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Japan Times
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Korean school strives to keep its homeland culture alive

When I first laid eyes on Tokyo Chosen Dai-Ni Shokyu Gakko (Tokyo Korean No.2 Elementary School) in the downtown Edagawa district of Koto Ward, it looked like any other school in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 8, 2005

Inside the belly of the beast

Jennifer Abbott's entire career as a filmmaker and editor has been involved with challenging people's perceptions. Her first documentary, "A Cow at My Table," was on the horrors of factory farming, and Abbott met her co-director Mark Achbar while working as an editor on his documentary on lesbian marriages...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2005

Folly of vying to rule rather than serve

KATMANDU -- The struggle over Nepal's political future seems to be unsolvable. Just as one group gains the upper hand and consolidates support for their cause, the opportunity slips away in a haze of bullets or boycotts.
BUSINESS
Dec 1, 2005

Seniors to pay more for medical service

The government and Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling coalition agreed Wednesday to raise medical costs for the elderly in two stages, starting in 2006.
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2005

Moviemaking sector, state seeking to foster young talent

Film production and distribution companies are reviving efforts to foster young directors and other moviemaking professionals.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 29, 2005

Opening the kimono to everyone

Maia Maniglier fell in love with kimono in 2001, when she was convinced to let a Tokyo kimono stylist dress her for a reception at the French Embassy. Kanji Nakashima impressed the skeptical French woman, who had lived in Japan since 1989, by dressing her both stylishly and comfortably.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 29, 2005

IC scheme gets frosty reception

Why the mistrust? I've lived in Japan for almost three years now, and I find the treatment of most foreigners in Japan is, in my opinion, fine. However, the potential damage of chipping, tracking, and who knows what else, will, I'm sure, deter people from traveling here.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2005

LDP, at 50, goes after Constitution

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged Tuesday to put the nation on a reform path to meet the challenge of a rapidly changing world, and to this end presented his party's blueprint to amend the Constitution for the first time to bring the charter in line with global realities.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 22, 2005

The 'IC you' card

People are still reeling from September's LDP landslide election, realizing that Koizumi can essentially legislate whatever he wants.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 18, 2005

Valentine's success this season an achievement for the ages

Against all the odds he got the job done and he did it his way.
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2005

Jinbo-cho sellers share book info database

Jinbo-cho, Japan's mecca for book lovers, is undergoing a quiet transformation that will change the way people browse for books.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2005

Action plan for bird flu includes ban on gatherings

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry unveiled a plan Monday empowering the government to ban public gatherings and quarantine people to counter the potential outbreak of a new strain of bird flu against which humans have yet to develop an effective defense.
COMMENTARY
Nov 14, 2005

Beijing appears more apt to seek flu help

HONG KONG -- China's appeal to the World Health Organization for help to determine whether three cases of "pneumonia caused by unknown factors" in Hunan province could have been the result of the H5N1 virus indicates that Beijing is taking the threat of bird flu seriously.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 10, 2005

Tokion talks Tokyo

Uber-cool magazine Tokion has been investigating the cutting edge of creative subcultures for almost 10 years. Having started as a Japanese/English bilingual culture magazine in 1996, it now has separate editions in each language and a cult following on both sides of the Pacific.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 8, 2005

Speed trap

It must have taken him by surprise. Kenji Kobayashi, former member of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party of Japan had just lost his seat a week previous.
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2005

Fishing for 'interesting individuals'

Tired of the same old liberal causes? Here's one you might not have heard of: "Fish," according to a spokeswoman for the Fish Empathy Project, "are interesting individuals who deserve our respect and compassion." Not since the British poet Rupert Brooke wrote about "each secret fishy hope or fear" way...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 6, 2005

Say 'cheese' and snap out of such fanciful thinking

Foreign-ministers-in-waiting don't drop clangers for nothing. When the then Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Taro Aso spoke last month at the newly-opened Kyushu National Museum in Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture, he fully expected his clanger to resound and reverberate when it hit the ground....
EDITORIALS
Nov 4, 2005

Toward a police-controlled media

There is a strong social trend toward protecting privacy. A milestone will be the enforcement of the Private Information Protection Law beginning in April. But the government is apparently taking advantage of this trend and people's distrust of the media -- due to often sensationalistic crime coverage...
MULTIMEDIA
Oct 30, 2005

Speaking volumes

Kaori Shoji
BUSINESS
Oct 27, 2005

How does the state want to care for the elderly?

Japan, with one of the world's oldest populations, is having increasing problems providing universal health care as each year there are fewer working people to pay for it.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 23, 2005

It's about time for Japan to take its foot off the gas . . . and think

What do the following recent news items have in common? 1) An automobile driven by a 23-year-old man in Yokohama accidentally runs into a line of high-school students returning home from school, killing two and injuring seven. 2) The United States Senate votes to open the Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil...
COMMENTARY
Oct 22, 2005

How not to manage U.S.-Singapore ties

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps the last thing that the well-run city-state of Singapore needs is for some outside columnist to defend it. Among the many natural-born rhetorical defenses available on this amazing island is the redoubtable Lee Kuan Yew. Even at 82, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2005

Learn to live and love consciously in workshop

Katie (Kathlyn) Hendricks sounds as clear as a bell on a three-way line between California, to which she has just returned from Colorado, and Japan. "I was in Boulder, Colo., facilitating a workshop not dissimilar to the three-day foundation training in conscious living and loving that is being arranged...
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2005

Ministry sees 85,000 asbestos deaths

Deaths caused by asbestos-related mesothelioma and lung cancer in Japan could reach 85,000, Environment Ministry sources said in an estimate Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2005

Shock over aid worker's death

Relatives of a Japanese aid worker and his son killed in Saturday's massive earthquake in Pakistan have departed their home in Fukuoka to identify the bodies as people close to them expressed shock and disbelief.
EDITORIALS
Oct 10, 2005

Help for victims of asbestos

The government has drafted an outline of a bill to provide financial aid to sufferers of asbestos-caused cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the membranes surrounding the lungs, and to bereaved family members of victims. The government hopes to have the Diet enact the bill next year.
Japan Times
Features
Oct 9, 2005

Building a bridge to forgiveness

Takashi Nagase still breaks down when he remembers the young British man he helped torture. "I couldn't bear his pain," he says, choking back tears. "He was crying 'Mother! Mother!' And I thought: What would she feel if she could see her son like this? I still dream about it."
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 4, 2005

Hidden wisdom of 'the guv,' Shintaro Ishihara

Adored by large sections of the Japanese public, reviled in equal measure by the foreign community and courted tirelessly by the domestic media: There are few more divisive figures in Japan today than Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.
COMMENTARY
Oct 3, 2005

The PC-cell phone downside

Since the 1990s, personal computers and cell phones have made fast inroads into the modern world. Without them, normal life would be almost impossible.

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