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COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2011

Oil prices and social unrest

HONG KONG — The resignation of Hosni Mubarak after a 30-year reign as modern-day pharaoh of Egypt has demonstrated the nervous and potentially combustible connection between oil and politics in the Middle East. As soon as Mubarak quit after weeks of demonstrations, oil prices dropped, but quickly rose...
COMMENTARY
Feb 9, 2011

Aquaculture booms but will wild fish recover?

SINGAPORE — Even as global food prices hit record levels, rising in January for the seventh month in a row amid concerns about future shortages, fish farming is a bright spot in the generally challenging outlook for food production. This is why Japan and many other Asian countries are so interested...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2011

The growth bargain in Asian consumption

LONDON — U.S. President Barack Obama caught the imagination of the world when he talked recently of a new "Sputnik moment." He outlined a bold plan for improving education, infrastructure and technology, and vividly compared the resolve required to put a man on the moon to the determination needed...
BUSINESS
Feb 5, 2011

Costs driving steel merger

Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd.'s plan to create the world's second-largest steelmaker is aimed at gaining leverage over raw material purchases and metal pricing as costs soar.
COMMENTARY
Feb 3, 2011

Food crisis threatens Asia

SINGAPORE — Is Asia on the edge of another food supply crisis that will stoke inflation, protection and political unrest?
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Jan 30, 2011

Kozuka striving to improve despite recent success

It is amazing how fast an athlete can go from being overshadowed to casting a shadow.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 23, 2011

Is 'Galapagos-thinking' Japan back at its evolutionary dead end?

There are expressions that buzz like busy little bees and ones that don't buzz anymore. One of the dead-bee buzzwords in Japan is shimaguni konjo, meaning "island mentality." As for a buzzword for 2011, you'd be hard put to find one more busily doing the rounds than garapagosu, which references the Galapagos...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Jan 19, 2011

Resurgent Mao to lead strong team at Four Continents

Following last month's dramatic national championships in Nagano, where Miki Ando won her first title in six years and Takahiko Kozuka broke through for his inaugural victory in a major senior competition, Japan will send a loaded squad to next month's Four Continents Championship in Taipei.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 13, 2011

Cooking teacher Kaori Baba

Kaori Baba, 56, is a cooking teacher in Tokyo. An advocate of eating local foods, Baba bases her lifework around protecting Japan's near-extinct traditional vegetables and popularizing their consumption. Whether she's cooking long, green pumpkins that only grow in one village in Gifu Prefecture or pureeing...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2011

A plea to the prince for a practical way to Harmony

HONG KONG — Many years ago, on my second day working in London, I was invited to take tea with Prince Charles in Buckingham Palace. About half a dozen journalists met the young prince who was about to embark on his royal duties but who clearly hadn't a clue about how the rest of the world lived and...
COMMENTARY
Jan 7, 2011

China shows signs of recognizing its limits

HONG KONG — After behaving in an assertive, sometimes arrogant, fashion through most of 2010, when it at various times took on the United States, Europe and Japan, both Beijing and the people of China appear to recognize the need for greater caution and restraint in the coming year. For one thing,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 6, 2011

2011: Armageddon can wait

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Where are global currencies headed in 2011? After three years of huge, crisis-driven exchange-rate swings, it is useful to take stock both of currency values and of the exchange-rate system as a whole. And my best guess is that we will see a mix of currency wars, currency collapses,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2011

Ogata to Japan: Remember, pay it forward

The top provider of official development assistance in the 1990s, Japan has since been shrinking its foreign aid budget as the economy stagnates.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2011

The true nature of faith in a globalized age

LONDON — The number of people proclaiming their faith worldwide is growing. This is clearly so in the Islamic world. Whereas Europe's birthrate is stagnant, the Arab population is set to double in the coming decades, and the population will rise in many Asian Muslim-majority countries.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2011

Indian elephant too slow for the Chinese dragon

HONG KONG — The visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to Delhi in December underlined the importance and immense diversity between the world's two once-and-future superpowers.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 3, 2011

Post-Cold War era taps Turkey as the new indispensable nation

ANKARA — Turkey made its imprint as one of the most influential countries not only on 2010, but on the first decade of the third millennium.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 27, 2010

Rough 2011 in store as imbalances rock economic tower of babel

The world economy should expect a bumpy road ahead in 2011 because increasingly uneven growth and widening economic imbalances are making it difficult for the major economies to set priorities for coordinated action, a senior European economist said recently in Tokyo.
JAPAN / Media
Dec 26, 2010

Somehow we survived a very explosive 2010

In April, much of the world ground to a halt.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 19, 2010

The explosion of life: demise

Second of two parts
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2010

China must release Liu or lose its credibility

LONDON, THE OBSERVER — We no longer live in a unipolar world. Western nations do not enjoy a monopoly on economic and political power. This is an encouraging shift and one that is bringing greater equality and prosperity to the world. With this progress, developing countries are increasingly influential...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Dec 5, 2010

Kim reveals new programs, targets return at worlds

While world champion Mao Asada struggles to regain her form and adjusts to a new coach, archrival and Olympic gold medalist Kim Yu Na is quietly eyeing next March's world championships in Tokyo for her competitive return.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2010

Young urged to pursue St. Gallen forum

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when student protests were commonplace worldwide, five people at a Swiss university launched the St. Gallen Symposium, a bid to hold a dialogue with the world's leaders.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2010

Aims of Britain and Japan

LONDON — This is a speech delivered by David Howell, minister of state in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to the Japan Society of London on Nov. 18. Before being appointed to his current post, Howell was a regular contributor to The Japan Times.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 27, 2010

England unlikely to win 2018 bid

LONDON — Next Thursday at FIFA House in Zurich the host for the 2018 World Cup will be chosen. The best bid — England's — will probably not win.
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Nov 20, 2010

Murakami's skill, personality a winning combination

Following her third-place finish at last month's NHK Trophy, Kanako Murakami said she wanted to be on top of the podium at her next competition.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 20, 2010

Loss to France another setback for Capello's England

LONDON — It was a good week for Joe Hart, John Terry, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney.
LIFE
Nov 14, 2010

The Hour of the Ox

At 13 years of age, Angelica Akahoshi was the youngest person ever awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for Literature.

Longform

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.
Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.