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COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2011

The West's Middle East pillars of sand crumble

LONDON — Two centuries ago, Napoleon's arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East. Now, almost 90 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and eight years after the Iraq war began, the revolutionary protests in Cairo suggest that another...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 5, 2011

The comic life of expats in Japan

Tales of expat life in Japan all too often get blown out of proportion and quickly become picaresque adventures that little resemble real life.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Jan 18, 2011

NPB's 50-homer club unlikely to be expanding ranks

The period between the start of the calendar year and the beginning of camp is often wrought with bold proclamations and lofty goals as ambition helps power players through their final winter preparations.
JAPAN / AT JAPAN'S EXPENSE
Jan 6, 2011

Japan far behind in global language of business

Last in a series
EDITORIALS
Jan 5, 2011

'Predictable' verdict in Moscow

Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a difficult man to like. He is a Russian tycoon, a multibillionaire who got rich during the fire sale of Russian national assets during the kleptocratic years of the Yeltsin era. But being unlikable does not make him a criminal, and neither does daring to challenge Russian...
COMMUNITY
Jan 4, 2011

Arudou's Alien Almanac: 2000-2010

No. 5: The Otaru onsen case ('99-2005)
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Dec 14, 2010

Doing Japan in a van: highs, lows, dos, don'ts

Oh, the pros and woes of responding to your queries. Great advice, personal experience — even the odd wakeup call. Here are some responses to our Nov. 16 column on "How to do Japan — in a VW camper van":
CULTURE / Film
Dec 3, 2010

'Yoi Ga Sametara Uchi Ni Kaero (Wandering Home)'

Yoichi Higashi has accumulated a long list of honors in a four-decade career, including a Silver Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival for his childhood drama "E no Naka no Boku no Mura (Village of Dreams)." But compared with certain other Japanese directors of his generation, his overseas profile is...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Nov 24, 2010

'Virtua Tennis 4' moves into the next dimension

Another motion controller, another sports game. It didn't take game developers long to follow the lead set by Nintendo's Wii and create games for the new PlayStation 3 Move and Xbox 360 Kinect add-ons that revolve around throwing, batting, putting or lobbing things. And yet somehow it's still not hard...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 17, 2010

Tireless work ethic earned Nomo respect in majors

Third in a four-part series
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2010

Big Issue finds home; homeless in charge

The Big Issue Japan Ltd., a publisher that hires homeless people to sell its magazine on the streets, opened on Friday Japan's first shop managed by homeless people in a former convenience store in Nishi-Umeda subway station.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Sep 26, 2010

Day of reckoning looming for Big Matsui, Little Matsui, Iwamura

Matsui, Matsui and Iwamura.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 12, 2010

Late P.E.N. Club president sets tone of Tokyo global writers' meet

This month, The Japan P.E.N. Club hosts the annual International PEN Congress, whose wide variety of lectures, readings and symposia will feature guests from Japan and overseas.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2010

End of Operation Iraqi Freedom

Officially, it's over. Thursday's withdrawal of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq, marked the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The move fulfilled the promise of U.S. President Barack Obama to end his country's combat mission in Iraq by the end of August....
COMMENTARY
Jul 11, 2010

Treason of the attorney

LONDON — Eighty years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding toward the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called "The Treason of the Clerks"— "clerks" in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their high calling chose to serve...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 1, 2010

Battery makers in heated rivalries

Powerful, long-lasting rechargeable batteries may be key to a future green society — especially if they can become widely used to power electric vehicles.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Apr 19, 2010

Playing ends off the middle

Komeito, the third largest political party in Japan, is striving not to antagonize but to be friends with as many rival groups as possible in a determined bid to win in the Upper House election scheduled for this summer. The principal reason for pursuing this tactic, which has been described by some...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 16, 2010

Director-actor Hideto Iwai proves that anything is possible when you come out of hiding

Tokyo-based Hi-bye, whose name means "crawling-death" (from the Japanese hi-hi, meaning "to crawl," and the English farewell, "bye-bye") was founded in 2003 by playwright, director and actor Hideto Iwai, 35, and has built a reputation for its keen observations of the darker and weaker aspects of humans...
JAPAN / POSTAL REFORM ROLLBACK
Apr 15, 2010

Chronology of privatization

April 2001 — Junichiro Koizumi wins the LDP presidential race and becomes the nations's 87th prime minister with privatizing postal services as his main goal.
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2010

Autopsy report: too few deaths examined

If the police had had their way, the sudden death of a young sumo wrestler three years ago would have been simply a tragic event quickly swept under the rug, dismissed, as it initially was, as heart failure from unknown causes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 12, 2010

Israeli confronts past by mastering Wagner

Rising Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger will complete, in Tokyo in March, his first series of performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung," a cycle of four linked operas by 19th-century composer Richard Wagner.
EDITORIALS
Feb 28, 2010

Cancer-thwarting lifestyles

Cancer has been the No. 1 cause of death for Japanese since 1981, accounting for one-third of Japanese deaths. One's lifestyle is closely related to the contraction of cancer and one can avoid developing cancer to a large extent by changing one's lifestyle. Thus education can play an important role....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 26, 2010

This acting lark is elementary for Downey Jr.

HOLLYWOOD — When one beholds the billboards touting the first movie in the new "Sherlock Holmes" franchise, one sees the slim, natty, Anglo-looking Jude Law and imagines he is Holmes and that the less buff, older and somewhat rumpled Robert Downey Jr. is his Dr. Watson. Wrong, of course, and despite...
EDITORIALS
Feb 17, 2010

Space program: Hopes and fears

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Japanese Astronaut Soichi Noguchi was launched Dec. 21. He is now in the International Space Station some 400 km above Earth working in Japan's space lab "Kibo" (Hope), which is attached to the ISS. He will stay in space for five months, the longest stretch yet for...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2010

The Libya option in Iran

LOS ANGELES — International efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons will be given a new lease on life this month, because France has assumed the presidency of the United Nations Security Council. As Council president, France — which shares America's views about the need to strengthen...
JAPAN
Feb 6, 2010

Quick rise, meteoric fall mark career of troubled yokozuna

In his 11-year career, sumo wrestler Asashoryu stomped out record-breaking wins to become the undisputed champion of the past decade. Yet his reign was littered with scandals that floored the traditional sport, where athletes are expected to act with decorum both in and out of the ring.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight