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COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 13, 2008

Landlords, support, auto advice

Reader BJ is having trouble communicating with his landlord.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 13, 2008

Team Japan faces huge hurdles on road to Homeless World Cup

Japan's collective image of homelessness is a fairly bleak one: Men in unwashed clothing, faces devoid of expression, hauling armfuls of flattened cardboard that will be their resting place for the night; rows of depressingly permanent-looking blue tarp huts in parks and beneath bridges, tucked out of...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 11, 2008

Home-interaction game show, retail documentary, school-age drama

The last thing we need is yet another quiz show featuring comedians proving how smart or dumb they are, but "The Quiz Man" (TV Asahi, Tuesday, 7 p.m.) promises something quite different. The difference has nothing to do with the content.
JAPAN
May 11, 2008

Hu concludes summit with Osaka, Nara events

NARA — Amid the tightest security of his trip, Chinese President Hu Jintao concluded his visit to Japan in the Kansai region this weekend, dining with Osaka political and business leaders on Friday night and seeing the sights in the ancient capital of Nara on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / FREEWHEELIN' ACROSS JAPAN
May 9, 2008

Green and to the heart of the matter

First of two parts
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 9, 2008

South Korean punk band Gumx regroups after military service

"Gumx is back!!" proclaimed the T-shirt for Seoul punk band Gumx's short Japan jaunt in late February. The band's first foreign gigs in more than three years, it had good reason to be excited about returning to the live circuit in its biggest market.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 6, 2008

As parent firm posts record profits, Berlitz teachers strike back

Question: How do you get to be on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires? You might inherit your wealth, take risks and get lucky, or work for it. For Soichiro Fukutake, owner of Berlitz's parent company Benesse, it's a case of "all the above."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 6, 2008

Open-minded schools adopt innovative approaches

As our society continues to urbanize, it is becoming increasingly difficult for children to be children. Long gone are the days when they were free to get muddy without being told off by adults, or to run about without the threat of speeding cars. In the concrete jungle in which more kids grow up these...
JAPAN
May 4, 2008

Referendum law evokes one question: Why?

Now that a law is in place for conducting a national referendum on revising the Constitution, it is important to tell the public why it needs to be amended and start more discussions, a pro-amendment group said Saturday.
CULTURE / Books
May 4, 2008

Japan as a land of many religions

PROPHET MOTIVE: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan, by Nancy K. Stalker. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 265 pp., $49 (cloth) Reviewed by Florian Coulmas Japan has sometimes been called an irreligious country, but students of religion know that this...
JAPAN
May 3, 2008

DPJ weighs voting rights for all permanent residents

A group of Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers is drafting a bill that would give foreign nationals with permanent residence status the right to vote in local elections. They plan to gear up after the Golden Week holidays and submit the bill during the current session of the Diet.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2008

'10,000 B.C.'

The 1966 film "One Million Years B.C." was one of those classic naff B-movies from Hammer Films in the '60s. Rerun endlessly on both Saturday afternoon and late-night TV over the next couple of decades, the film had something for both demographics: excellent dinosaur animation by Ray Harryhausen (unsurpassed...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 2, 2008

Canadian ambassador brings a lifelong love of Japan to his post

Joseph Caron, Canada's ambassador to Japan since 2005, remembers his first day here — a Saturday in late August 1975. He stayed at the Hotel New Otani and visited Ginza, Nihonbashi and Omote-sando.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 1, 2008

Halls of light in a city of horses

Something for everyone — that seems to be the motto for the new Towada Art Center in Aomori Prefecture. With cash in hand and a desire to see their town turn around, Towada has banked on art as a way to bring back vitality to an area that has lacked it of late.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 30, 2008

A failure to influence Bush

HONG KONG — Five years after the toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the United States has precious little to show for its $3 trillion war, except for more than 4,000 American military dead (1,000 more than perished in the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11), 150,000 Iraqis killed, 1.5 million...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 29, 2008

Judiciary's 'snake legs' exposed

On April 17 the Nagoya High Court ruled that the dispatch of Air Self-Defense Force personnel to Iraq was unconstitutional. While the ruling made news, it will probably not make much difference to Japan's foreign policy. Its significance may be nothing more than academic — after all, despite the headlines...
Reader Mail
Apr 27, 2008

Moral 'progress' is debatable

Professor Peter Singer's April 17 article, "Have we finally achieved moral progress?," is insightful and interesting. He is right in that we have made progress in the areas of racial and gender equality. Our Eastern societies need more gender equality. Nevertheless, Singer's views are Eurocentric in...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 26, 2008

Rudd has lots of 'big ideas'

Bring on a republic. That's one clear demand to come out of the biggest talk-fest ever stage-managed in Canberra. And new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is just the leader to bring it on.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 25, 2008

Japan, Brazil celebrate 100 years of emigration

Japanese and Brazilian officials celebrated the centennial of Japanese emigration to Brazil in a ceremony in Tokyo Thursday, saying they will work to further strengthen bilateral ties.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2008

'There Will Be Blood'

It's 1898, somewhere in Southern California. A grit-encrusted silver miner works in his pit, scrabbling for a find. In wordless scenes, in the middle of nowhere — set to a queasy sweep of strings — we see this man fight with nature to get at her resources, sinews bulging as he hacks away with a pick,...
EDITORIALS
Apr 24, 2008

Warming up Tokyo-Seoul ties

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak's visit to Japan this week heralds the start of a new relationship between South Korea and Japan. It is the first visit to Japan by a South Korean president since December 2004, when Mr. Roh Moo Hyun met with then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Prime Minister Yasuo...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2008

Mixing sports and politics

PARIS — "Do not mix sports and politics!" That defiant cry from China's rulers to the threat of a boycott of this summer's Beijing Olympic Games does not stand the test of reality. Sport and politics have always been closely linked.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2008

New Delhi's dilemma with the Dalai Lama

PRAGUE — As the world reacts to China's crackdown in Tibet, one country is conspicuous by both its centrality to the drama and its reticence over it. India, the land of asylum for the Dalai Lama and the angry young hotheads of the Tibetan Youth Congress, finds itself on the horns of a dilemma.
JAPAN
Apr 21, 2008

China's foreign minister wraps up 'diplomatic' visit to Osaka, Nara

Politics was off the menu as Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi wrapped up his visit to Japan over the weekend with dinner Saturday in Osaka and lunch Sunday in the ancient capital of Nara.
Reader Mail
Apr 20, 2008

Destructive Internet addiction

The April 5 article "Internet addiction recognized as 'an illness' " mentions that some people can become addicted to the Internet, spending excessive time online playing games, viewing pornography and doing e-mail.
JAPAN
Apr 18, 2008

Japan and China put on best faces for Hu's visit

Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura agreed Thursday in Tokyo to do their utmost to make Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit a success as they officially announced his May 6-10 trip.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?