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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.
JAPAN
Sep 30, 2011

Tokyo plans to store, burn debris from disaster zone

To help quake- and tsuami-damaged areas rebuild, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Thursday it is offering to store about 500,000 tons of debris and waste from Iwate and Miyagi prefectures for three years.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 25, 2011

Welfare system not faring well

Ten years ago, in her book "Nickel and Dimed," Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled her own experience as a subsistence-level American wage-earner during a period of relative economic vigor. She found a whole class of workers who lived — and would always live — from paycheck to paycheck. In the afterword...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2011

The 9/11-3/11 connection

It's an interesting twist that the recent Sept. 11, 2011, anniversary marks two momentous events — 10 years since the multiple terrorist attacks in the United States that spawned a worldwide "war on terror", and six months since the devastating combination of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant disaster...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 19, 2011

China's historic rise (or slowdown)

Is China on the brink of eclipsing the United States as the world's economic megapower, with the yuan taking over from the dollar as the global currency, and China able to exercise financial, military and political hegemony?
JAPAN
Sep 11, 2011

Effect of contaminated soil on food chain sparks fears

Six months after the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture, the public's awareness of the threat posed by radiation is entering a new phase: the realization that the biggest danger now and in the future is from contaminated soil.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Is China's economic miracle a mirage?

Doubts are beginning to be heard about how sustainable is China's economic miracle, particularly the relentless emphasis on exports and investment spending by hundreds of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and local governments. Beijing, of course, has its supporters, including banker turned academic Stephen...
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Sep 3, 2011

Lineup competent but lacking buzz

The new ministers hand-picked Friday by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda lack the star power or celebrity status needed to reverse the Democratic Party of Japan's dwindling popularity.
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2011

Leukemia claims Tepco worker

A man in his 40s who worked for a week in August at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s radiation-leaking Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has died of acute leukemia, but it was not caused by exposure to fallout, Tepco said Tuesday.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES
Aug 28, 2011

Building excitement in Shirokanedai

Exiting the Nanboku Line at Shirokanedai Station in west-central Tokyo, my sandaled feet immediately start to sizzle. So instead of walking to Meguro's Institute of Nature Study as planned, I bolt down the first shaded slope I find.
Reader Mail
Aug 25, 2011

Laws that enforce conservation

Regarding James Dobson's Aug. 14 letter, "Power-saving mindset has limits": If the government would make laws to enforce conservation, Japan could easily reduce energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution-related health conditions.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 24, 2011

Okinawa vet blames cancer on defoliant

When Caethe Goetz was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of bone marrow cancer, at age 49 in 2003, both she and her doctor were perplexed.
EDITORIALS
Aug 21, 2011

More money for women athletes

The women's soccer team has won more than a first place victory in the Women's World Cup. They have also won increased financial support for women athletes in Japan. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry (MEXT) announced recently it would be increasing financial support for...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 16, 2011

Volunteers feel for Tohoku, but their duties lie in Nepal

In the physiotherapy ward at Katmandu's Bir Hospital, a middle-aged woman lay in bed, her back strapped to a big mechanical device. Rukmini Roka, 56, who suffers from chronic backache, struggled to stretch her legs as required by the special therapy machine.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2011

Agent Orange buried on Okinawa, vet says

In the late 1960s, the U.S. military buried dozens of barrels of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in an area around the town of Chatan on Okinawa Island, an American veteran has told The Japan Times.
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2011

Deal on bills looks to pave Kan's way out

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's hoped-for exit by month's end got new legs Wednesday, after a Lower House committee OK'd a key bond-issuance bill for passage later in the month and Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers began laying the groundwork for a race to elect a new leader.
COMMENTARY
Aug 6, 2011

The debt deal and Obama's 2012 problem

The story is that as Mark Twain and novelist William Dean Howells stepped outside one morning, a downpour began and Howells asked Twain, "Do you think it will stop?" Twain answered, "It always has." The debt-ceiling impasse has, as things generally do, ended, and a postmortem validates conservatives'...
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2011

Enabling women doctors to work

Regarding the July 3 editorial, "Boost women's role in society": Because of a serious shortage of doctors, Japan faces many problems including the runaround that patients get. It's time to improve the working environment for female doctors.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 24, 2011

Setsuden and the magic number 28

Japan's summer has started off with a bang, weather-wise.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 23, 2011

Zoos, aquariums weigh power cut, animal safety

While the Tokai region strives to cut electricity use this summer following the shutdown of the Hamaoka nuclear plant in May, local aquariums and zoos must continue to maintain a suitable environment for their fish and animals regardless of the circumstances.
COMMENTARY
Jul 18, 2011

False report hardly relieves Beijing's paranoia

For a change, the media itself is in the spotlight these days. The scandal over the illegal hacking of mobile phone messages by journalists in Britain has resulted in the closure of a venerable newspaper, the News of the World, and threatens to implicate not just reporters but politicians and the police....
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 18, 2011

Don't fall ill in a nuke crisis

The residents of Minami Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, are still being denied full medical services even though more than four months have passed since radiation leaks started from the nearby Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and...

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