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JAPAN
Nov 1, 2000

Seven injured in Tokai quake

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 5.5 jolted the Tokai region early Tuesday, injuring seven people in Mie, Aichi, Gifu and Nara prefectures.
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 1, 2000

International performers take to Shizuoka's streets

Shizuoka City has a problem. Mount Fuji is an hour east, a decent beach is an hour west. Outside of green tea and clean air, Shizuoka City itself doesn't have much going for it.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Nov 1, 2000

Be sure to do the Galapagos in style

You can "do" the Galapagos right. Or you can "do" the Galapagos wrong.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2000

Russia's back window onto North Korea

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- In the Davydova neighborhood in the northern part of town, one apartment block after another has been under construction for years. Thus, there are always North Korean laborers around.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 1, 2000

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has changed most of all?

When I look in the mirror each morning, I pretty much see what I expect . . .
LIFE / Travel
Nov 1, 2000

A stroll through ceramic country

FUKUOKA -- Driving from Fukuoka to the fertile northeast of Saga, the landscape suddenly changes. Gently stepped rice terraces and fields give way to short hills that rise abruptly like sugar lumps and end in craggy, chalky rocks. Towns with square brick chimneys loom, and signs begin pointing to artsy...
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Coughing Empress to get checkup

The Empress, who has been coughing since earlier this month, will at her own request undergo a special X-ray checkup later this week, the vice grand steward of the Imperial Household Agency said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Former KSD chief faces accusers

The former head of KSD, a government-linked insurance group under criminal investigation for alleged lending irregularities, has voluntarily visited prosecutors to deny the allegations against him, sources close to the case said Monday.
JAPAN / LIFE OFF MIYAKE
Oct 31, 2000

Evacuees long for home, gird for worst

Namiko Morishita did not expect it to last this long. She and her family fled their home on Miyake Island in late August as volcanic activity on Mount Oyama intensified.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Hard lessons Japan failed to learn

JAPAN'S FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ITS PARALLELS TO U.S. EXPERIENCE, edited by Ryoichi Mikitani and Adam S. Posen. Washington: Institute for International Economics, Special Report 13, Sept. 2000, 228 pp., $20. There's an old joke about a politician's plea for a one-handed economist, one who can't say, "but...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 31, 2000

Speechless, but never silent

JAPANESE BEYOND WORDS: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker, by Andrew Horvat. Foreword by Jan Walls. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 176 pp., $14.95. As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . ....
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Just the facts, ma'am

FACTS AND FIGURES OF JAPAN, 2000 edition. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 116 pp., 1,300 yen. SOCIAL SECURITY IN JAPAN, by Go Miyatake. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 80 pp., 1,800 yen (paper). CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE RELIGION, by Nobutaka Inoue. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 73 pp., 1,000 yen (paper). For people...
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Standards for GMO foods mulled

A working group for an international task force on standards for foods made from genetically modified organisms kicked off its second meeting Monday in Tokyo to discuss general principles and guidelines for assessing the risks of such foods.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Singer appointed UNEP ambassador

Singer Tokiko Kato on Monday was appointed as the first Japanese goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

The tea with chewy marbles from Taiwan gains foothold

What's got chewy, marble-size balls, tastes like ice milk tea and gets sucked through a big, fat straw? The answer is pearl tea -- a wacky and tasty snack-in-a-beverage from Taiwan now being served in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 31, 2000

Japan's visionless politics

Many Japanese watched on television at least part of the face-to-face debates between U.S. presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush. Both candidates are said to be more or less middle-of-the-road types,with no defining differ ences in political philosophy. In my view, however, Bush showed himself...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 31, 2000

A lonely voice calls for shared values

It is one of the ironies of our time that the very process that is tying the world's disparate peoples together is at the same time generating friction between them. Globalization may be spinning a vast web of relationships as it builds a single world market, but as it does so, citizens are accentuating...
EDITORIALS
Oct 30, 2000

Mr. Fujimori fights back

Peru's President Alberto Fujimori may be fighting for his political life, but he maintains his flair for the dramatic. Last week, he personally led a manhunt for Mr. Vladimiro Montesinos, the former head of the National Intelligence Service, who returned to Peru after fleeing the country on the heels...
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Lawmaker reveals Mori made rice vow

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori secretly promised North Korea 500,000 tons of rice aid in 1997 when he visited Pyongyang as the head of a delegation composed of Japan's three then-ruling parties, the head of a small opposition party told Kyodo News on Saturday.
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Western Pacific declared free of polio

KYOTO -- The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the western Pacific region free of the virus that causes polio, an important step in international efforts to eradicate the crippling childhood disease from the world.
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

University hospitals found padding food bills

Nineteen hospitals affiliated with state-run universities padded bills for patient meals they reported in fiscal 1999, officials with the government's Board of Audit said Sunday.
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2000

Mori reviews SDF, praises performance

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori conducted his first naval review Sunday in Sagami Bay, Kanagawa Prefecture, in a ceremony involving about 10,000 people, 63 vessels and 61 aircraft from the Ground, Maritime and Air Self-Defense forces.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2000

West Papua: Indonesia's next East Timor?

LONDON -- The biggest single taxpayer in Indonesia is the U.S. firm Freeport McMoran. The money comes mostly from its Grasberg mine in the mountains of West Papua, which sits on the largest gold deposit in the world. That is why Jakarta, which used every dirty trick in the book to hang onto East Timor...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 30, 2000

U.S. reporter misses the mark on Japan

"Given America's willingness to avert its eyes from the most troubling chapters of its history and to resist critical self-evaluation and discussion of the country's atrocities against native Americans and African Americans . . ."

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