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JAPAN
May 23, 2013

Cesium levels in water, plankton baffle scientists

Plankton and seawater samples taken less than a year after the Fukushima meltdowns show high concentrations of radioactive cesium at different locations, puzzling scientists.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 22, 2013

Cracked cellphone screens become the latest youth status symbol

Brittany Lofton spots them all the time: teens and college students clutching their beat-up cellphones, with screens so cracked that spider-web-like patterns creep across the glass.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues
May 21, 2013

Fear and incarceration, from Kampala to Nagoya

"I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, where two men lay. I couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. They had been...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 19, 2013

Family drama is reimagined for today's Japan

"Kazoku Game (The Family Game)," directed by the late Yoshimitsu Morita and released in 1983, remains a movie milestone. A cynical black comedy, it presented to the world a distillation of the less edifying social outcomes of Japan's postwar economic miracle. The Numata family are invaded by a private...
JAPAN
May 17, 2013

11 women in Diet decry Hashimoto

A bipartisan group of female lawmakers Thursday called for Osaka Mayor and Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) coleader Toru Hashimoto to retract and apologize for his abrasive comments justifying the sexual enslavement of females during the war and suggesting that U.S. servicemen in Okinawa...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 2013

The comedy and drama of Takashi Fujii

At age 41, Takashi Fujii has quite the resume. In 2000 and 2001, he appeared on national broadcaster NHK's annual top-rated New Year's variety show, "Kohaku Utagassen" ("Red and White Song Battle"); he toured abroad as a pop singer in 2004, including shows in Los Angeles and Shanghai; and in 2009 he...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 16, 2013

Pair log off, hit street to meet, hear real people

Once addicted to a social-networking service, 27-year-old Lim Moon Hyang suddenly got tired of responding to instantaneous feedback from her online friends and realized with terror just how deep her SNS obsession ran.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
May 14, 2013

Czech promoter sings way to cultural identity

For singer Eva Miklas Takamine, who also has been head of the Czech Center in Tokyo since March, singing both Czech and Japanese songs is a way of expressing her identity.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 13, 2013

It ain't easy being a bilingual girl

This bilingual thing ... they say that it's a both curse and a blessing. Watakushigotode kyōshukudesuga (私事で恐縮ですが, A thousand pardons for having the gall to talk about myself), but I think of it more like a stigma. It's not the same for millenials — they were born and raised in a kinder...
Reader Mail
May 12, 2013

Price of peace with North Korea

Regarding the May 8 front-page AFP article "N. Korea moves missiles from coast" and related stories: Is it better to rent or own? It's an age-old debate and one where the White House has drawn a line in the sand right along the 38th Parallel.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 11, 2013

Genesis of a brawl: Decades of Sherpa resentment fuel confrontation on Mount Everest

It's an irresistible contrast. On the one hand, modern mountaineering superstars with their blogs and sponsorship deals, scrapping with outraged Sherpas on the slopes of Everest. On the other, one of the defining images of the 20th century, the photograph of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary standing...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 11, 2013

There are plenty more fish jokes in the sea

The Go Fish! Foundation is an international organization for the protection of fish, their parents, family and friends. Go Fish! rescues, rehabilitates and gives sanctuary to fish in need.
Reference / Q&A
May 10, 2013

How signs of a 'lost continent' came into JAMSTEC's underwater view

The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Brazilian government announced Tuesday the discovery of a large mass of granite on the seafloor near Rio de Janero — a landmark finding that suggests a continent may have once existed there.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 9, 2013

Replaying people's actions with a twist

Much of Belgian artist Francis Alu00ffs' work and life have been determined by chance.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 9, 2013

Fukushima activist fights fear and discrimination based on radiation

Sachiko Banba aches for children in Fukushima Prefecture, who worry whether they can lead a normal life.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2013

Possible solution to Apple's cash-flow problem

It's possible that Apple's best long-term move would be to release a hefty portion of its unused cash to shareholders who would then plow it back into the economy.
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2013

Globalized sacrificial altars

The Bangladeshi garment factory collapse poses moral questions for politicians and business executives worldwide, including: What is the value of a human life?
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 4, 2013

Manned Mars trip no longer a dream

The notion of landing astronauts on Mars has long been more fantasy than reality. The planet is, on average, 225 million km from Earth, and its atmosphere is not hospitable to human life.
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2013

Planting courage in China

After decades of crackdowns on freedom of expression and basic human rights, people in China often lack courage — the very prerequisite for one's well-being.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 3, 2013

Roppongi Hills gets love on its 10th anniversary

Roppongi Hills was unlike anything Tokyo had ever seen before. Until it opened 10 years ago, Roppongi was more often seen as a 'High Touch Town,' where businessmen partied with foreign hostesses and off-duty soldiers packed the nightclubs.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 3, 2013

'Harry Potter' star to feature in 'Tokyo Vice' yakuza thriller

Producers announce that Daniel Radcliffe will take the lead role in the film adaption of crime reporter Jake Adelstein's memoirs about Japan's underworld.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2013

An art expedition to Southeast Asia

Confronting the ongoing state of transformation that characterizes their native Singapore, two artists exhibiting at a new exhibition, "Welcome to the Jungle," adopt quite different approaches and media. Francis Ng in "Constructing Construction #1" turns his camera on an unfinished section of an ugly...
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2013

New global environment of human hybridization

While Catholic doctrines evolve slowly, the Latin vocabulary has been expanding steadily in recent years, reflecting the surge of neologisms like telephonium.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Apr 30, 2013

Samurai moms and the art of brood maintenance: a mother from the West's lessons from the East

May in Japan is the perfect month for mothers. Wreathed in the fertile blooms of spring, bolstered by days of absolute perfection, May is also a month of muddy contradiction.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 30, 2013

Stalin's reputation not so monstrous 60 years on

The reputation of Josef Stalin, a moral monster by any standard, has nevertheless enjoyed a bit of a revival in Russia, 60 years after his death.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Apr 30, 2013

Stand up to Abe for the sake of Japan, Asia's future

Life is comparable to a spiritual drama that in retrospect can be recalled as a series of happy, sad and bitter memories
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 29, 2013

Evolutionary biologist says cave-man diet is flawed

Living like cave men — or at least eating like them — is being hailed by some as an ideal lifestyle.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 28, 2013

Pressure grows for the nation's housewives

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's April 19 National Press Club speech about boosting women's participation in the workforce has been covered extensively in the domestic and foreign media since it signals a sea change in the Liberal Democratic Party's view of women's role in society. He said the government...

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo