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JAPAN
Mar 31, 2011

Fukushima No. 1's scary shadow

FUKUSHIMA — Tetsuo Sakuma has loaded his small pickup with all it can carry. There's not much of value: a television, some books, boxes of clothes, snatched in haste from a home he may never sleep in again.
EDITORIALS
Mar 28, 2011

The needs of weaker evacuees

As rescue and support operations for people hit by the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami go on, every effort must be made to prevent the deaths of people who have survived the disaster. Elderly survivors, especially, find themselves in difficult straits. Timely support must be given...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Mar 25, 2011

Sendai, Saitama players catching on with other teams

The Sendai 89ers are a symbol of Tohoku region and their fierce loyalty to the locals reflects that fighting spirit.
EDITORIALS
Mar 18, 2011

Getting relief to survivors

People who have taken shelter at evacuation facilities in northeastern Japan since the March 11 quake and tsunami are finding themselves living under harsh conditions. The central and local governments must make strenuous efforts to deliver aid and personnel to those places as soon as possible. The death...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 10, 2011

Robocon founder Dr. Masahiro Mori

Dr. Masahiro Mori, 84, is a specialist in robotics and Emeritus President of the Robotics Society of Japan. Mori is the founder of Robocon, the robotics contest he started in 1981 when he was a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since then, Robocon has developed into the world's most famous...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 9, 2011

Japanese women and the art of being alone

One of the biggest changes in Tokyo women over the past five or so years has been their new-found capacity for solitude. Tokyo joshi (女子, young girls, single women or any female who sees herself as being a relatively free-spirited individual) had been notorious — even among themselves — for their...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 6, 2011

'Galapagos' has evolved as an analogy for Japan

English naturalist Charles Darwin put Galapagos on the map, having visited the group of islands, situated in the Pacific Ocean some 970 km west of continental Ecuador, in 1835, during the voyage of the HMS Beagle. His impressions and observations of the islands' unique biosystem contributed to his 1859...
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2011

Matsuzawa will seek ban on public smoking

When Kanagawa Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa formally announced Tuesday that he will run for Tokyo governor, he listed a raft of key policy objectives, many of which he advocated in his current office.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2011

Red Devils and moneyed 'untouchables' of soccer

HONG KONG — The front cover of the report by the respected audit and consulting concern Deloitte is dramatic and eye-catching: It consists of just a picture of a fedora hat reminiscent of the 1930s and, above it, a stark headline, "The Untouchables."
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Feb 20, 2011

Hitler's insult to Asia; martial law in Tokyo

75 YEARS AGOThursday, Jan. 30, 1936
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Feb 15, 2011

Can mah-jongg and pachinko parlors clean up their acts?

The clean air campaign targets some of the smokers' last places of refuge — mah-jongg and pachinko parlors.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 29, 2011

New Yorker finds success within himself in Kyoto

American restaurateur Charles Roche, 62, credits his love of feting others to having grown up in the warm and noisy embrace of an extended Italian-American family in the Bronx. As part of a food-loving clan he jokingly refers to as "the Sopranos without the crime," he remembers splitting chestnuts and...
CULTURE / Music
Dec 31, 2010

Best Japanese/overseas albums of 2010: Goblin

Shugo Tokumaru — "Port Entropy"
LIFE / Digital
Dec 29, 2010

Living in Japan: There's an app for that

As 2010 draws to a close, smartphone use in Japan has risen to an all-time high, accounting for around 50 percent of all handset sales here. Yet it shames this columnist to admit that I'm still rockin' an old Windows 6.1 phone — insofar as a Windows 6.1 phone can be rocked at all — because as someone...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2010

Mastering the enemy's tongue

Creating a language-learning program may not sound like the kind of material to set the readers' pulse racing, but author Roger Dingman has a unique and compelling story to tell.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 15, 2010

Marketers bask in the glow of the year's successes

If you can generate profits during a 不景気 (fukeiki, a business recession), you must be doing something right. If you can generate a ヒット (hitto, hit) and sustain it in the face of deflation, imitators and low-cost imports, then you're to be heartily congratulated for your business acumen.
COMMUNITY
Nov 6, 2010

Canadian loves keeping Fukuoka informed

Nick Szasz, a native of Toronto, has published the free bilingual magazine Fukuoka Now since 1998. He says he launched the publication out of love for the biggest city in Kyushu and his sense of mission to provide information for non-Japanese living in the area.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 31, 2010

Japan's Afghanistan news blackout in the spotlight

Veteran freelance journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka was finally freed last month by kidnappers after five months of captivity in Afghanistan. Though the Japanese media reported the kidnapping when it happened last April, and then Tsuneoka's release on Sept. 6, any details about his confinement or what he was...
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 3, 2010

Architect triumphs in defeat

Kengo Kuma might be the most self-effacing architect around. His trademarks are not large monumental forms or breathtaking sculptural shapes, but finely wrought details such as elegant stone cladding on a high-rise tower, an unlikely pitched roof or a superbly framed view on a garden.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 18, 2010

Hey, you — go home!

This is one of the few modern countries in the world where you can go back in time without ever leaving the current century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 17, 2010

Firth on playing it gay by playing it straight

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Colin Firth was nominated for an Oscar for best actor this year for "A Single Man." As we know, Hollywood insider Jeff Bridges took home the Oscar, but Firth was "genuinely thrilled at the nomination and genuinely relieved when it was over. The stress is something else. So are...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Sep 16, 2010

Privacy not an issue for geolocation apps

Where are you right now ... and do you want to share that information with your social network? Geolocation apps want to know.
EDITORIALS
Sep 9, 2010

Bacterial assault on hospitals

Fifty-three patients at Teikyo University Hospital in Tokyo's Itabashi Ward have been infected with the multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter bacterium since August last year. Thirty-one of them died later of various causes, and nine of those deaths are believed to be directly attributable to the superbug....
EDITORIALS
Sep 7, 2010

Preparing for 'deep landslides'

Unusually strong rains caused heavy damage in western Japan and the Chubu region this summer. For example, an evacuation order was issued to 110,000 residents of some 48,000 households in Hiroshima. In mid-July, record precipitation was recorded at six points in Japan, including rainfall of 107 mm per...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Sep 2, 2010

Power spots: Japan’s latest spiritual craze

Feeling down? Need a recharge? Seek the nearest 'power spot.'
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 28, 2010

An insane asylum for tourists

As the world spins faster and faster on its axis, threatening to cut off our supply of gravity and fling us into outer space, Japan is left wondering what to do next.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell