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LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Jul 6, 2000

Mixing traditions in a quest for freedom

A frog smokes a cigarette in this detail from "The Waiting" by Taeko Takezawa. "I am a totally different type from the other people you've interviewed," says painter Taeko Takezawa as she lights up a clove cigarette. "I am not living my life with any kind of issue consciousness. I'm just trying...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 6, 2000

Law inhibits election coverage and debate

Prior to the Lower House elections June 25, commentators both here and abroad complained that the parties weren't putting forth concrete proposals, but instead only vague assurances that they would rebuild the economy and return Japan to its former glory as the world's last bastion of civility.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Jul 6, 2000

Bush pulls ahead in presidential polls

Texas Gov. George W. Bush continues to enhance his lead in the polls over Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. Despite what we believe about the value of polling at this time in the contest, Bush's success on the campaign trail contrasts with Gore's constant difficulties (with staff,...
LIFE / Style & Design / SIMPLY DIVINE
Jul 6, 2000

Art and design meet status and money

Ignore the rainy season and dream that you are sweating by the sea rather than on the subway. Hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, magazines . . . You probably already protect your skin with Clarins, shield your eyes with Gucci sunglasses, flaunt your bits in a Ralph Lauren bikini, but would you shell out over...
OLYMPICS
Jul 6, 2000

Sydney to fall short of eliminating drugs from Games

Australia vowed to run drugs off the road to the Olympics when it won the right to host the Games in Sydney this September, but the wheels of sports bureaucracy do not spin fast enough to outpace performance-enhanced athletes.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 6, 2000

Hooligans, pack a pencil and lots of undershirts

"The hooligans are coming, the hooligans are coming!"
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2000

Japanese wins hot dog pig-out

NEW YORK -- A trio of gustatory gladiators from Japan out-gobbled all other international competitors at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest here Tuesday, sweeping the top three spots and reclaiming the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2000

Bangkok sticks with its old-style politics

BANGKOK -- If Thai politics has changed since demonstrators ousted a pro-military government in 1992 and set the stage for democratic reforms, you would hardly know it from watching the campaign for this month's Bangkok gubernatorial election.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

G8 leaders likely to skip Security Council reform

In a significant diplomatic setback for Japan, top leaders of the Group of Eight major countries are unlikely to refer to the need for reform of the United Nations Security Council in a joint declaration to be issued at their upcoming summit in Okinawa.
BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2000

All things pointing to high-priced activity

The Tokyo stock market appears poised to snap out of a three-month correction. Having reached a high of 20,833 on April 12, the 225- issue Nikkei average fell to 16,008 on May 15 and is now hovering around 17,500.
EDITORIALS
Jul 5, 2000

New Cabinet must earn its mandate

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori reorganized his Cabinet on Tuesday. It continues the tripartite ruling alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party, New Komeito and the Conservative Party, even though each party lost seats in the June 25 Lower House election. This new Cabinet is officially referred to as the...
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Heavy thunderstorms disrupt traffic, transportation services

Downpours lashed many parts of the country Tuesday afternoon, disrupting railway services and road traffic amid temperatures of over 30 degrees during the day.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Mori selects new Cabinet

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori inaugurated his new Cabinet, which maintained the basic structure of his old one, on Tuesday night after being re-elected to the nation's top government post in the Diet earlier in the day.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Snow lied after milk-poisoning case

OSAKA -- Officials of Snow Brand Milk Products Co. on Tuesday said that a valve at an Osaka production facility found to be contaminated with a toxin-causing bacteria was used almost every day, and not rarely as it had claimed Saturday.
BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2000

Hotel bankruptcies hit postbubble high

The number of bankruptcies of inns and hotels rose 8.4 percent in fiscal 1999 from the previous year to 90, the worst figure since the burst of the late 1980s bubble economy, a private credit research institution said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Newly appointed ministers announce policy priorities

The ministers appointed to the second Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori announced their priority tasks in separate press conferences Tuesday evening.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Projectile fired at base found

Police said Tuesday morning they found one of two projectiles fired Monday night at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in what they believe was an attack by radicals opposed to the presence of the U.S. military in Japan.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2000

Japanese researcher chips away at an ancient mystery

PHONSAVAN, Laos -- Archaeologist Eiji Nitta dug and scraped. The answer to the puzzle of the giant stone vessels scattered throughout the Plain of Jars in northern Laos lay, he believed, not in their material or their contents, but in what lay under them.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2000

The Plain of Jars: A place of war and death

PHONSAVAN, Laos -- It should be hard to go missing on the Plain of Jars. But hundreds have.
BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2000

Japan to resume yen loans to Colombia

After nearly five years of suspension, Japan will resume official yen loans to Colombia to help the Latin American country rebuild its shattered economy, government sources said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 5, 2000

Mind reading, or am I just predictable?

It is often said that long-time married couples grow so close they can actually read each other's minds, but either that's hooey or my wife and I are out of synch, ESP-wise.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jul 5, 2000

Species hidden in the mist of Tikal

TIKAL, Guatemala -- Early morning, and thin mist licks around the feet of Tikal's towering Mayan temples. It is that haunted time, not quite light, not quite dark, when one feels that the odds of seeing a jaguar padding golden-eyed through the ruins are at their highest.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 5, 2000

The tyranny of the square

When talking to Ted Nelson, strap in tight. It's quite a ride. Trained as a philosopher and film director, he is equal parts visionary and crank. Many consider him to be one of the fathers of the World Wide Web. He coined the word "hypertext" in 1965, but he has become a scathing critic of the Web and...
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2000

Advancing smartly backward

LONDON -- It is an old American saying that "the pioneer is the one who gets the arrow in his back." So when President Jacques Chirac of France recently proposed a "pioneering" project to bring France and Germany still closer together at the political level and, as he put it, to "move further and faster...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 5, 2000

Migrants and vagrants under Teuri's crags

An hour and a half west of the small harbor town of Haboro, which is just three hours north of Sapporo, lie two small islands: Teuri and Yagishiri. Teuri is easy to visit and has fascinating seabird colonies and good walking. There is a ferry from Haboro, which goes via Yagishiri, and although there...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jul 5, 2000

Sometimes too late

Several readers have asked me to repeat my favorite column. That is quite difficult. Actually, there would be two but neither was ever written. There are many questions that are never selected to be in a column.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2000

A Japan-U.S. alliance for an altered world

The world is still trying to grasp the meaning of the summit between the two Koreas. Many are euphoric; wiser heads counsel that there is a long way to go before there's real peace on the Korean Peninsula. Nonetheless, if reconciliation and, eventually, unification do come about, the effects will be...
EDITORIALS
Jul 4, 2000

A step toward financial stability

The Financial Agency, which was launched Saturday in a major move to integrate the operating and planning roles of financial policymaking bodies, started actual operations on Monday. The new financial-watchdog body combines the Financial Supervisory Agency and the Finance Ministry's Financial Planning...
SOCCER / World cup
Jul 4, 2000

Japanese, Koreans study cohosting at Euro 2000

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Senior officials from both the Japanese and Korean World Cup organizing committees said Saturday they expected to learn many things from the cohosted Euro 2000 Soccer Championship, but emphasized that the 2002 World Cup was a different kettle of fish with its own attendant problems....

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes