicol's Oct. 6 article, "Canadian sojourn helps to shake off Japan malaise": Wouldn't it be grand if Nicol's son-in-law, Don McCubbing, could travel to Japan and get to work restoring some of those salmon streams that the construction ministry has bulldozed under in the name...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Evidence of Mary's virginity

Regarding Reza Aslan's Oct. 6/7 article, "Separating Jesus from the legends": Aslan's accusations of irrationality notwithstanding, there is plenty of scriptural evidence to support the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Abe waiting for right moment

Regarding the Oct. 7 Kyodo article "Documents detail how Imperial military forced Dutch females to be 'comfort women’": To be made to wait seven decades for this fragment of truth to emerge about the sexual slavery of European women is a new war crime in itself, but the government's ongoing attempts...
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2013

With 8% hurdle cleared, Aso eyes 10% sales tax

Just a week after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his intention to raise the 5 percent consumption tax to 8 percent next April, Finance Minister Taro Aso said he was upbeat about raising the levy further to 10 percent.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Oct 8, 2013

Backlash against Miyazaki is generational

If you haven't lived in Japan, it's hard to appreciate just how beloved are anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki and his creative hub, Studio Ghibli.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Oct 6, 2013

Hearing on the tax rise

An intensive meeting began on the 26th at the prime minister's office to examine economic and financial future trends. It will hear from 60 people composed of delegates from various fields, including economic specialists and experts, as to the raising of the consumption tax by the Abe administraion.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2013

The rich hit back at the poor

The economic divide between the haves and the have-nots may not be as wide in the United Kindom at it is in the United States, but it is growing dangerously.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013

Abe's economic house of cards

Regarding the Sept. 30 Kyodo article "Abe appoints more women, brother to senior government posts": "Inbred nepotistic cronyism" might be the initial reaction of anyone outside Japan upon reading the list of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's appointments.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013

Ambiguity turned off city voters

Regarding the front-page Oct. 1 article "Hashimoto's Osaka merger dream in jeopardy": I think it should come as no surprise that a candidate backed by the Japan Restoration Party was defeated in the Sakai mayoral election held last Sunday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Oct 4, 2013

Rural exchange program for city kids draws down

Amid a rapidly aging and declining population in rural areas of Aichi Prefecture, an exchange program to send young students from cities to the Tomiyama district in the village of Toyone will be terminated in March 2015, along with the closure of the district's only elementary and junior high school....
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013

Mindset trumps English ability

In his Sept. 23 article, "The communication skills for vying in the world," Sadaaki Numata expressed concern about Japan's ability to hold its own in international forums and negotiations.
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013

U.S. interest in a Japanese affair

In the Sept. 26 Kyodo article "Abe tries to counter militant image in U.S.," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says that under the current interpretation of Japan's Constitution, Japan's warships cannot "come to the aid of U.S. warships operating around Japan in international waters if they are attacked from...
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013

Rights to our body after death

I usually enjoy Ted Rall's opinion essays, but I didn't fancy his Sept. 27 article "Mandatory organ donation." Even though he writes as he usually does, provocatively and tongue in cheek, there are serious people among us who seriously propose this dystopian stupidity.
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013

Playing 'softball' with an autocrat

Regarding Tom Plate's Sept. 23 article "The good side of Singapore icon Lee Kuan Yew": Plate seems obsessed with men like Lee, who has been described elsewhere as autocratic, arrogant, vindictive, vicious and just plain mean and nasty.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 30, 2013

Youths should learn from Malala's courage

What will it take to get more young people in Japan to break out of their shell and go out into the world to experience interacting with people of different cultural backgrounds
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 30, 2013

Cultural and legal hurdles block path to child adoptions in Japan

While more than 7,000 couples applied to adopt or become foster parents every year between 2006 and 2010, only 309 children were adopted in fiscal 2010, according to government figures.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Sep 30, 2013

Foreign iPhone fans, be aware of Softbank's two-year visa rule

Softbank requires that you have at least two years remaining on your visa if you wish to pay for a new iPhone handset in monthly installments rather than fork out for the whole lot up front.
WORLD
Sep 29, 2013

NSA gathers data on U.S. citizens' social connections: report

The National Security Agency began mining Americans' email and phone data in 2010 to map out their social connections and locations, according to The New York Times.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Sep 29, 2013

Unions mull a 'Labor Party'

The Japanese Trade Union Confederation, feeling somewhat estranged from the Democratic Party of Japan, is mulling the idea of realigning opposition parties into a labor party.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Sep 29, 2013

Majority of students experience bullying

The National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) announced on the fifth that according to a survey it had conducted, only 30 percent of students are free from being bullied in junior high school.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 28, 2013

Nothing is clear about court ruling on illegitimate kids

Evidently I was wrong.
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013

Keep tabs on Lake Biwa water

It was with great distress that I read the Sept. 19 Kyodo article "Cesium-tainted wood chips found near (Lake) Biwa."
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013

In the interest of human security

The Sept. 17 Bloomberg article by Dmitri Trenin, "Why the West misread Russia," provides deep insights into the thinking behind Russia's proposed arrangement to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons — without the use of force.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Sep 27, 2013

Maglev veteran keeps looking toward the future

The route for the Linear Chuo Shinkansen between Tokyo and Nagoya has been announced, and the country's first magnetically levitated train is moving toward the start of operations in 2027.
Reader Mail
Sep 25, 2013

Questionable link to innovation

Professor Takamitsu Sawa made some factual mistakes in his Sept. 17 article, "Lack of liberal arts education is sapping Japan's creativity." In Japanese universities, students of science, engineering and medicine take courses in social studies their first year. As an economics professor at Nagasaki University,...
Reader Mail
Sep 25, 2013

The men that lack 'life skills'

Regarding Michael Hoffman's Aug. 31 article, "Married or single, Japan is a desolate country": I have a few elder moms as students, all with adult sons living at home.
Reader Mail
Sep 25, 2013

What will replace the signature?

Regarding the Bloomberg Global Perspective of Sept. 20, "The case against cursive writing": I do not think less of children or young adults who cannot write because they were not taught cursive handwriting in school. It is a laborious, lengthy, time-consuming lesson in an environment where teachers are...
Reader Mail
Sep 25, 2013

So much lost in progress' name

Regarding Michael Hoffman's Sept. 22 article, "Ancient tales by the 'savages' of Hokkaido have lessons for today": British traveler Isabella Bird wrote "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" (1880) after she traveled by horseback from the Port of Yokohama to the wilds of Ezo (Hokkaido), on a journey through a relatively...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years