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Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 9, 2008

Toyako businesses seek long-term benefit

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — Takuji Okamoto, 69, has run a tiny noodle shop with his wife, Chieko, for 23 years at the Lake Toya hot springs resort area.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 6, 2008

Hillman aims for Sapporo-like success in K.C.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Last November at his sayonara party in Tokyo, I semi-promised outgoing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Trey Hillman I would travel to Kansas City in 2008 to see him in action as skipper of the American League Royals. Last month, I made good on that promise.
Reader Mail
Jul 6, 2008

Officials deserve to be charged

As if the international traveler doesn't have enough to worry about with a long flight, long lines, cramped seating and proper travel documents, now we have illegal drugs or contraband being planted in luggage. This violation of rules by enforcement officials could jeopardize a traveler's entry into...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 5, 2008

Deja vu . . . or biting the bullet train

They say deja vu occurs when your brain burps and somehow interprets what is happening now as a memory.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 4, 2008

Plunging into the abyss

I'm hanging from a rope, high above the churning froth of an ice-blue river. My friends are waving and shouting out to me, but the roar of the waterfall muffles their voices. I pull myself off a wooden seat and lower my legs. Now there's nothing between me and the water below but crisp mountain air....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 2, 2008

The right way to reconstruct rivers

It's the end of June and, after three weeks of travel, I'm back at my desk in Kurohime up here in the beautiful hills of Nagano Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2008

Best way to beat the oil barons

Over the past 18 months, oil prices have more than doubled, inflicting huge costs on the global economy. Strong global demand, owing to emerging economies like China, has undoubtedly fueled some of the price increase. But the scale of the price spike exceeds normal demand and supply factors, pointing...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2008

Pretoria's duty to Zimbabwe

Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the presidential runoff scheduled for Friday secured for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe a Pyrrhic victory.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 28, 2008

The rainy season, brought to you by snails

Aspersa: Nothing like a nice slither in the rain. That dry concrete is so hard on the foot.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 27, 2008

A very green afternoon cuppa

Whenever I travel to Tokyo I make it a point to spend at least a good part of one day on a visit to Shibamata in Katsushika Ward. This lovely neighborhood tucked away in the remote northeastern corner of the city on the banks of the Edogawa River still retains some of the flavor of the Edo Period (1603-1867)....
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

An impressionable connoisseur of cultures

TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world's greatest interpreters. Readers...
EDITORIALS
Jun 19, 2008

Big boost for cross-strait ties

The Taiwan Strait continues to shrink. Last week, China and Taiwan agreed on regular nonstop charter flights between the two sides of the strait, a move that would boost tourism, help the sputtering Taiwanese economy, and provide the impetus for even more ambitious links between them. This progress is...
Japan Times
JAPAN / RETRACING ROUTES
Jun 18, 2008

Returnee from Brazil offers blend of both worlds to Gunma settlers

Second in a series When Shoko Takano opened a Japanese-language school in Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture, in October 1991, Japanese-Brazilians working at local factories flocked in to seek her advice on living in Japan.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 17, 2008

Idling drivers

Dear Alice,
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2008

Japan brings North back to bargaining table

In-mid April, a senior Foreign Ministry official in charge of Asian affairs looked confident. Although bilateral talks with North Korea had been suspended for more than half a year, the official predicted Pyongyang would have no choice but to come back to the bargaining table to discuss the abduction...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 14, 2008

Pilgrimages done on the run

Welcome to the hood: the Buddhahood. Some sects of Buddhism believe you can attain Buddhahood by chanting certain purification chants over and over. Others, such as Shingon, use pilgrimage as a method of achieving divine enlightenment and understanding of the world.
BUSINESS
Jun 13, 2008

MHI has no plans to enter jumbo jet market

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which plans in 2013 to launch Japan's first domestically produced jetliner, is not looking to enter the jumbo jet fray, MHI President Hideaki Omiya said Thursday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 13, 2008

Koshu stands out as sip of summer

Last month, Tokyo's wine community was given a rare treat: Two of the most famous names in the wine world descended to hold forth on subjects including the bright future of Japan's Koshu grape and Bordeaux's stellar 2005 vintage.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 13, 2008

World Beat 2008

If New York City was the world, then the borough of Brooklyn would be Global Bohemia, the place where undiscovered international creative forces meet, get drunk together and make art. In terms of music, no Brooklyn indie band personifies this idea better than Gogol Bordello, the "gypsy punk" collective...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 10, 2008

Health cover; donating clothes

Reader TJ writes:
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 8, 2008

Politician on variety show, pop-culture music special, Chinese medical special

Grouchy, grizzled former Liberal Democratic Party star Koichi Hamada refuses to move gently into retirement. He continues to show up on whatever variety show will have him and bellow about what's wrong in the government and elsewhere. And apparently this attitude still attracts new fans, including "sexy...
BUSINESS
Jun 7, 2008

Toyota's new fuel-cell car goes twice the distance

Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday it has developed a new fuel-cell hybrid, a car powered by hydrogen and electricity that can travel more than twice the distance of its predecessor model without filling up.
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2008

Energy-cost issue boils over

Is the green party over? Is the ferocious rise in energy costs worldwide, driven by the soaring price of oil, undermining all the enthusiasm for saving the planet in the longer term via cutting carbon emissions and penalizing all forms of fossil-fuel consumption?

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami