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Japan Times
Features
Jul 31, 2005

Speaking up for a 'right-size' city

In their search for the soul of Nagoya -- a city some dub "Japan's best kept secret" -- staff writers Setsuko Kamiya and Yoko Hani met up with five long-term foreign residents. All five happened to be American, and all have been in business there for between five and 10 years. Settling down for a chilled-out...
Japan Times
Features
Jul 31, 2005

'Secret' city basks in its low-profile limelight

It's at the geographic center of Japan and has in the past been at the hub of its history. It's also the nation's fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million. But despite these, and many more, claims to fame and prominence, Nagoya City in Aichi Prefecture has always been outstanding for its...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 30, 2005

Messages of peace seek empathetic human canvas

A peace symbol set modestly with diamonds. A tiny image that is open for interpretation as a tree, an atom-bomb cloud or even an angel. The curved line of a whale suggesting the swell of the sea while winking freedom with a precious eye. All are designs on a theme -- the work of jewelry artist-craftsman...
LIFE / Language
Jul 28, 2005

Cram schools cash in on failure of public schools

With Japan's economic bubble long since burst and job security fast becoming no more than a fond memory, there has been a surge in applications to private schools from primary grades up to college.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Jul 28, 2005

A one-way trip down psycho alley

Feeling that virtual, killer instinct when playing violent games is a guilty pleasure of the PlayStation era. We kill zombies in "Biohazard," Chinese warlords in "Dynasty Warriors" and police officers in "Grand Theft Auto." For many of us, the aim-fire-reload mechanics of games have become second nature....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 27, 2005

You think you're pretty funny, huh?

On a Saturday evening in late May, at an auditorium in NHK's headquarters in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward, preparations for the recording of a popular show called "Bakusho On Air Battle" were underway.
JAPAN
Jul 26, 2005

Japan begins quest for fastest supercomputer

The technology ministry aims to develop a next-generation supercomputer some 73 times faster than today's record-holder, ministry officials said Monday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 26, 2005

Cleaning the body

Summer is upon us, and spring-cleaning of your body may be long overdue.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 24, 2005

Strangelove encounters of a MAD scientist kind

Herman Kahn is back in the news.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 23, 2005

Cool Biz: Okinawan shirts and bikinis

Prime Minister Koizumi would be proud of me. I am completely embracing the Cool Biz campaign by going to work in a bikini top and shorts. And I think Mr. Koizumi would agree after seeing my workplace, which doesn't even have air conditioning. I would support the campaign even more if in addition to the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 22, 2005

Do you want it soft or natural?

Aoyama is a breeding ground for night culture. It's as if someone dropped an extremely virulent strain of lounge-bar.alt in the area and it went berserk. Almost every time you round a corner, there's yet another stylish light-box sign marking the entrance of another chic new hideaway (some don't even...
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2005

TBS, Tsutaya video chain link up

Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. and Culture Convenience Club Co., which operates Tsutaya, Japan's largest video rental shop chain, said Wednesday they will set up a DVD planning and sales company in early August.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 20, 2005

Shock & awe: hotshots wow Shibuya

Two leading contenders to the throne of the contemporary drama world, now long occupied by Yukio Ninagawa, are certainly Suzuki Matsuo, 42, founder of the Otona Keikaku theater company, and the Asagaya Spiders' 30-year-old founder, Keishi Nagatsuka. Currently both of these rising stars happen to be staking...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 15, 2005

Hatsuogawa: The days of eel are upon us

Tradition is comforting, no matter whose culture it is. We eat plum pudding for Christmas, mochi at New Year and moon cakes to mark the Autumn Festival. We throw beans at setsubun and, on Valentines' Day, we will gladly accept as much chocolate as comes our way.
JAPAN
Jul 14, 2005

Tokyo still weak on human-trafficking: U.N. investigator

The government will have to do much more than just revise a few laws to combat human-trafficking, the U.N. special rapporteur on the problem said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Jul 14, 2005

Unraveling motives of terror

LONDON -- After months of careful planning, it has been the turn of London to suffer the carnage already familiar to the people of Madrid, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, New York (although not on the same scale) and many other world cities.
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2005

Ministry plans comprehensive scholastic testing

The education ministry plans to conduct nationwide scholastic ability tests, starting in the 2006 school year, that would cover every student in selected grades, ministry sources said Saturday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 10, 2005

Contort yourself, by any means necessary

"No New York," the 1978 compilation produced by Brian Eno, remains a snapshot of lower Manhattan's music scene at that time. The pioneering punk club CBGB's was thriving, the influential performance space-cum-disco, the Mudd Club, was about to open and a musician could still afford to live in the East...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 10, 2005

Coming out of the linguistic closet

QUEER JAPAN FROM THE PACIFIC WAR TO THE INTERNET AGE, by Mark McLelland. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, 248 pp., 15 b/w photos, $34.95 (paper). Japanese homosexuals face a peculiar problem. There is a true confusion among terms for sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender expression. As one scholar...
Japan Times
Features
Jul 10, 2005

DEPRESSION

'Istarted to get to work late -- sometimes at 11, then at 12 and then at 2; and then I had to quit my job."
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2005

University presidents take voluntary salary cuts

The heads of 10 national universities that acquired corporate status in spring 2004 have voluntarily cut their pay in an effort to promote business efficiency, it was learned Saturday.
COMMUNITY
Jul 9, 2005

Humanitarian paints hope for students of Vietnam

Fred Harris looks around the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho, central Tokyo, and observes with his usual keen but fond eye, "This was the first club I joined when I came here in 1964." (He was also in Japan while serving as a U.S. soldier during the Korean War.)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jul 9, 2005

Five signs of the coming Golden Age of trance

In the fast and chaotic protoculture growing around psychedelic trance in Japan, it is often difficult at best and futile at worst to try to get a genuine fix on the direction in which we are headed.
EDITORIALS
Jul 5, 2005

Japan wins by withdrawing ITER bid

France has won the competition to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's first nuclear-fusion reactor. Japan fought hard to win the project, but in the end the projected cost and the promise of playing a significant role in subsequent research gave Tokyo ample reason...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 5, 2005

The whaling debate

Stay away Why should a country who has exhausted the whale population in their country come over and hunt a mysterious creature we have all looked after in our country.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2005

Takeshi Yoro: Professor No-Self

Some think of him as a retired anatomist par excellence; some revere his knowledge of the human brain; while to others he's simply someone who's nuts about insects.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 3, 2005

Many ways to view a temple

MUROJI: Rearranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist Temple, by Sherry D. Fowles. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. 296 pp.; 13 color plates and many b/w illustrations, drawings, maps; $50.00 (cloth). Muroji, one of Japan's most beautiful temples, was founded near Nara in the late 8th...

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