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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Jul 1, 2014

Gunma's 'Brazil Town' offers a carnival of cuisine

This month A Taste of Home is taking a field trip to Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture. Oizumi, an otherwise ordinary town, is home to roughly 4,000 Brazilians — about one-tenth of the local population. Most of them work in nearby factories (Subaru is a big one). But some of them are working to make life a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 1, 2014

Shokuhin Matsuri aka Foodman cooks up footwork on 'oiss'

"I used to be a video-game nerd," says Takahide Higuchi, the experimental footwork producer also known as Shokuhin Matsuri in Japanese and Foodman in English. "I thought that guys who were popular with girls made music, but I was sort of stubborn and didn't try. Then, in my last year of high school I...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 1, 2014

Fear, suspicion undermine fight against Ebola

When Mohamed Swarray contracted the deadly Ebola disease in June, he was confined to a tented isolation ward at Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone. But he didn't stay there long.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society / FOCUS
Jul 1, 2014

Beijing quietly tightening grip on Hong Kong

Since Britain handed back colonial Hong Kong in 1997, retired primary school teacher and Falun Gong devotee Lau Wai-hing has fully exercised the freedoms China promised this city of 7.2 million.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 1, 2014

Emperor penguin populations to slide as climate change reduces icy breeding grounds: study

Global warming will cut Antarctica's 600,000-strong population of emperor penguins by at least a fifth by 2100 as the sea ice on which they breed becomes less secure, a study said on Sunday.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jun 30, 2014

Japan tourism still suffers from a credit card gap

Tourists want two things: to be able to use their smart phones and their credit cards in Japan.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 28, 2014

Forget the world in a peaceful Okinawan island garden

First came the Ishigaki-teien, a mass of soaring limestone rocks, judiciously placed cycads and two lines of highly concentrated fukugi, the closely-matted leaves of the trees traditionally used in Okinawa as typhoon barriers. Owned by the Ishigaki family, who have lived on the island of the same name...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 26, 2014

U.S. Supreme Court ruling protects cellphone privacy

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that police officers usually need a warrant before they can search the cellphone of an arrested suspect, a major decision in favor of privacy rights at a time of increasing concern over government encroachment in digital communications.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014

Duty-free reform off the mark

Regarding the June 18 Kyodo article "Duty-free reform to boost tourism": I feel that this initiative will have little effect on tourist numbers. To Western visitors, Japan is very "foreign"; prospective tourists are nervous at the prospect of a visit. This duty-free initiative is wide of the mark.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2014

World needs to take a dose of realism about Iraq

As imbalances of power, wealth and productivity become magnified in our age, ethnic and religious loyalties as well as notions of honor and dignity have become more seductive than iPhones and elections. Just ask the despots who've lost the monopoly of force in Syria and Iraq.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 21, 2014

Ending Japan's sexism requires men to lean in, too

Ayaka Shiomura's tears show why Shinzo Abe's talk of empowering Japan's women is still more hot air than policy.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 20, 2014

France, Japan have different objectives for FIVB World League encounter

France will look to lock up a trip to the second group finals in Sydney next month when it takes on Japan in the opening match of the fifth round of World League Intercontinental play on Saturday afternoon at Shimadzu Arena.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 20, 2014

Tag pushed as an Olympic demo sport

If there is one thing Yasuo and Takao Hazaki feel confident about outdoing any other father-son duo in, it is their intense commitment to the ancient playground game of "onigokko," or team tag.
EDITORIALS
Jun 18, 2014

Boosting visitors to Japan

The government has adopted a set of measures aimed at achieving a target of doubling the number of visitors to Japan to 20 million in 2020.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 15, 2014

Argentina spikers triumph against Japan for second straight day

Argentina completed a sweep of Japan with a four-set (25-21, 25-19, 23-25, 25-17) victory in their World League Pool D match on Sunday afternoon at Komaki Park Arena.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 14, 2014

Happy endings: foreigners working in Japan's film industry

Film is supposed to be a universal language, but the film business in any given country is usually run by the locals for the locals. The one great exception is Hollywood, which has been making films for the world since the silent days and is open to talent, preferably English speaking, from around the...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 14, 2014

Taliban shifting from religious group to criminal enterprise: U.N.

The Taliban's reliance on extortion and kidnappings, along with narcotics and illegal mining operations, is transforming it from a group driven by religious ideology into a criminal enterprise hungry for profit, U.N. sanctions monitors said in a new report.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jun 14, 2014

China says it will never send military to oil rig spat with Vietnam

A Chinese official said on Friday that China will never send military forces to the scene of an increasingly ugly spat with Vietnam over an oil rig in the South China Sea and accused Hanoi of trying to force an international lawsuit.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 13, 2014

Rakuten rakes in ¥30 billion for first bond sale

Rakuten Inc., the e-commerce company led by billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani, issued its first public bonds Friday, selling ¥30 billion of three-year notes.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 13, 2014

Taliban captive Bergdahl departs Germany for home

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years as a Taliban prisoner of war before being released on May 31, left a U.S. military hospital in Germany on Thursday and headed to San Antonio for further treatment, the Pentagon said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2014

The most important sci-fi film never made

Cinema is strewn with the ghosts of films unmade — projects that spent years in development, teetering on the brink of being greenlit before disappearing without a trace. And one such project became the stuff of legend: cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 10, 2014

The Kyoto neighborhood where dessert is the main course

Kitayama is five stops on the subway from downtown Kyoto, but it might as well be a million miles away for the tourists who trudge around the city in search of Kyoto tropes: temples, shrines, teahouses and geishas who are more than likely tourists dressed up for the day.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 7, 2014

Iki Island: the stones and stories that keep paradise from floating away

Legend has it that many years ago the pretty little island of Iki was not connected to the seafloor. Instead, it floated around at the whim of the currents, presumably bobbing back and forth between Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami