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JAPAN
Jun 16, 2002

Male tourists rude overseas: survey

Many Japanese tour guides are embarrassed by Japanese male tourists abroad who fail to follow local customs of showing courtesy to women, according to a survey conducted by a major travel agency.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 16, 2002

Why the rain is mainly a pain

Your shoes make squishing sounds when you walk. After a couple of days' use, your bath towel begins to smell like it recently emerged from an Egyptian sarcophagus. Rain hats and scarves, umbrellas and waterproofing sprays proliferate. But no matter what you do, you still don't feel dry.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Jun 16, 2002

Big world sprouts from tiny grains of rice

When you travel between one small town and another in Japan often the panorama is a vast plain of flooded fields or a towering terraced mountain of rice paddies. In early June, up and down the Japanese archipelago, rice has been planted and the glistening paddies are teeming with life. Along with the...
EDITORIALS
Jun 15, 2002

Stop modern-day slavery

Human slavery is a difficult idea to comprehend. Treating another person as a piece of property is so fundamentally alien to every philosophical and legal tenet of our age that most people assume that slavery is a purely historical phenomenon. They are wrong. Slavery is very much alive. It continues...
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2002

New Kansai runway faces delay

The transport ministry on Friday sharply lowered its forecast for passenger demand at Kansai International Airport off Osaka, indicating that the scheduled opening of a second runway in 2007 could be delayed.
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2002

Facing need for immigrants

LONDON -- The problem of illegal immigrants (or economic migrants) and of people seeking asylum because of persecution in their home countries have become dominant themes in the European media. Popular antipathy to the plight of these people has been exploited by rightwing parties, especially in France,...
JAPAN
Jun 13, 2002

Ex-SDF officer held over cash scam

OSAKA — A 44-year-old former Self-Defense Forces officer has been arrested for allegedly bilking a woman out of some 9.5 million yen by posing as a trading house president, it was learned Wednesday.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL
Jun 13, 2002

Water, water irises everywhere

For those who live in Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, tsuyu officially began last week. Although in some years little or no rain falls in this rainy season, I personally always hope the heavens open to give some respite from the relentless heat.
SOCCER / World cup
Jun 12, 2002

Germans advance after nasty battle with Cameroon

AINO, Shizuoka Pref. -- Three-time World Cup champion Germany, despite being down to 10 men, beat Cameroon, which also was reduced to 10 players later in the game, 2-0 Tuesday night at Shizukoa Ecopa Stadium to advance to the next round of the World Cup finals.
JAPAN
Jun 12, 2002

Prosecutors grill Togo on funds scandal in Europe

Japanese prosecutors in Europe have repeatedly quizzed former elite diplomat Kazuhiko Togo over a breach of trust case involving two Foreign Ministry officials now under arrest and a government-funded committee on aid to Russia, investigative sources said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 2002

Japan, Cuba quietly hail century of state relations

HISANE MASAKI Staff writer Quietly and with little fanfare, Japan is celebrating the 100th anniversary this year of state-to-state contact with Cuba.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 6, 2002

Communication need not be a medical emergency

In response to the newly arrived businesswoman seeking native English-speaking general practitioners/family doctors in Kansai and Kyoto, here is a quick round-up.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2002

Celebrate football's field of dreams

It's twenty minutes before England's opening World Cup game at Saitama Stadium and I'm sitting almost directly behind the goal, sacred posts that I'm hoping Michael Owen will tune his gold-plated radar into the moment he walks onto the pitch.
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2002

Mr. Arafat's failures

Real peace between Palestinians and Israelis will be preceded by two conditions: an Israeli withdrawal from most, if not all, of the occupied territories and genuine democracy in the Palestinian Authority. Attention has usually focused on the first factor, but it has become increasingly evident that...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 2, 2002

Looking behind life-or-death situations

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of eight young children at the Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka. Shortly after that, a young man killed a child in a Kyoto schoolyard before killing himself when faced with arrest, thus reinforcing the fear among the general public that Japan's schools...
COMMUNITY
Jun 2, 2002

See you at Almond

Earlier this year, the Dentsu Research Institute predicted that Japan's co-hosting of the World Cup would benefit the economy to the tune of 3.182 trillion yen. While Tokyo isn't hosting any of the games, its glitzy Roppongi district will likely play host to thousands of soccer fans from around the world...
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2002

Kansai firms hope the Cup runneth over

OSAKA -- While economists debate the macroeconomic impact of the FIFA World Cup, which kicked off Friday, Hisako Tanigawa just hopes it will mean extra pocket money for her family.
JAPAN / CLOSE NEIGHBORS
Jun 1, 2002

Chinese, South Korean students warm to Japan

To Lee Hee Jung, a 20-year-old South Korean student at Yokohama National University, Japan is closer to her mother country than the United States not only geographically, but psychologically.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CUP COUNTDOWN
May 29, 2002

Hotels vie for World Cup windfall

As the Friday opening of the 2002 FIFA World Cup approaches, hoteliers in and around Tokyo are making last-minute efforts to get their slice of the hoopla that will carry on through the next month.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 26, 2002

Victor Segalen: searching out the strange to find a way home

VICTOR SEGALEN AND THE AESTHETICS OF DIVERSITY: Journeys Between Cultures, by Charles Forsdick. Oxford University Press, 2000, 242 pp., 40 pounds (cloth) In 1919, 41-year-old Victor Segalen was found dead in a Breton forest, a copy of Shakespeare beside him, the pages opened to "Hamlet." Thus ended the...
SOCCER / World cup
May 25, 2002

Guidelines for changes on tickets given

The Japanese World Cup Organizing Committee on Friday announced the details for changing the name of World Cup ticket holders following an agreement reached with FIFA to broaden the reasons for the change in Thursday's FIFA ticketing sub-committee meeting.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2002

The beautiful game becomes art

Soccer commentators, in their hyperbolic struggle to convey the excitement of the sport, sometimes refer to it as an art. This analogy isn't totally offside, as there's no denying the aesthetic element of a sport requiring so much strength, speed and coordination. But what happens when the kinetic art...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 21, 2002

The hermit opens up to visitors

PYONGYANG -- It's not difficult to find your way around Pyongyang. The city has few tall buildings and wherever you go, the imposing monolith of the Tower of the Juche Idea -- topped by a red "flame" that glows at night -- enables visitors to get their bearings.
COMMENTARY
May 21, 2002

Overhaul the foreign service

The police intrusion into the Japanese Consulate General in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang on May 8 has revealed, both here and abroad, the sorry state of Japanese diplomacy.
COMMENTARY
May 20, 2002

Too early to fete a new day for Myanmar

HONG KONG -- On May 7, Vietnam inadvertently hindered 50 million Myanmarese from learning that "at last Aung Sang Suu Kyi is no longer under house arrest." The Myanmar government's authoritarian habits prevailed at the very moment when hopes of future democracy were reborn.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
May 19, 2002

Whaling: A live issue over death

Whales dolphins and porpoises, the aquatic mammals collectively called cetaceans, number less than 80 species, or fewer than 2 percent of all mammals. They are, however, probably the most talked about and written about of all wild animals -- despite being some of the most poorly understood creatures...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji