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Reader Mail
Jul 14, 2011

Volunteers get wrong message

Regarding Tomoko Otake's July 10 Timeout article, "Company team helps fill Tohoku gap": I am a "long-term" volunteer who has been in Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture) for almost a month, and have no plans to return to my home in Osaka in the near future.
Reader Mail
Jul 10, 2011

Believe in human relationships

Thank you for Michael Hoffman's excellent July 3 article, "Japan needs to do more than simply 'cope' with stress." Hoffman expresses what I have felt for many years while living in Tokyo. Many people in this straitjacket society either have to put up with humiliation and daily insults at work, or risk...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 9, 2011

Don Morton raises a mug to bicycles and cold beer

Film buffs may know American Don Morton for the reviews he writes for Metropolis magazine. During a recent interview in his apartment, though, he mostly talked about bicycles. In fact the 67-year-old native of San Francisco is the founder of the Tokyo-based Half-Fast cycling club.
COMMENTARY
Jul 7, 2011

Yemen continues to inspire amid great odds

The Yemeni people are unrelenting in their demands for democracy. Millions continue to stage rallies across their country in a display of will that is proving the most robust out of all the Arab revolutions. The Yemenis face great challenges, including the political vacillation of their country's opposition,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 7, 2011

TCY Radio aims to revive club scene

Aside from being one half of successful J-pop duo m-flo, Taku Takahashi is also one of the most established DJs in Japan's club scene. So when Takahashi talks dance music — people listen. Just as well, as that's exactly what he's doing with his latest project, the online station TCY Radio.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2011

Rethinking Japan's Myanmar policy

An historic meeting June 29 between parliamentary Vice Foreign Minister Makiko Kikuta and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon highlights Japan's increasing willingness to look beyond its self-interest and promote democracy in the region.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jul 5, 2011

Lives such as Daniel's deserve to be honored in these pages

I had a shock in May with the death of a close friend, Daniel, a long-term Japan resident in his sixties who had been in bad health. We were close and I'll miss him.
EDITORIALS
Jul 5, 2011

Power conservation in summer

On July 1, the government started imposing a 15 percent power consumption cut on large-lot users serviced by Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Tohoku Electric Power Co. Small-lot users, including households, are also called on to reduce power consumption by 15 percent. Other power companies are also calling...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 5, 2011

Welfare rise: sign of economic, aging times

The Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to maintain the minimum standard of wholesome and cultured living. Thus to help those struggling to make ends meet, the government provides financial aid according to poverty level while encouraging them to get back on their feet.
EDITORIALS
Jul 4, 2011

'Software' to deal with disasters

An experts' panel at the Central Disaster Management Council of the Cabinet Office on June 26 announced in its interim report a new approach in working out countermeasures to large-scale earthquakes and tsunami. It took lessons from the March 11 quake and tsunami, which devastated the Tohoku Pacific...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2011

Kotaro Horiuchi: A life spent in uncharted waters of boat design

Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of...
COMMENTARY
Jun 30, 2011

Hong Kong's values set it apart

The renowned Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, held for 80 days without charge, was finally released under conditions that among other things forbid him to talk to the media. Ai has apologized to reporters, explaining that he is not allowed to talk about his case and, in fact, "I can't say anything."...
Reader Mail
Jun 26, 2011

Learning to love Super Cool Biz

Because of the power-supply shortages expected this summer, we are being asked to do two things: shift peak hours of electricity consumption in order to level off spikes during the day, and save energy as a whole to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 26, 2011

Readers offer 3/11 insights, valuable resources

As Japan has struggled with the physical and emotional challenges of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, and the ongoing nuclear crisis that resulted, I have written three Our Planet Earth columns related to those events: one on Japan's response (March 27); one on alternative...
EDITORIALS
Jun 24, 2011

Restart of reactors is premature

Trade and industry minister Banri Kaieda on June 18 declared that the nation's operators of commercial nuclear power facilities had taken adequate measures to handle severe accidents and called for restarting the power plants.
EDITORIALS
Jun 23, 2011

Employment in Tohoku

The nation's employment situation has worsened since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged its supply chains, thus affecting economic activities nationwide. The unemployment rate for April was 4.7 percent, 0.1 percentage point higher than in March.
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Jun 21, 2011

Is Facebook's 'Check-in Coupon' a good deal in Japan?

Facebook makes a foray into Japan's mobile coupon market with location-based discounts, but will social shopping catch on?
EDITORIALS
Jun 20, 2011

Draft for reconstruction

On June 11, just three months after a massive quake of magnitude 9.1 and a mega-tsunami devastated the Tohoku-Pacific coastal areas, the Reconstruction Design Council, a government panel responsible for drawing up a blueprint for reconstruction of the areas, made public a draft of its first proposal,...
EDITORIALS
Jun 15, 2011

Accelerate reconstruction efforts

Three months have passed since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku Pacific coastal areas. Many of the areas and local residents remain in a crisis situation. More than 15,400 people are dead and about 8,000 others are missing.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2011

JET coordinator finds Iwate spirit contagious

Iwate Prefecture's coast suffered some of the most severe damage in the March 11 quake and towering tsunami, where more than 4,500 people have been confirmed killed and 2,700 are still missing.
COMMENTARY
Jun 14, 2011

Japan gropes for leadership

Japan, as well as the Japanese, are fighting and struggling. They are running against the wind of the rising yen-dollar exchange rate, which tends to affect exports. And the economy struggles in the almost bottomless pit of government deficits, which are likely to worsen as a result of the March 11 earthquake...
Reader Mail
Jun 12, 2011

A checkup can tell only so much

Regarding the June 5 editorial, "Japanese life index": Japanese people need to find their own healthy lifestyle to achieve a measure of happiness. Additional items from the latest "Your Better Life Index," prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, records Japan's life expectancy...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 10, 2011

New media keep old media honest

Ssecond of Two Parts
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 9, 2011

Video-sharing website sparks Net revolution

When you get down to it, the Nico Nico Douga website is just a combination of videos and text comments about them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 9, 2011

Portrait of an artist or photographer?

For Takashi Homma, being a contemporary photographer is very different from being a photographer.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 5, 2011

Doomed self-obsessive remains iconic to some in the Japan of today

"It's not that I'm weak, it's that the suffering weighs down on me too heavily."
EDITORIALS
Jun 4, 2011

Mr. Kan's tricky promise

What happened Thursday in the Diet — a vote on a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Naoto Kan in the Lower House — will further deepen people's distrust of lawmakers at home and tarnish Japan's image abroad. The motion did lead, however, to Mr. Kan's vague pledge to resign in the near future,...
COMMENTARY
Jun 3, 2011

The Fukushima disaster and Japan Disincorporated

The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster is being used to convince the world that nuclear energy generation is inherently dangerous, especially in earthquake-prone Japan.
EDITORIALS
May 26, 2011

Helping hands to Mr. Kan

The perseverance that people in northeastern Japan have shown after the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated their communities March 11 has impressed many people around the world.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear