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CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 9, 2001

For your regular viewing pleasure

Those who believe young people don't have proper peer models should check out TBS's "Sekai Ururun Taizai (World Sojourn)," which, every Sunday at 10 p.m., features a young celebrity traveling to a distant corner of the globe and living with a local family while learning a local skill or craft.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 26, 2001

Sips of high-grade tranquillity

In parts of Asia, tea is more than a mere beverage: It is a social lubricant, a sacrament of complex rituals and a vital part of national identity. Throughout history, farmers and philosophers alike have treasured a steaming cup of cha. While there is some evidence of tea's health benefits, there is...
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2001

Ministry to boost child-care support for working moms

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to earmark 700 billion yen for measures to boost child-care support for working parents within its fiscal 2002 budget request, according to ministry officials.
COMMUNITY
Aug 19, 2001

Tradition in transition

Art went private at the beginning of the 20th century. Back then Cubism's quest for a new visual language, abstract art's pursuit of purity of form, and Surrealism's sense of inwardness had little appeal to a public who viewed Modern Art as self-serving and difficult.
SOCCER / J. League / ON THE BALL
Aug 14, 2001

World Cup volunteers require effective training

The Japanese World Cup Organizing Committee recently announced the results of volunteer applications for next year's World Cup.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 29, 2001

Shochu appeal goes supersonic

FUKUOKA -- Kyushu folk are feeling quite tickled about something at the moment: a shochu boom in bars around Japan. The surging popularity of this once-lowbrow spirit, which originated in Kyushu, suggests that its old-fogy image may be disappearing for good and that lucrative times lie ahead for the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 8, 2001

In the pink

When Yokohama hosts the final and three other games in the soccer World Cup next June, foreign visitors will be spared a full-frontal view of the city's sleazier side by the waterfront, where a campaign to lessen any shock to their systems has been under way since last year.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 8, 2001

Love town where time stands still

OSAKA -- Osaka Mayor Takafumi Isomura repeatedly says he wants to turn the city into an international tourist destination. But camera-toting foreigners snapping pictures of Tobita, one of its oldest and most famous neighborhoods, are probably not what either he or the local business community have in...
EDITORIALS
Jul 1, 2001

Drivers' rights on the line

Hello, New York! You listening? Welcome to another small corner of the convoluted world of unenforceable legislation.
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2001

Six arrested in visa scam involving fake marriages

Police arrested six people Wednesday on suspicion of arranging bogus marriages to help Chinese nationals stay in Japan to work, police said.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 10, 2001

Japan, America and women's place

THE ROAD WINDS UPHILL ALL THE WAY: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan, by Myra H. Strober and Agnes Miling Kaneko Chan. The MIT Press, 2001, $21.95. The image of Japanese women walking several steps behind their "master" husbands is alive and well in the American popular imagination....
COMMUNITY
Jun 10, 2001

Home (not so) sweet home

"The word 'home' comes from the Nordic and Germanic languages and means a place of comfort, a warm fire and a place to sleep," said Colleen Lanki, artistic director of Kee Company, a Tokyo-based bilingual theater group.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 5, 2001

Sparks fly in Mexico's city of artists and artisans

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico -- Having grown up in Los Angeles, where only the sanest of fireworks were legally sold, I was taught that colorful sparks shooting up higher than 30 cm would surely make someone pay for their reckless abandon. How happy I was to discover here that it's not necessarily true....
COMMENTARY / World
May 25, 2001

Racial quotas widen social gaps, not rectify them

SINGAPORE -- When some 600 ethnic Chinese students who passed a string of examinations with distinction failed to gain admission to public universities in Malaysia recently, a controversy erupted in the media over a major flaw in university entrance criteria.
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 2001

There goes the neighborhood. . . into the future

Until last week, I thought there were basically three types of factories: oily old clunkers where maybe the beaten-down workers go on strike and a gritty hero emerges who is played by Jeff Bridges in the made-for-television movie; gleaming, robot-dominated technological wonders; and grim Third World...
COMMUNITY
May 6, 2001

Think you're safe? Think again

Japan has long enjoyed a reputation for being one of the safest countries in the world. It's said that you can trust your neighbors here. That there's little need to be constantly worried about your belongings. That you can walk the streets safely at night.
JAPAN
May 3, 2001

Peacekeeping shackles hobble Japan

Staff writer The 1991 Persian Gulf War marked a turning point in Japan's involvement in international security efforts, triggering a debate that paved the way for the nation to participate in U.N.-led peacekeeping missions. Ten years later, however, Japan is still debating how far it can go.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2001

Pets in the big city

After a long, grueling day at the office, there's nothing better than returning home to a warm welcome. For some that means a freshly cooked meal, for others, a warm hug. For many, though, it's the excited bark of a dog and the affectionate nuzzle of a cat.
COMMUNITY
Apr 29, 2001

My friend, my life, my ferret

They're furry. They're fun. They're portable. They're Japan's fastest-growing pet craze. Ten years ago they were nowhere on the pet scene; today they edge out rabbits for third place after dogs and cats.
COMMUNITY
Apr 15, 2001

Put your cafe surfing on someone else's tab

Racking up huge phone bills accessing the Internet from home? Eagle-eyed boss preventing you from writing e-mail at work?
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 7, 2001

One with nature beneath the blossoms

It's the cherry-blossom season, and you know what that means -- we no longer have to look at those silly purple cabbage plants that have grown into conehead spectacles begging to be trodden down by a loose hippo. Yes, Japan's winter pallor will soon be infused with the colors of spring: pink "sakura"...
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2001

Saving the forests through photos

KYOTO -- The blue mushrooms in the Australian state of Tasmania seemed like windows onto the soul of the forest to French photographer and environmentalist Jerome Hutin.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Mar 15, 2001

Storm on the mountaintop, wind in the pines

The Japanese archipelago is home to five or six species of pine tree. The number is debated because among these species are geographical subspecies, varieties, ecotypes and "physiological races," the last expression referring to pine varieties that look similar, but are physiologically different, as...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 22, 2001

Zagat updates guide to Tokyo's best restaurants

Not a single local-cuisine restaurant appears in the 10 top restaurants of this year's Tokyo Zagat Survey, the annually updated restaurants guide that many in the West consider the diner's bible.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 21, 2001

Crow problem or people problem?

I have traveled to many countries on all of the world's continents, and, always wearing my naturalist's cap, I tend to notice the wildlife, especially the birds. Some stick in one's memory, some don't, but the only country I have been where what sticks is the crows is Japan. Why is that?
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 8, 2001

Brash, bright, cheerful and fun

As a matter of principle, the Food File doesn't write up places within the first few weeks of their opening. Instead we prefer to wait until the kitchen has settled in properly and recovered from the inevitable strain of dealing with the local media and the surge of customers that inevitably follow....
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 8, 2001

Roti: Brash, bright, cheerful and fun

As a matter of principle, the Food File doesn't write up places within the first few weeks of their opening. Instead we prefer to wait until the kitchen has settled in properly and recovered from the inevitable strain of dealing with the local media and the surge of customers that inevitably follow....
JAPAN
Feb 7, 2001

Help arrives for families with ill children

A facility to provide a place to stay and counseling for families with children who require long-term medical treatment far from home will open Friday in Tokyo.

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