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Events
Dec 18, 2003

Question of SDF being sent to Iraq divides panelists

The British journalists taking part in the Keizai Koho Center symposium had the opportunity to meet with Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi during their one-week visit to Japan, with the issue of the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq one matter that came up in their discussions.
Events
Dec 14, 2003

KANSAI: Who & What

Ninth annual luminaire to light up Kobe streets: The ninth annual Kobe Luminarie will light up the Kyu-gaikokujin Kyoryuchi (Old Foreign Settlement) district and Higashi Yuenchi park in Kobe's Chuo Ward, near JR Motomachi Station, between 6 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. until Dec. 25.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 14, 2003

Sweet sounds of the soundtrack

MUSIC FOR MOVIES: Toru Takemitsu, Vols. I & II (3-4 of the "Complete Takemitsu Edition"), edited by Tetsuo Ohara. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2003, 21 CDs, with program books, 24,000 yen each. Some of the most interesting contemporary film music was written by Toru Takemitsu. In just under 40 years he composed...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 14, 2003

Hair care from topknots to tints

To all outward appearances, Hair Salon Kitadoko is as modern as the Shibuya Cross Tower skyscraper in which it's located. As befits these times, too, it has a toll-free number for customers to call for appointments, as well as a Web site.
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 11, 2003

S. Korea holds Japan

YOKOHAMA -- South Korea won the East Asian Football Championship on goals scored after a tame 0-0 draw with Japan at International Stadium Yokohama on Wed-nesday night.
JAPAN
Dec 11, 2003

Ministry gets warmer in search for arsenic contamination source

Three locations around an arsenic-contaminated well in Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, have the highest levels of the poison ever found in the area, the Environment Ministry said Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 10, 2003

Is it a film? Is it a play? No, it's cinetheatre

Ever had a dream that was so real it made you lose your grip on reality? One that turned into hallucinations the following day? One that drove you close to madness?
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2003

Autopsies reveal cause of death for slain diplomats

The two Japanese diplomats who were shot dead in northern Iraq were hit by more than a dozen bullets, the Metropolitan Police Department said Friday in releasing the results of autopsies.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2003

Space agency gropes to regroup

Japan's Mars probe is in trouble. Its weather satellites are breaking down. And its latest attempt to put a pair of spy satellites into orbit ended last weekend in a 110 billion yen fireball.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 30, 2003

all systems GO!

In the game of go, there are no cards, no dice, no tricky moves like chess or complicated formulas to remember as there are in poker or mah jongg. And though in principle the game is simplicity itself, go is in a mathematical stratosphere all of its own.
MORE SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 29, 2003

Top League looking to emulate World Cup final

While the rest of the world was watching the final stages of the action Down Under at the Rugby World Cup, it was business as usual for the players in the Top League.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 29, 2003

East lies down with West in hotel room

Western-style hotels in Japan are a curious mix of East and West, leaving people feeling like their body has been pulled all the way to the East and back to the West several times.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Nov 27, 2003

Sex matters -- for worms, at least

It is perhaps rare for readers of British tabloid newspapers to ponder the same questions as evolutionary biologists, but that may have been the case last week. The tabloids enjoyed themselves at the expense of women suffering from a rare and often debilitating condition: persistent sexual arousal syndrome....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2003

Ex-military doctor decries use of depleted uranium weapons

The depleted uranium rounds the U.S. and British forces were believed to have used in the war on Iraq may have subjected parts of the country to heavy radioactive contamination, a visiting U.S.-based doctor of nuclear medicine has warned.
JAPAN
Nov 21, 2003

Wiretap law -- hard to use, easy to abuse?

In September, a 35-year-old Kawasaki mobster was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for selling 269,000 yen worth of stimulants to seven people between December 2001 and February 2002.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 21, 2003

Glacial pace of F.A. on discipline a joke

LONDON -- As you read this representatives of all the leading bodies in English football will be emerging from what was described as "a two-day lock-in" as they attempt to update the Football Association's disciplinary system, which is so out of date it is a wonder the fines are not paid in cattle.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 20, 2003

Relicts of the distant past

Time passes; it flows on, sometimes seemingly at breathtaking speed like a mountain torrent, at others crawling like a meandering backwater. Personal time expands and contracts. Geological time is relentless; grinding, shaping, wearing; sufficiently prolonged to isolate islands, to raise landmasses,...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2003

Exposing the roots of Islam

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The former dynamic leader of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, again made big waves, this time at his departing salvo. Most of the world's reactions focused on his remarks about Jews, but there were other interesting aspects in his comments regarding Islam that were perhaps overlooked....
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 13, 2003

The indispensable vagueness of 'domo-domo'

It's when I'm away from Japan and forced to speak in another language (in this case English) that I realize just how vague Japanese can get. At home, it's possible to go through a whole day without uttering one coherent sentence built on spontaneous thought and logic.
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2003

Pension crisis brings on number crunchers

The future of Japan's public pension system remains uncertain, and polls indicate the issue is a key concern of voters ahead of Sunday's House of Representatives election.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Nov 7, 2003

Meandering in time beside the Tama

From its source in the high mountains to the northwest of Tokyo, the Tama River flows southwest before emptying into Tokyo Bay. The upper reaches in Okutama are part of the Chichibu-Tama National Park. The lower reaches separate Tokyo from Kanagawa Prefecture, with Haneda airport at the river's mouth....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2003

North Korean no-war pact not in the cards

HONOLULU -- Behind all the diplomatic, and some not so diplomatic, rhetoric in the confrontation between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions are three basic reasons why U.S. President George W. Bush will not offer the North Koreans the nonaggression pact they demand....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Nov 2, 2003

Food for thought

Yukio Hattori, 'one of Japan's busiest men,' takes time to chew over the issue of food and other meaty social matters with staff writer Masami Ito.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Oct 30, 2003

Hall of Famer West regrets Riley's decision to walk away from coaching

NEW YORK -- Don't look now (you're too late, anyway, the preseason is over), but the Grizzlies were the NBA's most improved Canadian outcast during the exhibition schedule, their sole setback to the champion Spurs.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2003

102.5 million eligible to vote Nov. 9

There are roughly 102.5 million eligible voters in Japan, the home affairs ministry said Tuesday as official campaigning for the Nov. 9 general election began.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 29, 2003

250 reasons to be happy, then some

I'm happy! The reason I'm happy is I love art, and this month a total of four -- yes four -- new contemporary art spaces opened in Tokyo.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 27, 2003

Antarctic expedition to reunite in Himalayas

Masayoshi Murayama, who participated in Japan's first expedition to the South Pole in 1956, and his former colleagues will hold a reunion in the Himalayas in December.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 26, 2003

Mixing drinks with 'The Maven of Malt'

Malted barley has no better promoter than the noted English writer Michael Jackson, who has the distinction of being recognized as the world's foremost writer on the subjects of beer and malt whisky. His early writings on ale more than 30 years ago are considered the spark that helped ignite interest...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 26, 2003

Revealing more to life and death

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA, by Henry Scott Stokes. Tuttle Publishing, 2003, 271 pp., $16.95, (cloth). One afternoon in the late 1960s, Henry Scott Stokes received a visit at the Tokyo office of the London Times from the writer Yukio Mishima, who declared to the startled young journalist, "You...

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