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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Mar 26, 2017

Music's shifting tides reveal a hunger for artistry in Japan

Music is often characterized over-simplistically as a battle between rock and pop, seriousness and fun, but the two are always in an ever-shifting balance. With this column coming to the end of its six-year run, it feels timely to cast a look back — and perhaps also a hopeful eye forward — over the...
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 26, 2017

French minister Royal to run for U.N. development agency post

French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said on Friday that she was running to lead the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), at a time when the U.N. could see an abrupt cut in crucial United States funding.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 25, 2017

How the word 'terrorism' can help pass a bill

During the recent Diet grilling over his alleged involvement in the Moritomo Gakuen land purchase scandal, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe accused his opposition party tormentors of resorting to inshō sōsa. The most accurate English translation is probably "image manipulation," which, in the age of fake...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2017

Make our cities great again

As cities build taller, they must keep three benchmarks for livability in mind — community, resilience and sustainability.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / EMBASSY PRESENTS ECO-FRIENDLY LIFESTYLE
Mar 23, 2017

Ceremony celebrates coffee

Ethiopia's own coffee culture has helped people relish slow living in the nation, with a unique ceremony providing people with lively communication, a lecturer versed in the Northeast African country explained to people at a recent seminar in Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 22, 2017

World can't afford the price of deforestation

Opportunities to align economic development with the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions are rare. Yet that is what reforestation offers.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 22, 2017

After six years, Assad now secure but country is carved up as war thunders on

More than six years since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, he is winning on the battlefield but Syria's civil war is far from over, with his once stable country broken into fiefdoms ruled by rebels and warlords.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 22, 2017

Study shows navigation devices switch off parts of brain

If you have long feared that using a satellite navigation system, or "satnav," to get to your destination is making you worse at finding the way alone, research now suggests you may be right.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2017

The happiest nations don't focus on growth

The world's happiest nations rank low in economic growth but high in social trust.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2017

Why people still live, and die, on garbage dumps

In the developing world, huge open dumps loom as one of this century's most pressing health and environmental challenges.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 21, 2017

Oil experts huddle in Tokyo to seek refuge from China fuel flood

Huddled deep within Tokyo's government district, nearly two dozen of Japan's top oil experts pore over a problem plaguing their industry: How can they stop China from pushing its crude refiners into a corner?
Japan Times
BASEBALL
Mar 21, 2017

Players encouraged by growing interest in WBC

Adam Jones on Saturday night in San Diego made the catch heard 'round the World Baseball Classic when he leapt against the wall to rob Manny Machado of a home run.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 21, 2017

Japan's 'Matrix'-style job fairs evolving as employers forced to think outside the square

Graduate recruitment in Japan looks a bit like a scene from the movie "The Matrix."
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Mar 20, 2017

Nagoya dye house looks abroad to keep traditional black in fashion

A dye house in Nagoya that specializes in kuro montsukizome, the dyeing of black-crested formal kimono that has been practiced since the Edo Period (1603 to 1868), is working on selling stoles and T-shirts that make use of the same technology.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2017

Amid North Korea threat, Tillerson hints that 'circumstances could evolve' for a Japanese nuclear arsenal

U.S. secretary of state says possibility of Japanese atomic weapons may have to be considered as tensions on Korean Peninsula surge.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Mar 19, 2017

Black Women in Japan group gears up for its first big bash

Back in the summer of 2015, I did a series of articles where I profiled black women married to Japanese men, discussing the highs and lows of building and maintaining such relationships, as well as the rewards and challenges of raising biracial children here in Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 18, 2017

Taiwan: Where Japanese go to feel at home on vacation

Taiwan was Japanese soil for about five decades until the end of WWII. Amazingly, this is the one country where the Japanese imperialists managed to do more good than harm when they colonized it in 1895.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 17, 2017

The $3 billion biotech firm that almost wasn't finds new life

The biggest biotechnology company in Japan almost didn't get built.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2017

Fukushima moms don lab coats to measure radiation in food, sand and soil

At a laboratory an hour's drive from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, a woman wearing a white mask over her mouth presses bright red strawberries into a pot, ready to be measured for radiation contamination.
Japan Times
LIFE / EVENTS AND INFORMATION
Mar 16, 2017

Taichung expo showcases green, nature people

The city of Taichung in central Taiwan held the first news conference outside the country to announce in Tokyo on March 8 that it will host the 2018 Taichung World Flora Exposition, from Nov. 3, 2018 to April 24, 2019.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 16, 2017

U.S. group Sierra Club seeks probe of EPA's Pruitt over CO2 comments

U.S. environmental group the Sierra Club has asked the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general to investigate whether the agency's head, Scott Pruitt, violated internal policies when he said he did not believe carbon dioxide was a major contributor to climate change, according to a letter...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2017

Millennial movers revive Japanese mountain towns amid depopulation

High-speed broadband. An award-winning brewpub built with recycled materials as part of a "zero waste" mission. An artist-in-residence program. Organic pizza from a wood-fired oven.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2017

Trump accelerates risk of confrontation with Kim

The Korean Peninsula is heating up and the Trump administration's policy appears to be to stoke the flames.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2017

Seoul gets the impeachment process right

The removal from office of South Korean President Park Geun-hye is a remarkable outcome for a relatively new democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2017

Europe or anti-Europe?

The eurozone is stuck in a semi-permanent economic malaise, which could destroy it.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 13, 2017

Toto rolls out droll toilet humor with a whiff of class

Sit back and relax as this week's Bilingual column splashes on the results of Toto's 2016 Toilet Senryu Contest.
LIFE / Language / MORNING ENGLISH
Mar 13, 2017

Let's discuss making home deliveries easier

Major courier firm Yamato Transport Co. hopes to implement measures to ease the burden on delivery drivers and improve their working conditions.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb