Search - 2012

 
 
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Sep 7, 2012

Players take Greek offers

The Greek economy is in horrible shape. The eurozone has been on shaky ground for years. And, yes, the Greek League is barely surviving.
BUSINESS
Sep 7, 2012

Rising tensions hurting China sales, Nissan exec says

Nissan Motor Co., the best-selling Japanese automaker in China, said deliveries are off as it cut back on marketing events in the wake of violent anti-Japan demonstrations last month.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 6, 2012

Feel the Roots

What do you get when you mix prehistoric Jomon Period ruins and free-spirited, improvised percussion and rhythm? Jomon Trance, that's what. A genre coined by global music group RaBiRaBi, it's a sound that "blends the ancient and the future to create a new ceremonial space."
COMMENTARY
Sep 5, 2012

Obama earns mediocre marks on economy

President Barack Obama's economic report card is at best mediocre. I'd give him a C+, while acknowledging that presidents usually don't much influence the economy. It's too big and subject to too many complex forces, from new technologies to global conditions.
EDITORIALS
Sep 5, 2012

Cinemas going digital

Japan's cinema world is now undergoing its greatest transformation since the introduction of "talkie" and color films. It has been learned recently that 10 major cinema complex firms, which cover some 70 percent of the roughly 3,300 movie screens in Japan, are expected to complete the introduction of...
ANNOUNCEMENTS / TRAVEL INSIDER
Sep 5, 2012

Is Japan Cool? asks ANA's website; BA special fares until Sept. 7; Cathay meals

ANA's Is Japan Cool? site
EDITORIALS
Sep 4, 2012

Mr. Mitt Romney, a man of faith

It is now official: Mr. Willard Mitt Romney is the Republican Party nominee to contest the presidency of the United States in 2012. Mr. Romney acquired the requisite number of delegates in the Republican primary race months ago but it took the party convention to make it official. Now, Mr. Romney and...
BUSINESS
Sep 4, 2012

Both Ford, Toyota claim top-selling car in the world

Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U.S. automaker, and Toyota Motor Corp., Asia's biggest car company, are each saying they produced the best-selling car in the world in the first half. Their definitions are the key.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2012

The heirs of inequality

It has long been known that spurts of rapid economic growth can increase inequality: China and India are the latest examples. But might slow growth and rising inequality — the two most salient characteristics of developed economies nowadays — also be connected?
EDITORIALS
Sep 3, 2012

Preparing for Nankai megaquake

The Cabinet Office's Central Disaster Prevention Council said Wednesday that a megaquake of magnitude-9 in the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coasts and its ensuing tsunami could kill up to 323,000 people in 30 prefectures including Tokyo, with about 70 percent of the deaths tsunami-related. Malfunctioning...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2012

Judgment day for the eurozone

Europe and the world are eagerly awaiting the decision of Germany's Constitutional Court on September 12 regarding the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the proposed permanent successor to the eurozone's current emergency lender, the European Financial Stability Mechanism. The Court must rule on German...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012

Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage

Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2012

A Borgesian look at a fictional Hong Kong

ATLAS: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, by Dung Kai-cheung, translated by Anders Hansson and Bonnie S. McDougall. Columbia University Press, 2012, 192 pp., $24.50 (hardcover).
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Sep 1, 2012

Writing may be on wall for Rooney

Sir Alex Ferguson can be a good friend but a very bad enemy.
BASKETBALL
Sep 1, 2012

Chiba Jets sign pair of veteran forwards

If the current rate of signings keeps up, don't be surprised if a Cameroon basketball fan club is soon established in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2012

Putin's bad neighbor policy reaps poor harvest

Russia has shown itself to be an international spoiler with its ardent support for Syrian President Bashar Assad. The contrast with its benign policy toward Libya in 2011 reflects how Russian foreign policy changed with the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin. On foreign policy, at least, Russia's...
EDITORIALS
Sep 1, 2012

The blame for Diet paralysis

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and the ruling Democratic Party of Japan bear primary responsibility for the current paralytic political situation — the virtual stoppage of Diet deliberations after a censure motion against Mr. Noda passed in the opposition-controlled Upper House Wednesday.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Aug 31, 2012

Fujitsu beats IBM in X League opener

Fujitsu, last year's X League runnerup, prevailed despite IBM quarterback Kevin Craft's mighty passing game as the Frontiers edged the Big Blue 24-20 in the opening game of the 2012 X League season at Tokyo Dome on Thursday night.
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2012

Censure motion against Noda OK'd

With the Sept. 8 end of the current Diet session nearing, political players in Nagata-cho engaged in a heated tit-for-tat battle Wednesday as the opposition-controlled Upper House passed a censure motion against Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to try to push him into dissolving the Lower House.
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2012

Romney poised to fix a GOP problem

Conventions are the seventh-inning stretch of presidential politics, a pause to consider the interminable prelude and the coming climax. Republicans gathering in Tampa face an unusual election in which they do not have a substantial advantage concerning the most presidential subject, foreign policy....
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2012

Political pandering to America's middle class

Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the middle class. At their conventions, the two parties will compete fiercely for its support.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Aug 29, 2012

Kim reveals new programs, denies marriage rumors

Kim Yu-na geared up for her much-anticipated return to competition this season by announcing her musical selections for her programs recently through her agency, All That Sports.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2012

DPJ bills clear Lower House, to stall

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan used its numeric advantage to pass two key bills through the Lower House on Tuesday amid a vote boycott by the main opposition parties, which plan to block passage of the legislation through the Sept. 8 end of the Diet session.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2012

The Arab Spring's backward leap for women

As the dust of the Arab Spring revolutions begins to settle, women — who stood shoulder to shoulder with men in defying tyranny — are finding themselves marginalized and excluded from decision-making. Despite the new freedoms championed by the revolutionaries, women are still regarded as subordinate...
COMMENTARY
Aug 28, 2012

Lockdown on expert candor

Larry Summers knows better. In a column for the Washington Post (which ran Monday in The Japan Times under the headline "The unlikely chance of shrinking government"), the Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama shows why the federal government...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 28, 2012

Why is government policymaking paralyzed?

It is no secret that the global economy is struggling. Europe is in the midst of a crisis whose root cause is a structurally flawed monetary and economic union.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 28, 2012

Home purchases rise ahead of tax increase

Record low mortgage rates and the prospect of a consumption tax hike that will add the price of a new Toyota Corolla to the cost of an average home spurred Sumiko Morigaki into action.

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’