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Reader Mail
Jul 14, 2011

Shameful neglect of students

Regarding the July 9 Kyodo article "Students from Taiwan denied disaster funds": When the tragic quake and tsunami struck Japan (March 11), my wife and I immediately wrote a check and donated money to the relief effort. Many foreign people donated money like this, including many people from Taiwan.
Reader Mail
Jul 14, 2011

Of course, stress tests are needed

Regarding the July 9 front-page article "Kan under fire from his own team": Perhaps I'm missing something, but I see no reason why Prime Minister Naoto Kan should apologize to anybody, least of all the nuclear industry, for requiring stress tests of nuclear reactors. It is now a matter of public record...
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 14, 2011

Fighting for change the Fuji Rock way

Faced with the nation's worst disaster since World War II, Fuji Rock Festival founder Masahiro Hidaka had to make a choice back in March — whether to hold Japan's biggest summer music festival this year or not. He decided that the show must go on.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Jul 12, 2011

Boycott sumo, a sport tainted by racist rules

To the Japan Sumo Association:
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...
Reader Mail
Jul 10, 2011

Reasons to remain in Japan

The June 26 Counterpoint article by Roger Pulvers, titled "Hearn the Western misfit finally found himself at home in Mejij Japan," prompted me to write. I was in Japan between 1946 and 1954, and have continued to be at home here since 1980.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 10, 2011

Up close and personal with MIT robots

I'm in a lab surrounded by computer and video equipment, toys, and robots. Lots of robots. I'm like a kid in a candy shop. It's the modern equivalent of an Aladdin's cave for otaku (geeks).
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.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 9, 2011

Nagoya assistance for disaster-hit city a bit rocky at times

More than two months have passed since Nagoya started sending its officials to support the understaffed municipal government in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, where 68 out of its 295 employees were killed in the March quake and tsunami or remain missing.
Reader Mail
Jul 7, 2011

Manufacturing shift doesn't save

Regarding the July 3 Kyodo article "Toyota plants start weekend operations": I really wish the media would stop referring to what the auto manufacturers are doing as "saving energy." This is inaccurate, misleading, and gives them credit for something they are simply NOT doing.
Reader Mail
Jul 7, 2011

Politicians neglect the obvious

Regarding Natsuko Fukue's July 5 article, "Matsumoto rips Tohoku governors": Newly appointed reconstruction minister Ryu Matsumoto (who resigned this post Tuesday because of his reported remarks) needs to understand some things:
Reader Mail
Jul 7, 2011

Japan's accountability for fallout

Regarding the June 29 article "Elderly volunteers to help Fukushima nuclear cleanup": It's good that Japan is using the elderly to clean up the radioactive disaster at Fukushima. It might also consider using the mentally disabled, prisoners and orphaned children to clean up Fukushima.
BUSINESS
Jul 6, 2011

Underwater mining of rare earths economically not viable: expert says

Underwater mining for rare earths, used in hybrid cars and plasma televisions, is economically and possibly environmentally not viable, an academic from the independent think tank Council on Foreign Relations said.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2011

The risks of 'disaster nationalism'

A common sight seen throughout Japan these days are signs that read Ganbaro Nippon (translated "Don't give up Japan").
Reader Mail
Jul 3, 2011

Opportunity for Hiraizumi area

Regarding the June 27 article "Hiraizumi gets listed as Heritage site": It is glad news that the temples and landscape of Hiraizumi (Iwate Prefecture) have won UNESCO approval as a World Heritage cultural site. The news comes amid the aftereffects of the horrific March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Although...
Reader Mail
Jul 3, 2011

Grief not the same as mourning

When tragedy and loss occur, when people vent their sad emotions, we cannot say that we are witnessing their grief. That is what we commonly say, what is written and spoken in the media, and even what professionals loosely say.
Reader Mail
Jul 3, 2011

Try telecommuting and flex-time

Regarding the June 28 article "Daylight saving: Is it finally time to convert?": While a conversion to daylight saving time would have some advantages, what is really needed is an aggressive push to promote telecommuting and flex-time in Tokyo, thus giving both employees and employers more options on...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 3, 2011

Have a hideously good time in Tono's past and present

The professor's snoring had kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. When I awoke, the reading light in the hostel's upper bunk was still on and a copy of "The Legends of Tono" lay open at the page where I had dozed off. With that book being full of hobgoblins, ravaging wolf packs and rural satyrs,...
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2011

Better trip for Japanese retirees

Regarding the June 26 Kyodo article "Ogasawara Islands join World Heritage family": Last year I was part of a delegation of foreigners sent by the Japan Tourism Agency to assess the overseas tourist potential of the Ogasawara Islands.
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2011

Differences in experiencing grief

In his June 12 Counterpoint article, "Barber's cutting comment denies others' humanity — and hers, too," Roger Pulvers lamented his young Korean barber's stereotypical and dehumanizing view of the Japanese and her inability to see other cultures from any viewpoint other than her own.
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2011

A suicide trigger everywhere

One paragraph of The June 23 article "Suicides upping casualties from Tohoku catastrophe" states that "The link between depression and suicide is well documented, particularly in Japan, where depression has been shown to be a major suicide trigger."
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jun 27, 2011

Power industry's chokehold

The electric power industry in Japan has such strong political clout that nobody, not even the government, seems capable of liberalizing the generation and distribution of electricity, let alone making a dent in the regional monopoly currently enjoyed by each of the 10 utilities.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2011

Rethinking the myth that we cannot make energy independence financially feasible

Human beings' inalienable fascination with fossil fuels and their lack of political confidence in driving the nation through a careful energy transition process have often put the energy independence dream in the backseat among national priorities.
COMMENTARY
Jun 27, 2011

Woman poet signifies defiance in Bahrain

Ayat al-Qarmezi, a 20-year-old woman poet in Bahrain, recently condemned to one year in prison, has become the human face of defiance against the regime ruling the country. Her crime, to have spoken at a pro-reform rally in Manama's Pearl Roundabout in February.
Reader Mail
Jun 26, 2011

Spare the cut and save the shade

The June 16 Bloomberg article titled "'Green curtains' surge in face of power shortage" offers many ideas on how to cope with the impending summer heat — from gardening to buying cooler outfits and losing weight.
Reader Mail
Jun 26, 2011

Dosimeters offer peace of mind

I fail to see the reasoning behind at least two negative reader responses to the June 15 Kyodo article "34,000 children in Fukushima to get dosimeters."
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2011

Post 3/11 Japan: war literature

One's immediate reaction to the start this month of a new collection of war literature to mark publisher Shueisha's 85th anniversary might well be puzzlement. Why now, after more than half a century of peace in Japan, are we offered 20 volumes on literature related to war?
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jun 25, 2011

Parts makers at mercy of recovery's pace

Kokune Ltd. President Yasushi Kogune is not sure his 55-worker die-casting company will be able to survive until the slump brought on by the March 11 earthquake ends.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?