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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Aug 1, 2008

Suzuran: Chilling with chuka soba

Japan's infatuation with ramen can seem bewildering to the uninitiated. When you see lines around the block outside nondescript noodle joints in remote locations, with waits of up to an hour, it's hard not think the obsession is verging on the pathological.
COMMENTARY
Jul 31, 2008

Money can't buy Tibetan love

By all measures Tibet's economy is booming. In the past 30 years its growth rate has outstripped the rest of China's, 10.4 percent to 9.8 percent year on year. The result is that the vast majority of Tibetans have been pulled out of deep poverty.
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2008

Culture counts as much as looks

Call me trite, but Sakumi Shimose's July 27 letter, "Japanese beauty on world's stage," totally misses the point! Japanese women and men can be confident on the world stage while being proud of their heritage and culture, not just their looks.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2008

Nissan, Mazda lead uptick in June production

Nissan Motor Co. and Mazda Motor Corp. led a rise in June auto production as revamped, fuel-efficient models boosted exports.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2008

DoCoMo quarterly profit rises 41%

NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday that first-quarter profit rose 41 percent after it reduced handset subsidies to customers.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2008

Is the NPT still effective?

LOS ANGELES — Forty years ago this month, more than 50 nations gathered in the East Room of the White House to sign the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). In his memoirs, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson called it "the most significant step we had yet taken to reduce the possibility...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2008

Nationalism isn't an issue in Japan

As Japan renews its claim on Takeshima (Dokdo to Koreans) and prepares to mark the Aug. 15 anniversary of the end of the Great East Asia War, we can expect more Asians — and some Americans — to warn against the dangers of rising Japanese nationalism. What is striking, however, is the absence of nationalism...
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2008

Radovan Karadzic falls victim to soft power

Radovan Karadzic's disguise was elaborate, but he didn't spend the past 13 years hiding from the Serbian authorities. They knew where he was all along. Only 10 days after the government changed, the police plucked him off the bus that he rode to work every day and started the process of extraditing him...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2008

Ex-captive: Bogota prevailing over FARC

The recent bloodless rescue of 15 hostages in Colombia, including a former presidential candidate who had been held for more than six years, was seen internationally as a signal that the Bogota government was finally prevailing over the nation's leftist guerrillas.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2008

Steps eyed to triple foreign students here

The government, hoping to boost the ranks of foreign students in Japan to 300,000 by around 2020 from 118,500 at present, unveiled steps Tuesday that include simplifying immigration procedures and allowing candidates to complete admission and accommodations applications in their own countries.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 29, 2008

Past shortcomings motivating factor for many 2008 Olympians

According to conventional wisdom, people forget the runnersup, but they remember the champions.
OLYMPICS
Jul 29, 2008

Olympians get spirited sendoff

Four years after Japan's best-ever performance in the Summer Olympics — a 37-medal effort in Athens — the nation is gearing up for 2008's biggest sporting extravaganza in style.
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2008

More good lawyers needed

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nichibenren) has made an emergency proposal to slow down the government's plan to increase the number of successful applicants in the annual national bar exam to 3,000 by around 2010. Nichibenren said that since the current system of nurturing legal professionals...
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2008

Spending off the road

The ruling coalition partners Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have started discussions on how to proceed with the plan to free up the use of revenues from road-related taxes. A consultative body, made up of officials from both parties, will serve as the ruling bloc's decision-maker on the issue....
Reader Mail
Jul 27, 2008

Understanding of youth falls short

The indiscriminate murders that happened in the Akihabara district of Tokyo on June 8 demonstrate that mainstream understanding of youths is a total blunder. The 25-year-old suspect seemingly acted in accordance with the understanding that young losers are incompetent and self-tormenting scum -- without...
Reader Mail
Jul 27, 2008

Convenience stores can conserve

As for whether 24-hour stores should be required to reduce their operating hours to save energy, aren't there dozens of energy-saving measures that could be implemented without this debate? Too much energy is being wasted on debate!
Reader Mail
Jul 27, 2008

Japanese beauty on world's stage

Regarding the July 16 article "Miss Universe lesson: Japanese women find beauty inside and out": As the world becomes globalized, the concept of beauty is also globalizing. In 2003 Miyako Miyazaki won fifth place in the Miss Universe competition. In 2006 Kurara Chibana was first runnerup, and following...
Reader Mail
Jul 27, 2008

Belarus girds for warming fight

There are probably very few people nowadays who have not heard of the Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand, not so many know that there exists only one amendment to this document -- to Annex B to be exact. It basically sets my country's commitments regarding the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions between...
Reader Mail
Jul 27, 2008

Cloudy logic on tobacco tax

I didn't like what I read in the July 11 article "Lawmakers seek sweet spot in tobacco tax debate." While I fully support raising the tobacco tax, I disagree that the revenues should be used as an alternative way to cover ballooning social security costs in a rapidly aging society.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell