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LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 18, 2011

Lone holdout's first nuclear winter looms in Tohoku

As bitter winds blow around cesium and other radioactive particles spewed from the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's reactors, Naoto Matsumura lights a cigarette, which he considers relatively good for his health.
EDITORIALS
Dec 17, 2011

Nursing home dilemma

The health and welfare ministry is pushing a plan to increase the number of "single-unit rooms" in nursing home facilities for the elderly. Such rooms are placed around a common space so that elderly people can maintain relationships with others while enjoying privacy in their rooms. The ministry also...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 16, 2011

Imperial law revisited as family shrinks, Emperor ages

It's not an easy job, being the emperor of Japan.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Dec 13, 2011

One-fifth of kids deprived of contact with one parent

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, and the government of Japan,
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Dec 13, 2011

One-fifth of kids deprived of contact with one parent

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, and the government of Japan,
COMMENTARY
Dec 7, 2011

Blame the welfare state for U.S. and Europe's ills

We Americans fool ourselves if we ignore the parallels between Europe's problems and our own. It's reassuring to think them separate, and the fixation on the euro — Europe's common currency — buttresses that mind-set. But Europe's turmoil is more than a currency crisis and was inevitable, in some...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 4, 2011

Occupy Wall Street resonates within Japan

While Japan's vernacular media has regularly reported on the Occupy Wall Street movement that has swept the United States over the past several months, coverage regarding the movement and its aims has been somewhat bland.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 3, 2011

Playing a little chicken

Here it comes, the eternal question . . .
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2011

Agent Orange buried at beach strip?

Dozens of barrels of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange were buried in the late 1960s beneath what is now a busy neighborhood in the central Okinawa Island town of Chatan, near Araha Beach, according to a former U.S. soldier who has recently pinpointed the location thanks to a 1970 map of a U.S. base obtained...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Nov 29, 2011

Kamakura: So what's Thanksgiving all about?

Matt PiaggiStudent, 22 (New Zealander)Some American relatives came over and did Thanksgiving for us. My uncle stood up in front of us and said that it was about giving thanks for the family we've got. I loved the turkey we ate.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Nov 28, 2011

Existential fear stalks M.D.s

The Japan Medical Association (JMA), once the most powerful lobby group with mighty political clout, still clings to its position of staunchly opposing any scheme to increase the number of doctors, in order to protect its own vested interests.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Nov 28, 2011

Some kanji can take a lifetime to fully appreciate

I made my first kanji connection with the graphically unassuming character 生 in the early days of a beginners Japanese class, when I stumbled through a self-introduction using the standard 私は学生です (Watashi wa gakusei desu. I am a student.). My instructor explained that one meaning for 生...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2011

Smiles return to Tohoku as the circus comes to town

At Nakamura Daiichi Elementary School in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, a theater company named La Tatan Sha recently staged a musical for the students that featured live painting.
COMMENTARY / World / ABE'S PROMISES
Nov 15, 2011

Investing in legal power for people

Inspired by Anna Hazare's hunger strike, thousands of people recently gathered at Ramlila Grounds in New Delhi to protest governmental corruption. Protesters from here and around the country pressed for specific political change — a new institution to combat corruption. In principle, they won. Parliament...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 12, 2011

Calm at J. Village belies the danger

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday for the first time let reporters into the base camp for thousands of workers striving every day to fix the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, showing off new dining facilities, a dormitory for single workers and the latest radioactivity monitors to check vehicles...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2011

Five myths about global population

The world's population hit 7 billion people at the end of last month, according to United Nations estimates, launching another round of debates about "overpopulation," the environment and whether more people means more poverty.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 5, 2011

Hokkaido roots spur woman to bring folk tales to masses

For Deborah Davidson, Hokkaido is not only home, it is a door to other worlds. As a child, she played with Ainu children and watched them care for the frolicking cubs of the "iomante" (bear ceremony). As a translator, she now focuses on bringing Ainu folk tales to an English-speaking audience.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2011

Taxation alone won't save Japan from its public debts

Jun Azumi has joined the chorus of those promising the imminent prospect of a rise in Japan's consumption tax. As finance minister, one would think — hope, perhaps pray — that Azumi should know what he is talking about.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 1, 2011

Justice stalled in brutal death of deportee

Abubakar Awudu Suraj had been in Japan for over two decades when immigration authorities detained him in May 2009. The Ghanaian was told in Yokohama of his deportation to Ghana at 9:15 a.m. on March 22 last year. Six hours later he was dead, allegedly after being excessively restrained by guards.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 23, 2011

Post-Fukushima, 'they' can no longer be trusted — if ever they could

Every year when I was a child, my parents would take my brother and me from our Los Angeles home to Las Vegas on vacation. Back then in the 1950s, Vegas was still a family-oriented holiday destination. Dad would drop a few bucks at the crap table while the rest of us basked in the sun.
EDITORIALS
Oct 21, 2011

Informed decision needed on TPP

Moves to join the talks for the Transpacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) agreement had been put on hold since the March 11 disasters devastated the Tohoku region. But Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is now eagerly pushing for progress.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 18, 2011

Agent Orange revelations raise Futenma stakes

On Sept. 26, Nago City Council became the first municipality on Okinawa to adopt an official resolution calling for the governments of Japan and the United States to conduct an investigation into the spraying and storage of Agent Orange on the island.
COMMENTARY
Oct 17, 2011

Worrisome link between diabetes, Alzheimer's

In 1999, the Rotterdam Study uncovered the strong association between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. In this landmark study carried out in the Netherlands, 6,370 elderly men and women were followed for an average of two years. In what was perhaps one of the first reports on this issue, they found...
COMMENTARY
Oct 5, 2011

Why Messi finishes first on and off the pitch

There was no one happier in Barcelona on Saturday, Sept. 19, than 11-year-old Soufian of Morocco. He had seen his hero Lionel Messi, the Argentine soccer player, lift his hands and slap his thighs after scoring the first goal against team Osasuna — gestures that Soufian knew indicated that the goal...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Oct 2, 2011

Working horses make for even happier woodlands

Our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust has recently acquired more parcels of land to add to the 30 hectares we have long and lovingly tended up here outside Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture hills.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past