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Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 27, 2009

Koza remembered

It's October 2009, and I'm sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store in Koza city, taking photographs of the sidewalk. I've been here for close to an hour — surrounded by a dozen old photographs, four maps and reams of photocopies all weighed down with chunks of brick to stop them blowing away...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 27, 2009

Decade's end abuzz and a-flutter with wist for a warm poetic past

At the end of the year — and, particularly, the end of a decade — an old man's fancy turns, involuntarily, to nostalgia.
MORE SPORTS
Dec 26, 2009

Takahashi leads at nationals

OSAKA — Daisuke Takahashi finished first in the short program at the Japan National Figure Skating Championships on Friday, moving a step closer to earning a spot for the Vancouver Olympics.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 26, 2009

Storyteller of implausible success

Imagine this: An Indian diplomat in London churns out his first novel during a two-month hiatus before his next posting. The novel becomes an international best-seller and is translated into 42 languages. Before the book is even printed it has been optioned for a film, which goes on to win eight Academy...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 25, 2009

Japanese hospitals take interest in 'medical tourists'

While many Japanese companies have gone global over the years, making companies like Toyota, Sony and Canon household names in every corner of the world, the Japanese health care industry is focused largely on the domestic market and has long been shielded from pressure for change.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 25, 2009

Cuts fear clouds a year of diversity and innovation in Japan theater

Following the landmark change of government in August, meetings of its Budget Screening Committee have for the first time been opened to the public. Sadly, though, when that committee got round to arts financing in November, many members harshly criticized the amount awarded to the public theater sector....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 25, 2009

Mexico Music Festival 2010

Yuriko Kuronuma, a renowned Japanese violinist based in Mexico, never gives up.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Dec 23, 2009

One step at a time — sumo needs to change

As 2009 draws to a close, the sport of sumo can look back on a year largely free from scandal. Pleasing perhaps for many of the conservative elements in and around the sport, but 2010, could well prove the year in which relative young bloods in the ruling stablemaster elite take steps towards advancing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2009

Using financial aid to curb suicides

KURIHARA, Miyagi Pref. — Four years ago, suicides in this city in the Tohoku region were running at nearly double the national rate, and as the global financial meltdown hit Japan they might have been expected to go even higher.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 22, 2009

Too innocent for prejudice?

Are kindergarteners racist? Do they discriminate between children with different skin colors?
COMMENTARY
Dec 21, 2009

No such thing as classless

According to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the taxation policies of the Tory (Conservative) Party were decided on the playing field of Eton (one of Britain's top private schools). Thus, Gordon Brown, whose Labour government trails in the opinion polls behind the Conservative opposition, seemed from this...
Reader Mail
Dec 20, 2009

Best customer service in the world

Regarding Amy Chavez's Dec. 12 article, "Is service with a smile too much to ask for?": My wife recently flew back from the United States (on an American airline). My wife is an American and we have been living in Japan for 1Łyears now.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 20, 2009

Stunning book speaks volumes about the ravages visited on Tibet

Ten years ago, near the end of 1999, the Chinese author Wang Lixiong received a package from a young woman of Tibetan origin named Tsering Woeser. It contained several hundred black-and-white negatives.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 20, 2009

Cultivating pure tastes from the past

Shinagawa Ward in central Tokyo has seen lots of high-rise condos and office complexes sprout up in recent years, especially since shinkansen bullet trains began to stop there in 2003.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 20, 2009

Stephen Mansfield: Best books of 2009

Not for those looking for a cozy fireside New Year read. The fiendish methods used by the Kempeitai, Japan's military police, are known in outline, but now we have the chilling details. Felton focuses not only on the unit's systematic physical and sexual torture of Allied soldiers and Asian civilians...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009

Have fun and play with your food

I slip a red dress over my head. The silhouette is fashionably curved, the fabric luxuriously soft and the hemline festooned with small red bobbles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009

The beauty of subtle deceit

More than in any other country where the lacquer tree grows, the art of working with its hard-drying sap has excelled here in Japan. Two leading exponents were Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747) and Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), who both stand out not only for their inventive sense of design in decorating three-dimensional...
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Dec 16, 2009

New kanji are mighty compound-word builders

Joyo (general-use) kanji, which currently number 1,945, are the characters officially approved by the Japanese government for use in newspapers and government publications. Japanese schoolchildren study these during their nine years of compulsory education, and non-Japanese speakers must do battle with...
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2009

Proposal followed fight over feline

. I had been involved in triathlon for two or three years. Kentaro: It was my first or second time to join the triathlon training group when we met. She and I both lived in Oizumi Gakuen (in Nerima Ward, Tokyo). She taught me how to swim.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Dec 13, 2009

Tuffy hopes to extend career in Japan another year

It remains to be seen if Tuffy Rhodes will return to play a 14th season in Japanese baseball in 2010. The all-time leader among foreign players in home runs and RBIs says he's ready for another year — or two — but, if he is unable to attract an offer from a Pacific or Central League club, he will...
EDITORIALS
Dec 13, 2009

An education in violence

Violent behavior in Japanese schools increased to an all-time high in 2008, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Students, teachers and other people were victims of 60,000 violent incidents involving primary, middle and high school...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 12, 2009

The most annoying Japanese word

Several weeks ago a poll from the Marist Institute of Public Opinion — one that was slingshot quickly across the Internet — listed "whatever" as the most annoying of all English words.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 11, 2009

'The Man from London'

Appropriate to the director's family name of Tarr, "The Man From London" is akin to walking on an endless runway strip of newly laid-on tarmac.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 10, 2009

Turkey aims to reconnect with its neighbors

ANKARA — Nowadays, the international media are obsessed with the question of who "lost" Turkey and what that supposed loss means for Europe and the West. More alarmingly, some commentators liken Turkey's neighborhood policy to a revival of Ottoman imperialism. Recently, a senior Turkish columnist went...

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