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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 11, 2008

Jazz icon Akiko Yano finds her electronic muse

She released her acclaimed debut album 32 years ago at the age of 21, but Akiko Yano still refuses to rest on her laurels. Even with a 27th solo album on the way, the pianist, vocalist, lyricist and composer is still searching for new musical experiences.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2008

Rudd pencils in Tokyo visit

SYDNEY — After much grief in Canberra, Kevin Rudd has set a date to meet with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo. True, it's a bit late and the timing comes a poor second to his talks with other world leaders. But at least it's on and tempers may now cool.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2008

No end in sight to India's fiscal follies

NEW DELHI — India's new budget for 2008-2009 says less about the country's current financial health than it does about the irresistible tendency of Indian governments to use the national budget as a pre-election cudgel. Every year, India struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable: stimulate economic...
EDITORIALS
Apr 6, 2008

Health insurance for the elderly

A new health insurance scheme that covers people aged 75 or over began April 1. As their medical costs are more expensive than those of younger generations, they have been left out of ordinary health insurance schemes. One of the aims of the new system is to reduce medical costs by making participants...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2008

'Cloverfield'

An old gripe of Woody Allen was that America hated New York ("The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're leftwing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers!" he rails in "Annie Hall"). For most of his life he had stuck staunchly by his city, showing the rest of America just what "leftwing...
COMMENTARY
Apr 2, 2008

U.K.'s ongoing EU headache

LONDON — What is a constitution? The question may seem to be a rarefied and abstruse one for lawyers and academics, but just at the moment it lies at the very heart of British politics and strategy.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 31, 2008

Oxymoronic sustenance and sustainability

NEW YORK — Earlier this month there was held, in a midtown hotel, an International Conference on Climate Change. Yet another one? you might ask. But, no, this one was to make the case that Al Gore, with his argument in "An Inconvenient Truth" is a fraud, a swindler. One of the conferees' premises was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 27, 2008

Tokyo's tidal wave of art

L ike a tsunami moving through deep water, the boom in Japan's contemporary art world has been approaching, little detected, for several years. Now, as it readies to peak in a proliferation of events next week — many of them brand new — we can see for the first time just how big it was, and who was...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Mar 26, 2008

Phone imitates MP3 imitates phone

Lighter than Air: Anorexic models might no longer be PC on the catwalks, but laptop computer makers believe that consumers just can't keep their hands off them. As usual, Apple is seen as the trendsetter, thanks to its ultrathin MacBook Air model, which is trumpeted as the thinnest laptop of them all...
BUSINESS
Mar 25, 2008

Ishihara brainchild Shinginko said doomed from the get-go

When Rikkyo University professor Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi first heard about Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's plan to set up a new bank in 2003, one thought immediately leaped to mind: This is doomed to fail.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Mar 19, 2008

Gaming contest adds Dutch style to Japanese knowhow

UTRECHT, Netherlands From March 8 to 9 I was lucky enough to be involved as a jury member in a fresh initiative called the Japan GameJam. This new concept brings Dutch game designers into the exciting world of Japanese mobile gaming with a two day intensive game design session.
COMMENTARY
Mar 14, 2008

Burma sanctions don't work

NEW DELHI — Burma today ranks as one of the world's most isolated and sanctioned nations — a situation unlikely to be changed by its ruling junta scheduling a May referendum on a draft constitution and facilitating U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's third visit in six months.
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2008

Chamber again votes for Muto as row festers

The Lower House on Thursday approved the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling bloc government's nomination of Toshiro Muto as new Bank of Japan governor, resulting in a split decision after the opposition-controlled upper chamber rejected him just a day earlier.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 4, 2008

Politics in game of never-ending musical chairs

A nearly unbroken line of Liberal Democratic Party politicians has headed the government since the party's 1955 formation. This dominance, however, was shaken by the stunning victory of the Democratic Party of Japan in the July 2007 House of Councilors election. In this reshaped political landscape,...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA / STYLE WISE
Feb 26, 2008

Harajuku's "Style Deficit Disorder," model Irina Lazareanu gets wicked and more

Cure for disorder The popular fashion hub Harajuku is the subject of a fascinating new book by Tokyo-based editor and creative consultant Tiffany Godoy. Rich in detail and accompanied by some remarkable images, her book, "Style Deficit Disorder" (Chronicle Books), documents the history of the area from...
COMMENTARY
Feb 21, 2008

Starting with Kyoto, Rudd aims high

LOS ANGELES — Before too much time goes by, maybe somebody ought to take note of the smart political stuff coming out of Australia lately.
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2008

Obstacles to overcome in the development of a concert of Asia-Pacific democracies

NEW DELHI — The new Australian government is signaling a wish to turn its back on an initiative bringing four major democracies of the Asia-Pacific together, even as U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has vowed to institutionalize that venture.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Feb 20, 2008

'Streetfighter IV' leads the coin-op charge

Making their debut on the arcade-entertainment scene at Chiba's Makuhari Messe exhibition venue on Saturday were Crimson Viper, a redhead with a predilection for cross-dressing and ultraviolence, and Abel, a Teutonic blond whose rippling physique seemed to bear the hallmarks of some serious steroid abuse....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2008

Washington suffering from debt delusion

WASHINGTON — A second big American interest-rate cut in a fortnight, alongside an economic stimulus plan that united Republicans and Democrats, demonstrates that U.S. policymakers are keen to head off a recession that looks like the consequence of rising mortgage defaults and falling home prices. But...
BUSINESS
Feb 13, 2008

Flowers back for a second bite of Shinsei Bank

Christopher Flowers is back in Tokyo, eyeing a second opportunity to make money from Shinsei Bank Ltd.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2008

Wise man from Japan now the black pope

HONG KONG — An American Maryknoll priest in Hong Kong preached that the greatest blessings in life come when you least expect them, a rain shower on a hot day, a friend unexpectedly turning up, remission in a crippling illness, an inspiring idea just when your brain seemed to have turned into blancmange....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2008

Tsukiji looks to curb glut of pesky tourists

The Tsukiji Fish Market, one of Tokyo's most popular and well-known tourist draws, has adopted rules urging visitors to voluntarily "refrain from coming," because of sanitation concerns and the disruptions they pose to auctions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 7, 2008

The gobbiest girl in London, innit?

Adele cringes: "I can't believe I did a peace sign on TV — like Ringo Starr!"
Japan Times
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Feb 6, 2008

Confidence, right formula helped Giants to Super upset

GLENDALE, Ariz. — I had a short chat with my uncle Jack on the telephone Saturday afternoon. He lives in northern New Jersey, grew up in New York City and has always followed the New York Giants.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Feb 6, 2008

Tokyo's 'video people' come together

On Jan. 27, a new keyword climbed to the top of the rankings in Japan to steal first place on the blog search engine Technorati. Dougajin — literally "Video People" — was the name coined by organizers of Japan's first video-blogging event, held one day earlier, to describe the country's latest category...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 5, 2008

Giants cap improbable run with Super Bowl win

GLENDALE, Ariz. There's no perfect Super Bowl champion in 2008. Instead, there's a champion that took a page out of the previously unbeaten New England Patriots' book of achievements.
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2008

Geopolitical risks on the rise

DAVOS, Switzerland — At the recent World Economic Forum meeting of top political, business, intellectual and civil-society leaders, the discussions centered on a range of major international challenges — from new threats to the growing strain on water and other resources.
EDITORIALS
Feb 2, 2008

Making an impact on tourism

The government plans to inaugurate a Tourism Agency in October as an extra-ministerial bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The new agency will be aimed at attracting overseas visitors to Japan as their tourist destination and to make tourism an important industry of the nation....

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo