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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Feb 17, 2016

Developing confidence in English through Skype and scarecrows

Innovative classes in Shikoku hone students' cultural sensitivity as well as their communication skills.
Japan Times
JAPAN / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Feb 15, 2016

Kanazawa retirement community a relocation-from-Tokyo success story

With its artistic traditions and preserved traditional neighborhoods, the city of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, has long been known as "Little Kyoto." But over the past year, it has also been seen as a potential model for future continuing care retirement communities, or CCRCs, nationwide.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 13, 2016

Give me chocolate: Japan's growing obsession with the 'food of the gods'

People with a sweet tooth can get a glimpse of how Charlie Bucket felt when he first stepped into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory in Roald Dahl's popular 1964 tale by popping into Musee du Chocolat Theobroma in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 12, 2016

Happiness is a warm farm: How home cooking is reviving rural Yamagata

It's late January in Tokyo, and a rare 6-centimeter snowfall plunges the city's famously efficient transport network into chaos. Train lines report delays of up to four hours, leaving snaking lines of frustrated commuters steaming, despite the freezing temperatures.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 11, 2016

Heal thyself: U.N.'s WHO at crossroads; experts call for fresh focus, structure

When executive board members of the World Health Organization sat down for their annual meeting in Geneva in January, many powerful figures spoke forcefully of the need to reform the leading global authority on health and disease.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2016

As perceptions of animals evolve, so does English

In a language like English, which implicitly categorizes animals as things rather than persons, adopting the personal pronoun would embody the same recognition — and remind us who animals really are.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 8, 2016

Words about sentences: the Japanese vocab of crime and punishment

Navigating the terms and kanji involved in the penal process in Japan can be a trial in itself.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
Feb 8, 2016

Disgraced Kiyohara's situation similar to that of former pitcher Enatsu

Last week, a bat used by Kazuhiro Kiyohara during his high school days was removed from an exhibition celebrating the long and rich history of high school baseball at Koshien Stadium.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Feb 6, 2016

Swans, and us, at risk as wetlands shrink

Soon after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the huge tsunami it triggered that killed almost 16,000 people and left more than 2,500 missing in the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu, our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust contacted the many towns affected and invited survivors to...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 4, 2016

Heavyweight champ Fury contemplates retirement

World heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is struggling for motivation and could quit boxing, the controversial fighter told the BBC on Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 3, 2016

Japan's epic samurai dramas are in a tight spot

Japanese can roughly be split into two camps: those equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of history and those who have only a vague idea of who the samurai were or that a Shogun once lived in what is now the Imperial Palace. The history geeks on one side and those who couldn't care less on the other....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 30, 2016

Bringing Japanese folk dance into focus

As with many cultures, before modernization the Japanese people relied heavily on agriculture, holding a spiritual affinity with and respecting the power of nature. Bountiful harvests were celebrated in festivities that played a significant role in community activities, and the distinctive folk rituals...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 30, 2016

Is society on the cusp of massive change?

Philosopher Tatsuru Uchida, interviewed earlier this month by the Asahi Shimbun, merely confirms what we all know, or sense, when he says: "This is an age of transition. We're going through the confusion characteristic of bedrock change."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 27, 2016

'5 Flights Up' turns the horror of selling an apartment into a gentle fairy tale

Living in Tokyo has taught me that relationships matter but real estate matters more. My mom used to tell me never to date anyone who didn't have a down payment on a condo, which basically doomed me to permanent datelessness.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 27, 2016

Johnny Depp as a sociopathic crime lord in 'Black Mass'

'Black Mass" may sound like a classic horror film featuring Vincent Price or Barbara Steele, but it's actually a modern crime film about a gangster nicknamed "Whitey," played by Johnny Depp. Confusing? Yes, even more so when you examine its promo photos of a dome-headed Depp in aviator shades, which...
Reader Mail
Jan 23, 2016

Keene dives into Japanese hearts

The article "A life found in translation" in the Jan. 3 edition reminds us of our deep respect for Dr. Donald Keene.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2016

'American Ultra' is a half-baked stoner comedy, possibly written by robots

One of the most underrated films of the past decade has got to be "Adventureland," the 2009 coming-of-age comedy by Greg Mottola ("Superbad"). It mined its setting — a rundown 1980s amusement park — for plenty of jokes, but it had a fantastic bittersweet feel to it as well, capturing that moment...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jan 19, 2016

North Korean propaganda drops into defector's yard in South

The irony wasn't lost on Lee Min Bok when he spotted propaganda leaflets fluttering down in front of his home just south of the border dividing the Korean peninsula: it was airborne pamphlets flown the other way that convinced him to defect from the north more than two decades ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 17, 2016

Inspiration that comes in dreams and rice balls

Ichiko Aoba takes her seat at an old-fashioned coffee house in Tokyo's Shibuya district, and places a sketchpad and a plump pouch of rolling tobacco on the table. During the hour-long conversation that follows, the tobacco goes untouched, but the sketchpad gets a thorough workout. As she talks, the 25-year-old...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 17, 2016

Abenomics: state capitalism

Shinzo Abe's economic policies aren't really neoclassic or Keynesian. Rather they align more with the state capitalism practiced in China, Russia and Singapore.
JAPAN / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Jan 17, 2016

Foreign tourism emerges as bright spot amid Japan's dim economic prospects

With few positive signs of recovery for Japan's slumping economy, foreign tourism remains a sole ray of hope, and tourism authorities, local governments, industry players as well as retailers are eagerly awaiting another possibly record-breaking surge in Chinese tourists during next month's Chinese New...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 16, 2016

From sexual liberation to liberation from sex

Young people are forever shocking their elders, and elders, however shocking they themselves may have been to their own elders once upon a time, never fail to play their generation's perennial role of shocked onlookers to shocking youthful behavior of one sort or another.
CULTURE / Music / David Bowie in Japan
Jan 15, 2016

The man who sold the world on music

The Starman has departed for his home planet. I can't imagine a world without David Bowie, but the strange thing is, he never was in my world, at least physically. So why do I feel the loss as dearly as I would my closest friend?
CULTURE / Music / David Bowie in Japan
Jan 15, 2016

Bowie’s portable Japan

I first learned that David Bowie had died while riding the Beetle jetfoil ferry from South Korea to Japan. Of the myriad thoughts that flooded through my mind during the crossing — for Bowie has been my lodestar, an absolutely determinant influence in my life as the musician Momus — was the bittersweet...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Jan 13, 2016

Harsh winter bears down on migrants stuck near Dunkirk who didn't reach Calais 'jungle' camp

As thousands of migrants prepare for falling temperatures in the "jungle" of Calais on France's north coast, refugees in another makeshift camp just 35 km away are coping with even more squalid conditions as the winter freeze sets in.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 13, 2016

'El Chapo' tried to trademark name, sought biopic, was briefly in marine's sights after Penn meeting

Before his brazen jailbreak last year, notorious drug boss Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman instructed his lawyers to trademark his name, giving Mexican authorities their first clue he wanted to make a film of his life, local media said on Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 9, 2016

Publisher Takarajima-sha bets on shock therapy to revive its fortunes

With the temporary demise of its flagship publication, Takarajima looks to Showa nostalgia and shock ads in a bid to stay relevant.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 7, 2016

Florida woman died after hospital thought she was faking: lawyers

A Florida woman who collapsed and later died after being arrested for refusing to leave a rural hospital emergency room may have lived if medical staffers and police had not assumed she was faking illness, her lawyers said on Wednesday.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic