Search - 2014

 
 
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 28, 2013

Smashing ideas on future design and technology

While contemporary art is still transfixed by its own reflection, veteran Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa has focused her cultural microscope on something quite different. "Bunny Smash Design to touch the world," the current group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, is a hit-and-miss...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 27, 2013

Syrian refugee crisis pushes fragile Lebanon closer to breaking point

As you come through the military checkpoints on the way into Wadi Khaled, local mobile phones bleep with an unsolicited text: "The Ministry of Tourism welcomes you to Syria."
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 27, 2013

Tea party darling Cruz burnishes conservative credentials in Iowa

Sen. Ted Cruz used a series of long-scheduled appearances in Iowa over the weekend to cast himself as the natural leader of a burgeoning conservative movement that nearly derailed the new health care law.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 27, 2013

White House rallies Democrats in effort to shore up health site push

By the time President Barack Obama acknowledged on Monday that his signature health care program had serious problems, it was clear the political stakes had escalated for the White House.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 26, 2013

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo: Invisible touch

Clothing that morphs into a person's body shape at the flick of a wrist sounds like something straight out of a science-fiction film, but such innovations were on display at the wonderful Anrealage show at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo last week. Designer Kunihiko Morinaga has developed an in-seam...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Oct 26, 2013

Flip a skirt a month in 2014

Kaori Kato's Skirt Flipping Calendar enters its second year, while sticky notes debut.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 23, 2013

Fraught reunions

Her long-term boyfriend's death spurs concert pianist Charlotte into visiting her eldest daughter Eva, from whom she's been estranged for seven years. At Eva's house she also meets Helena, her severely disabled other daughter whom she had confined to a hospital for life, but whose care Eva has taken...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 23, 2013

Balloon to offer luxury, $75,000 ride to edge of space

There's a new player in the bustling world of "commercial space," although the "space" part is a matter of definition.
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Oct 22, 2013

Russia eyeing NSA-like surveillance

Less than three months after granting asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, Russia is preparing to implement the kind of electronic surveillance that Snowden uncovered in the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 22, 2013

ACA website to New Yorker: drop dead for now

The not-typically-quotable U.S. House Speaker John Boehner does have a point when he asks how we can we tax people for not buying Obamacare from a website that doesn't work.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 22, 2013

Cruz emerges emboldened from GOP debacle

The political consensus among many U.S. Republicans is that tea party members in the House have done grievous harm to their brand. But that's not how grassroot activists see it.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Oct 20, 2013

Political winds buffet NHK

An NHK insider warns that the quality of Japan's public broadcasting system is threatened by a poor personnel appointment for which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pulling the strings.
EDITORIALS
Oct 20, 2013

Firms hiring more foreign students

Japanese companies surveyed are increasingly looking to hire foreign students from China, South Korea and other Asian countries despite the less-than-rosy political relationships.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 19, 2013

Tanishige to become rare player-manager for Dragons

Kind of a surprise was the announcement last week that Motonobu Tanishige was named the new manager of the Chunichi Dragons.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 18, 2013

Controversy over Hodgson's joke a bunch of hogwash

The feel-good factor lasted 24 hours.
EDITORIALS
Oct 17, 2013

Pre-emption of mercurial hazards

Some might call it the epitaph for Japan's worst environmental tragedy. Delegates from about 140 countries meet in Kumamoto to adopt the Minamata Convention on regulating the use of mercury.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 17, 2013

'Jinrui Shikin (Human Trust)'

Sometimes as a reviewer of Japanese films I feel I am on the wrong side of the cultural divide, with no way to bridge the gap.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Oct 17, 2013

U.S. debt deal sets up new risks to growth

The deal reached by Congress on Wednesday to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling would avert a financial catastrophe but leave the weakened U.S. economy facing new threats.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 15, 2013

Tax-free account seeks to spur investment

Starting in January, individuals who invest in stocks and investment trusts in a Nippon Individual Savings Account will be eligible for tax exemptions of up to five years on their financial gains. The new instrument is aimed at getting people used to accumulating financial assets via small-scale investments....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 12, 2013

Myanmar takes helm of ASEAN while sectarian violence persists

Myanmar last week took the baton from the Sultan of Brunei, assuming the rotating chair in 2014 of Asia's most important regional organization, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2013

Crashes, sticker shock mark Obamacare shopping

Last week I spent six hours shopping for Obamacare on New York State's health care marketplace website. Officials had estimated that it would take the average person seven minutes. Either because I am not an average person or because the Obamacare people are idiots, I spent six hours setting up an account....
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2013

Wales set to restore Dylan Thomas' faded reputation as centenary nears

The little park where he played as a boy in Swansea, on Wales' south-west coast, has had a facelift, and a bronze statue is to be erected outside his childhood home. Manuscripts and rare photographs have been borrowed from an archive in New York, and his quotations have been liberally applied to council...
Japan Times
TENNIS
Oct 11, 2013

Tsonga dominates Mayer, reaches Shanghai semis

Seventh seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga roared into the semifinals of the Shanghai Rolex Masters on Friday with a comprehensive 6-2, 6-3 victory over unseeded German Florian Mayer.
EDITORIALS
Oct 10, 2013

Don't sell out Japan in TPP talks

The Abe administration's apparent rush to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks before yearend is disturbing given the lack of clarity so far on what Japan may be agreeing to.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 10, 2013

Machinery orders see best surge since 2008

In a sign of strengthening economic revival, machinery orders jumped to ¥819.3 billion in August, the highest since 2008, when the world was beset by a financial crisis.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami