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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 . . ."
COMMENTARY
Oct 30, 2000

Zhu puts relations to rights

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to Tokyo this month marked a turning point in Sino-Japanese relations, which have been strained for the past two years as a result of disagreements over wartime history. In a Tokyo news conference Oct. 16, Zhu said the Japanese people, as well as the Chinese, were "victims...
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Defendant admits role in Osaka killing

OSAKA -- A Japanese man on trial in Macau on charges of murdering a Chinese woman and injuring another in August has admitted being involved in the murder of a Japanese man in Osaka earlier this year, investigative sources said Saturday.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

DNA identifies soldier held in Siberia

A DNA test has identified the remains of a former Japanese serviceman who died in detention in a Siberian labor camp after the end of World War II, the Health and Welfare Ministry said Saturday.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 29, 2000

Hawks' Pedraza found relief in Japan

You wonder why he never made it to the majors. Talking here about Fukuoka Daiei Hawks relief ace Rod Pedraza, the best closer in the Pacific League if not all of Japanese baseball, and one big reason the Hawks have won the PL pennant each of the two years Pedraza has been their game-ender.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Collectors go cuckoo for Choco Eggs

KADOMA, Osaka Pref. -- Chocolate eggs are an integral part of Easter celebrations in the West. Although they have yet to catch on in Japan, one particular egg-shaped variety has become a hit here.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Japan hopeful ahead of North Korea talks

Japan and North Korea will hold talks in Beijing from Monday, with the focus of discussions likely to be on North Korean demands for compensation for Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Once 'golf course heaven,' Hyogo now at opposite extreme

KOBE -- Hyogo Prefecture, with the largest number of golf courses on Honshu, has a reputation as the country's golf heaven.
COMMUNITY
Oct 29, 2000

Food Bank Japan to aid homeless

It is hard to imagine how Charlie McJilton makes ends meet as a single father living in Tokyo. He says he does "this and that" to pay the bills. Committed to staying in Japan for love of his daughter, most of his time is spent helping those in the direst need -- foreign residents who have fallen through...
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Methods to cut emissions said already available

OSAKA -- With a United Nations conference on global warming just around the corner, a citizen's group is calling for existing energy-saving technologies to be more widely used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2000

Second warrant served on Blackman case suspect

Police have served a fresh arrest warrant against Joji Obara, a 48-year-old company executive under arrest for raping a Canadian woman in 1996, on suspicion of raping another foreign woman.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’