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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 13, 2012

New Zealander loses legal fight over crippling med addiction

When Wayne Douglas arrived home in New Zealand from Japan in early 2001, his own mother didn't recognize him at the airport.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Mar 13, 2012

Sansei's pursuit of love overcomes distance

Dale Araki is a third-generation Japanese-American who spent most of his childhood in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina before settling in San Francisco.
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2012

Nation marks first anniversary of disasters

Japan on Sunday marked a year since the massive earthquake and tsunami rocked Tohoku and its Pacific coastline on March 11, 2011, leaving nearly 20,000 people confirmed dead or missing.
SOCCER / J. League
Mar 11, 2012

Lucas gives FC Tokyo season-opening win over Omiya Ardija

FC Tokyo made a winning return to the J. League first division with a 1-0 victory over Omiya Ardija as the new season got under way on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 11, 2012

Catastrophe revisited 12 months on

The Ground Self-Defense Force troops have gone. So too the old blackboard with sheets of paper taped to it. I still remember a few of the names written in long lists there — the names of those whose muddied bodies could be identified after they were brought on military trucks to the makeshift morgue...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 11, 2012

Fear of conforming effects a perspective on sex

TOWARD DUSK AND OTHER STORIES, by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, translated by Andrew Clare, introduction by James Dorsey. Kurodahan Press, 2011, 219 pp., ¥1600 (paperback). When the house in which Junnosuke Yoshiyuki grew up burned down, Lawrence Rogers tells us, "he fled the flames with only his Debussy records...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 10, 2012

Stages of assimilation

When you first set foot in Japan, it's hard not to be impressed by the efficiency and social order. The streets are clean, trains run on time, and the people are quiet and polite, yet possess enough of the bizarre to make them interesting. (One of the first Japanese people I met was a woman who always...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2012

Myth-busting Vladimir Putin

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin unnerved many Russians and foreigners alike when he announced in September that he wanted to switch places with his handpicked successor, President Dmitry Medvedev. Although Putin won back the presidency in the election on Sunday, his popularity is sagging, and Russians...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2012

Myanmar and the search for democracy

Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy, by Bertil Lintner. Silkworm Books: Chiang Mai, 2011, 196 pp. The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, by Peter Popham. Rider: London, 2011, 446 pp. The abrupt shift in Burmese politics over the past few months has been extraordinary,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 3, 2012

'Alternative labor' helps Ishinomaki rebuild

Jamie El-Banna, 27, is a self-professed "cynical Londoner" who says he's "not a nice guy" and admits he is known to many as something of a party animal interested mostly in getting drunk. But a look at his recent track record reveals he's now spent over nine months volunteering in tsunami-ravaged Ishinomaki,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2012

'Henge'

Movie trailers and TV commercials both exist to sell, but unlike ads for toothpaste or instant ramen, trailers offer a direct experience, however manipulated, with the actual product. So websites that post links to trailers are not just shilling for distributors, but also offering their visitors, always...
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2012

Victimized adults turn to help the kids

Mayumi Baba, 36, took part as a volunteer in a September meeting in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, held for children who lost parents in the March 11 disasters.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 26, 2012

Welcome to the world we've made but don't want to share with children

"Love ... casts itself on persons who, apart from the sexual relation, would be hateful, contemptible, and even abhorrent to the lover. ... It seems as if, in making a marriage, either the individual or the interest of the species must come off badly."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 26, 2012

Job-seeking comedy avoids real issues

In 2004, novelist Ryu Murakami published "13-sai no Hello Work," a job guide for 13-year-olds, though most of the copies were bought by adults. The book did not offer practical advice, but rather job descriptions in all lines of work, from engineer to prostitute, in order to give readers an idea of what...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 25, 2012

Multilingual ex-professor pours all his energy into translation, writing

Curled up in his German grandfather's library, the young Charles De Wolf looked up from the pages of Goethe to dream of the cobblestoned streets of Europe.
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2012

Tohoku teen feels guilt of being lone survivor

Yuji Hamada will mark his 16th birthday on March 11, but last year's disasters have stripped the occasion of much of the joy he felt on past anniversaries, when he would celebrate at home with his family.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2012

Morning movies: 50 audience favorites to get you out of bed

Moviegoers set your alarms early, because the Toho Cinemas chain will in March begin its third annual Gozen Jū-ji no Eiga Sai (10 a.m. Film Festival). This year's event is the second series under the tag line "50 Films That Never Get Old," and the yearlong "festival" showcases 50 classic films, ranging...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 22, 2012

Smith's track record cause for concern

On a one-week assignment with the Nuggets last season in full anticipation of Carmelo Anthony exclusively spilling his guts to me about every aspect of his life and forthcoming destination, I accompanied the team on its charter to Phoenix.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2012

Double-killer as minor will face gallows

The Supreme Court upheld the death penalty Monday for a man convicted of strangling and then raping a young mother and murdering her 11-month-old daughter in 1999 in Yamaguchi Prefecture when he was 18.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WEEK 3
Feb 19, 2012

Avant-garde shamaness takes a poetic journey to the Californian suburbs

In a YouTube clip from February 2011, Hiromi Ito begins a reading of an excerpt from her narrative poem "I Am Anjuhimeko (Watashi wa Anjuhimeko de aru)" at the Museum of Modern Aomori Literature by banging the palm of her hand loudly and repeatedly on the desk in front of her. She sits down, squares...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 17, 2012

'TeZukA' animates the stage

Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is nutty about anime and manga. Speaking to him at a cafe in his native Antwerp, Cherkaoui drops all the right names into his conversation and gets as giddy as an otaku (obsessive) discussing Japanese pop culture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Feb 14, 2012

Nagoya: Do you think crusading Mayor Takashi Kawamura is doing a good job?

JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 12, 2012

This country needs a lot more lovin'

Japan's rather tepid sex life of late has drawn considerable attention, not so much prurient as anxious. What does it mean when young people in their sexual prime are bored by sex or can't be bothered with it? The implications are various: psychological (has life grown too virtual to be real?), economic...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 12, 2012

Commuter love affair, Tokyo tales

TOKYO COMMUTE: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line, by A. Robert Lee. Renaissance Books, 2011, 214 pp., $22 (paper) Arrive in Tokyo via airport train, as most travelers do, and it quickly becomes apparent that the city's lifeblood is its world-class railway network, each line...
EDITORIALS
Feb 8, 2012

Japan's population time bomb

A population trend estimate announced on Jan. 30 by the health and welfare ministry's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows that in 2060, Japan's population will fall to about 30 percent below the current level, while people aged 65 or older will account for 40 percent of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Feb 7, 2012

Questions raised about account of Tokyo cop assault

Some readers' responses to the Jan. 24 Zeit Gist column by Simon Scott, headlined "American claims Tokyo cop assaulted son, 8":
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2012

Mormon Church could use a Martin Luther

There has been much talk recently about whether America is ready for a Mormon president. This tolerance question should cut both ways.

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