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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Sep 13, 2011

Swede on mission to help Japan seniors

Gustav Strandell believes that if there is something good about his home country, Sweden, that he can bring to Japan, it's the concept and some of the technical skills of its social welfare system developed over its 100-year-plus history as an aging society.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Sep 11, 2011

Local governments crack down on health insurance scofflaws

As the tax base gets poorer fewer people pay their national health insurance premiums, and local governments are doing something about it.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 10, 2011

Swiss tries to bring foreign tourists back to Japan, a step at a time

The undulating sea observes the solitary walker. A triangular bamboo farmer's hat shades his face as the infinite horizon stretches ahead, marking out his path.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 10, 2011

The power of spiders in rural Japan

Although I have lived in Japan's countryside for well over a decade, I have only recently come to understand the power of spiders.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 9, 2011

Festival/Tokyo rewrites its script after quake

Chiaki Soma, the program director at Festival/Tokyo (F/T), needed to figure out how to proceed with the country's biggest theater festival following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11. She closed her office for 10 days and asked the staff to carefully consider the meaning of the festival in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 8, 2011

(M)otocompo's theater challenges stale indie scene

Shuffling onto the stage in a flurry of robotic jerks come three men wearing glazed expressions and identical striped tops. In time with the retro-futurist synthesizer chirps and bleeps, they then lurch into a kind of clockwork dance routine, while a fourth man, wearing a construction helmet and mask,...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Shockwaves from the West

A nervous calm has returned to the streets of England after last month's widespread riots, arson and looting across London and other cities sent shockwaves around the world. As far away as Japan people were asking if Britain was safe any more, and one German politician suggested moving next year's Olympic...
COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 2011

China's economy not a model for emulation

At a time when the United States and Europe are beset by economic crises, it is natural that the Western model of economic development, including a democratic political system, should be viewed with some skepticism while China's growth model is greatly enhanced.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2011

Sendai's jazz festival keeps the beat

For the past 20 years, the streets of Sendai have resonated with live music during the annual two-day Jozenji Streetjazz Festival, gathering crowds of hundreds and thousands from across the nation in what has become a staple mid-September feature in the city of 1 million.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2011

1991 USSR coup attempt's steep cost

Twenty years ago this weekend, a group of Communist Party Politburo members and Soviet government officials attempted a coup d'état. They created an unconstitutional "committee on the state of emergency," isolated the Soviet president and removed him from power.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 23, 2011

All in the family: Keeping inheritances is a tricky business

Many people hide inheritances to avoid paying taxes, which is relatively easy to do.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 21, 2011

Emergency escape routes: Publisher maps the best way home

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 brought death and destruction on an horrific scale to a vast area of the northeastern Tohoku region.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 18, 2011

There's gold in them there wardrobes!

More people are mining closets and wardrobes for the precious metals they might contain.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2011

Fall of Berlin Wall wasn't the end of barriers

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 13, under the cover of darkness, East Germany broke ground on the construction of the Berlin Wall, which became one of the most iconic symbols of violence and exclusion the world has ever known.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 16, 2011

Man eating sharks — and mercury, group warns

What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word "shark"? For many, it's a gaping maw of razor-sharp teeth or a dorsal fin cutting ominously through the water behind an oblivious swimmer. John Williams' iconic Jaws score is probably running through your mind as you read this. Sharks are Hollywood's...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 16, 2011

NGOs, academics call for abolition of nuclear plants

Antinuclear nongovernmental organizations and academics called for the complete abolition of nuclear power plants in Japan on Monday, the 66th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 12, 2011

Andy Bell glad to finally bring Beady Eye to Japan

Andy Bell may be in Stockholm but his thoughts remain focused on Japan. The guitarist's new band, Beady Eye, consists of the former members of Oasis who were left standing following Noel Gallagher's acrimonious departure two years ago. The quartet were in the process of launching their fledgling outfit...
EDITORIALS
Aug 11, 2011

New dimension in peace appeal

The peace declaration read aloud by Mayor Tomihisa Taue of Nagasaki on Tuesday, the 66th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city, is a strong call for abolition of nuclear weapons as well ending reliance on nuclear power. Japanese as well as foreign leaders should carefully read his declaration...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 11, 2011

Summer Sonic prepares for an Asian invasion

Amid all the rivalry between Japanese and South Korean pop groups and the contrived debates about whether the manufactured crap from one country is better than the manufactured crap from the other, fans of independent or alternative music have been left scratching their heads.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 8, 2011

Knowing your audience crucial to winning effective PR results overseas

When reaching out to overseas audiences, Japanese companies need to understand what their target audience wants to know instead of just releasing the bare facts, two public relations experts said in a recent series of seminars.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 7, 2011

Norway's horrors betray a bigoted ignorance of nationality's meaning

First of two parts
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 2, 2011

New law fails to ease organ demand

A year has passed since the revised Organ Transplant Law took effect in July 2010. Now anyone, even children, can be organ donors if the next of kin consent. The changes have raised the number of donors but many patients are still waiting to receive organs.
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011

Most unlikely bedfellows

"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
EDITORIALS
Jul 28, 2011

Nightmare in Norway

Some acts are just incomprehensible. Violent crime offends almost all people, but even as we condemn such acts, we can usually construct a plausible string of circumstances that explains such behavior and puts it in some context. Some crimes are inexplicable, beyond the imagination of all but the most...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 28, 2011

Vaccines bring shot of rock to Fuji

Even before the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake caused concert cancellations en masse, The Vaccines had to start pulling out of overseas tour commitments due to singer Justin Young's throat operation. Now "100 percent better," the band will show the audience at this year's Fuji Rock Festival what...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight