Search - about-us

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2000

Amid uncertainties, the universe beckons

LONDON -- "You would hope that from this point on," said Jim Van Laak, manager of the space station Alpha, on Friday, "we will never have a period when humans are not living in space."
JAPAN
Nov 9, 2000

Police nab Red Army founder Shigenobu

Fusako Shigenobu, the founder of the Japanese Red Army and a key figure in a series of international terrorist incidents in the 1970s, was arrested Wednesday in Osaka Prefecture.
COMMENTARY
Nov 9, 2000

Chinese irredentism threatens Asia -- and may come back to haunt Beijing

NEW DELHI -- The 50th anniversary of China's annexation of Tibet passed unnoticed by the world, reflecting the awe and respect that a rising China inspires and helplessness over the plight of the Tibetans. China's rise in an Asia at a time when Russia has declined, Japan has lost its economic sheen,...
JAPAN
Nov 9, 2000

Former KSD head arrested on suspicion of embezzlement

Tadao Koseki, the former director of a welfare business foundation for small businesses, was arrested Wednesday afternoon for allegedly misappropriating KSD funds, sources said.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 9, 2000

Now is the season of our great content

It's all too easy to take for granted a restaurant of the caliber of Les Saisons. Ensconced within the venerable portals of the Imperial Hotel, it is plush, self-assured and runs with the same effortless reliability as a well-tuned Bentley sports car. You just know that an evening at table is going to...
EDITORIALS
Nov 8, 2000

Reform is key to winning IT race

The world is gripped with IT fever. Despite linguistic differences, IT, shorthand for information technology, is a buzzword even here. It is believed to hold the key to the future development of the Japanese economy. That is why Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is leading the drive for an IT revolution. ...
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2000

Sea of Japan ports to berth fast coast guard patrol boats

The Japan Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it will station three special high-speed patrol vessels on the Sea of Japan coast by the end of March. The move comes in the wake of last year's failed chase of apparent North Korean spy boats.
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2000

Court grants recognition of man's A-bomb illness

OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision legitimizing a 74-year-old man's claim that radiation from the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima caused his health problems.
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2000

Shops continue discriminatory practices

A year has passed since the Shizuoka District Court issued a landmark ruling that awarded damages to a Brazilian journalist for being refused service at a jewelry shop in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, simply because she was foreign.
LIFE / Digital
Nov 8, 2000

Nintendo's new boy has bigger byte

SEATTLE --In 1989, a few short weeks after the worldwide launch of Nintendo's Game Boy, rival Atari released a handheld game system with a backlit color screen. The engineers at Atari considered Game Boy and its dim, low-resolution monochrome screen to be a technological joke.
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2000

Blood brothers, blood feuds

"In the year Sakalat 185, year of the Horse, the Thai came to tattoo all the inhabitants of the Lao cities." -- Oden Meeker, "The Little World of Laos"
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2000

Wreck and return of the Mary Rose

The man o' war, moving gracefully under billowing canvas sheeting, moved purposefully through the water. The pride of King Henry VIII of England's navy, HMS Mary Rose was a state-of-the-art warship tasked with repelling a French invasion across the Channel.
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2000

Ministry to survey Japanese on Sakhalin

The Health and Welfare Ministry next month will survey Japanese still living on Sakhalin since being detained there by the Soviet Union after World War II to determine how many of them want to relocate to Japan permanently.
JAPAN
Nov 8, 2000

Researchers to test DNA of King Tut

Researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo said Tuesday that they will test the DNA of Egypt's legendary King Tutankhamen to determine the country's royal lineage and the cause of his death.
LIFE / Travel
Nov 8, 2000

Catching Dolly Varden trout in Hokkaido's Churui River

After quickly catching my daily limit of pink salmon during a recent fishing trip to eastern Hokkaido's Churui River, I spent the next couple of hours pursuing smaller game, the oshorokoma, Japan's little native Dolly Varden char. This is a fish that makes up in looks and spunk what it lacks in size....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2000

A chance to reshape U.S.-Japan ties

Foreign policy is never a cutting-edge issue in U.S. presidential elections, and this year's campaign is no exception. Even when the candidates have ventured into the territory, the focus has been on China, North Korea or the role of U.S. forces in Europe or Africa or even Haiti. When Japan makes the...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 8, 2000

Nihongo dekiru?

Nihongo dekiru? Since Amazon.com opened for business, its biggest foreign market has been Japan. The company has about 193,000 customers here and they ring up about $34 million worth of sales. Mind you, the domestic Japanese market for online book sales is only $46 million. (In the name of full disclosure,...
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Ouchi gets eight years for role in cultist killing

The Tokyo District Court sentenced a one-time senior Aum Shinrikyo figure to eight years in prison Monday for his role in the 1989 murder of a 21-year-old cultist and the cremation of a follower who died during training in 1993.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Cyberspace expo to be tough on your mouse, not your feet

The government is preparing to launch a cyberspace exposition on the last day of 2000.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Parking lot protest leader found hanged

A man spearheading a local citizens' effort to stop construction on a controversial parking lot entrance proposed by Tokyo's Shibuya Ward was found hanged at his residence early Monday, police said.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Economy-class syndrome has struck 30 Japanese

Some 30 people in Japan have developed such symptoms after long flights as breathing difficulties, increased heart rate, chest pains, loss of consciousness, and interruption of blood circulation, a study conducted by a team of doctors showed Monday.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2000

Foreign-brand cigarettes account for 25% of market

Foreign-brand cigarettes accounted for a record-high market share of 25 percent in the first half of fiscal 2000, according to an industry association.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 7, 2000

From great fiction, more fiction still

THE TALE OF MURASAKI: A Novel, by Liza Dalby. Doubleday, 2000, 424 pp., $25.95. What if the author of "The Tale of Genji" had written an autobiography and it had remained undiscovered until now? What would it be like?
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 7, 2000

No chippie off the old block

WOODBLOCK KUCHI-E PRINTS: Reflections of Meiji Culture, by Helen Merrit and Nanako Yamada. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, 284 pp., profusely illustrated, $65. That category of woodblock print called the "kuchi-e" has not been widely investigated. In the large bibliography that concludes...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Nov 7, 2000

A fine fuzzy day out at Rocktober

The inaugural Rocktober festival on Sunday, Oct. 15, at Shiokaze Park in Odaiba, confounded my expectations: I had a great time.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan