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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 27, 2004

Meet the 'Brunei millionaire' -- and run!

So you thought you'd take a trip to Southeast Asia to get away from the pressures of modern life, including the spam that clogs your e-mail daily, especially those Nigerian scams that ask you to give your bank account information. As if you'd be so daft. So you plan a short trip to an exotic locale,...
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2004

End of 'News Station' run prompts mixture of disbelief, grief and relief

Friday will see the plug finally pulled on "News Station," the popular TV Asahi show that has made a virtue of breaking journalistic taboos during its 18-year run.
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2004

A bullet tips Taiwan's ballot

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian won last weekend's national election by a sliver. A mysterious assassination attempt on the eve of the ballot may have provided the margin of victory. The protests and charges of misconduct that followed the announcement of the results were predictable. It will take time...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Mar 25, 2004

System rebooted: 2004 is about to get cool

By the looks of things, I'm not the only one who's been a little busy this winter.
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2004

318 universities offer foreign languages

A total of 318 universities in Japan offered course work in English or other foreign languages in fiscal 2002, up from 256 the previous year, according to a survey released Tuesday by the education ministry. The figure equals about 46 percent of the nation's universities, according to the Education,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 21, 2004

Junior Senior

Danish duo Junior Senior may be difficult to describe, but their message is unmistakably clear: Get on the freaking dance floor. Their debut, "D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat," was last year's best party album, brimming with tracks that read like cheerleading chants: "Move Your Feet," "C'Mon," "Dynamite,"...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 20, 2004

Landmark hosts second intensive ballet seminar

From March 30 to April 1, Landmark Hall in Yokohama's Landmark Tower will echo to the sound of classical ballet instruction in English to a Japanese piano accompaniment. Since lots of nice things were said about the first Yokohama Ballet Intensive in 2003, YBI Director Helen Price is confident this year's...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2004

Child abuse explosion destroys myth Japanese are 'different'

The boy's tormentors began brutally, burning him with cigarettes and whipping him with a fishing rod. Then, police say, they committed the unimaginable: They locked the boy in a room and tried to starve him to death. Compounding the horror, one of the attackers was the boy's father.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 16, 2004

Shifting the burden

With the latest Japan Foundation survey showing over 8,000 organizations here at least nominally involved in "international exchange," the government is hoping to spare its own coffers by shifting the burden of assisting Japan's foreign population onto NPO groups.
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2004

NHK's cancellation of 'Sesame Street' leaves fans in dismay

When word spread late last month that public broadcaster NHK would pull the plug on "Sesame Street" after more than 30 years, loyal fans were shocked.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 14, 2004

Dance magic in the air

Famed at home in Taiwan, and increasingly hailed in Western and other Asian countries, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre wafted ethereally through Tokyo at the end of last month for just four breathtakingly beautiful stagings at Shinjuku Culture Center.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 14, 2004

The twisted terminology in Japan's marriage system

The so-called culture wars that have reignited in the United States over the legitimacy of gay marriage may influence this year's presidential election despite a general feeling that there are more important issues. The problem with gay marriage as a social issue is that both sides work against their...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2004

Iraqi sovereignty remains a distant goal

SEOUL -- Let's start with the obvious but often overlooked topic of what isn't taking place in Iraq today. Commentary to the contrary, sovereignty is not being handed back to Iraqis on June 30; it isn't even on the table.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 11, 2004

Bush majors in suppression of science

It comes as no surprise that U.S. President George W. Bush is calling for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. He is simply using the age-old tactic of picking on others to save his own hide.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Mar 10, 2004

Hold your breath and turn the wheel

Kyoto. The name conjures up images of courtly nobles and stoic Zen temples -- and yet so much more of Japan's cultural identity was born in that ancient city. In the world of ceramics, one of its glorious contributions has been Kyo-yaki, or Kyoto pottery.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 10, 2004

Two sides to every epoque

They called it the Belle Epo^que, the "Beautiful Age": France's brief period of grace after concluding peace with Prussia in 1871 and before the horrors of World War I turned her pastures into killing fields in 1914.
COMMENTARY
Mar 9, 2004

Perilous drop in readership

One long-standing trend in Japan has been the "shift away from print" -- an aversion to serious reading. For example, in the past four years, book sales have continued to decline. Compared with other countries, the books being read woefully lags in quality and quantity.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2004

Taiwanese stretch envelope before polls

SINGAPORE -- In the runup to Taiwan's presidential election on March 20, political sparks are flying not only in Taiwan but also in China and the United States. Moreover, the commemoration in Taiwan of the Feb. 28, 1947, killing of some 10,000 Taiwanese by Kuomintang (KMT) troops -- otherwise known as...
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2004

Weather satellite could go up as early as November

Japan plans to resume use of its H-IIA rocket and launch a new weather satellite as early as November to replace an aging satellite, as the investigation into a failed launch last year is almost finished, government sources said Saturday.
Japan Times
Features
Mar 7, 2004

Cheers! Ganging up in pursuit of fine pints

On a Friday night in Tokyo, there's no place livelier than Shibuya. But on Friday, Feb. 20, four pubs there were far busier than usual thanks to a crowd of revelers on a pub crawl called "Beer Gang" -- the inaugural event of the Good Beer Club, a newly formed group already with more than 150 members...
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2004

Dentsu wants to shoot ads in space

Dentsu Inc. wants to send celebrities to the International Space Station to shoot television commercials, a company official said Thursday.
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2004

Boards of education face overhaul

Education minister Takeo Kawamura asked the Central Education Council on Thursday to overhaul the 55-year-old board of education system.
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2004

For Marshall Islands, nuclear legacy lives on

The people of the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 U.S. nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, have their own Bikini stories.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 25, 2004

International theater festival takes Japan to a new stage

I recently read a book about a mass breakout by Japanese from an Australian prisoner-of-war camp on Aug. 5, 1944. Some 1,100 Japanese tried to escape, but none succeeded -- indeed, 231 died, many by their own hand using prison-issue cutlery. "Voyage from Shame" by Harry Gordon (1995) portrays this breakout...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 23, 2004

Critical war questions beg for an answer

NEW YORK -- First, my historian friend George Akita sent me a clipping of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's article that appeared in The Honolulu Advertiser (Aug. 7, 2003). Titled "We need rules for waging war," the piece begins with McNamara remembering the night of March 9, 1945, when...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 22, 2004

A first step to understanding the homeless

The mayor of Kawasaki, Takao Abe, is currently under attack from a group of city residents who don't want a planned homeless shelter put in their neighborhood. Last month, Abe rejected the residents' request for a meeting to hear his explanation of why a disused chemical factory in the Tsutsumine district...
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2004

Researchers' technologies increasingly being used by ventures

University researchers are gradually leaving their ivory towers to cooperate with businesspeople and utilize the technology they have developed.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 20, 2004

Music at the heart of Kichijoji's spirit

Most of Tokyo's main business districts are inside or around the JR Yamanote Line, but Kichijoji is a notable exception, being a part of Tokyo that's beyond the city's 23 wards.

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