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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 28, 2006

Endorphin II gets the juices flowing

As any decent dictionary published after 1980 will tell you, an endorphin is "any of a group of peptide hormones that bind to opiate receptors and are found mainly in the brain. Endorphins reduce the sensation of pain and affect emotions." In other words, they make you feel good.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 23, 2006

The many hazards -- especially for kids -- of living the high life

Some news stories make you laugh and some make you cringe. If you live in an apartment you may have done both while reading the July 13 story in this newspaper about an employee of Schindler Elevator K.K. getting trapped in a Schindler lift in the same Tokyo residential building where a teenager was...
COMMENTARY
Jul 16, 2006

Soft target needs an antiterror strategy

NEW DELHI -- The grisly July 11 Bombay train bombings, the latest in a series of major terrorist attacks in India, are a reminder that the country needs to move from hand-wringing to a credible counterterror strategy against jihadist groups.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 9, 2006

There's a price to pay for flaunting wealth in Japan

For its annual World Wealth Report, finance firm Merrill Lynch circles the globe and counts the number of millionaires. Though a million dollars -- 114 million yen, as defined by the survey -- ain't what it used to be, it's still a distant dream for the vast majority.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jun 30, 2006

Psychedelic radar 06.30

Solstice Music Festival 2006: July 15-17
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 11, 2006

Preparing for 'people's courts'

For more than 60 years since its last form of a jury system was suspended, Japan's courts have been the preserve of a largely unseen elite. Now, though, regular citizens are set to take part again too, and 'mock trials' like those popular in America may play a key role in preparing for this momentous...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 28, 2006

Japan sleepwalks by design toward peace-renouncing poll

The Japanese people may soon be asked to make a momentous decision in a nationwide referendum. As I write this, the major political parties are at loggerheads over conditions under which that referendum will be conducted. Behind the closed doors of the Diet, but barely touched on in the media, this debate...
CULTURE / Books
May 14, 2006

A force yet to be reckoned with

CHINA'S NEW NATIONALISM: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, by Peter Hays Gries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, 224 pp., $19.95 (paper). In East Asia, nationalism never acquired quite as bad a name as it did in Europe, and it is not uncommon to hear politicians go on record with nationalistic...
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 30, 2006

On the road to . . .

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, . . . Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages . . . ''
SPORTS / E-LIST
Apr 12, 2006

Checking out Seibu's early glory run

The E-List could fill a few thimbles with Japanese baseball knowledge, but not enough to be pompous. And now it is time to put the List's first serving of humble pie on the table.
COMMENTARY
Apr 3, 2006

If 'affluence' fails to please

One measure of "affluence," whose meaning can be ambiguous, is per capita gross domestic product. While GDP growth indicates a quantitative expansion of the economy, its size is by no means a measure of social well-being or people's happiness.
COMMENTARY
Mar 2, 2006

Blow to Philippine democracy

MANILA -- In democracies, governments have a constitutional right, even an obligation, to protect the democratic order against the enemies of the state. In line with this basic principle, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo recently justified the imposition of emergency rule as a preemptive action against...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Mar 1, 2006

Dead wood mars warm winter retreat

Once a year I try to spend time in Okinawa, if possible a month, during which I usually get a block of writing done. Okinawa is one of my favorite places in Japan, and nowadays I would say that it is where I most like to be in winter.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 3, 2006

Siblings' sweet harmony

From their look and sound to their history and attitude, The Magic Numbers contradict most of the conventions that define the British obsession for next-big-thing-ism; at the moment, this is best exemplified by Arctic Monkeys, who have sold more than 100,000 copies of their debut album in two weeks with...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 20, 2006

Cicada: That Mediterranean buzz

Readers of this column over the past seven years will be well aware of our abiding love of the food and wine of the western Mediterranean. Anyone who has eaten his or her way around Spain will understand. From the seafood of Galicia and the Basque coast to the sherry, tapas and superb hams of Andalucia,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 3, 2006

LDP landslide buries two-party system

The result of the Sept. 11 general election was a runaway victory for the Liberal Democratic Party, and political chaos. But from the fog of uncertainty that is enveloping Japan there may emerge a new political structure that could some day be called the "2005 order."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 21, 2005

Soaking up surprises while out birding in the buff

Was it really just the other morning that I opened my eyes to behold a thick frost on the ground around me beside Lake Kussharo in the Akan National Park of eastern Hokkaido? It already seems an age ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 15, 2005

Proving it to the people

While waiting for the news conference to begin for "Sayuri" at the Imperial Hotel on Nov. 28, two Japanese women were discussing Zhang Ziyi, the Chinese actress who plays the title role of a geisha during the years leading up to and immediately following World War II.
Japan Times
Features
Dec 11, 2005

Korean school strives to keep its homeland culture alive

When I first laid eyes on Tokyo Chosen Dai-Ni Shokyu Gakko (Tokyo Korean No.2 Elementary School) in the downtown Edagawa district of Koto Ward, it looked like any other school in Japan.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 11, 2005

Judicial execution: the way to a better world?

The most gruesome photograph of people that I have ever seen in a newspaper is that of convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg just before their execution in the electric chair on June 19, 1953.
COMMENTARY
Dec 5, 2005

Japan's education disability

Many economists say the Japanese economy is at a "standstill" ahead of the start of a full recovery. For some time I have used a similar expression -- but in a different context -- to describe Japan's economic condition following the "Heisei recession," which lasted from February 1991 to October 1993....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 17, 2005

Play it again, Sam . . . but with these lyrics

His name is Joe. And Joe says: "If you can't walk, dance. If you can't talk, sing. And you can't hear . . . just make things up."
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 28, 2005

Moves afoot to counter U.S. Big Oil's clout

Reducing the greenhouse gases that derive from human activities and cause global warming is perhaps the most critical environmental challenge facing the world community.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
May 15, 2005

No laughing matter

O n the stage, Charlie Chaplin was known as the tramp who made millions laugh without saying a word. But in his heart of hearts, it seems the great comic wanted to be a statesman whose words could change history.
COMMUNITY
May 15, 2005

Spaghetti with chopsticks makes a mess of Mishima image

Many years ago, while teaching Japanese language and literature at the Australian National University in Canberra, I asked students in a seminar to conduct an experiment on campus. That was in the 1970s, when Australia and much of the rest of the world were rediscovering Japan as an economic and cultural...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 5, 2005

Swallow tales to silence those who speak with forked tongues

It was 1969, and I was driving our open-topped Mercedes Unimog to Asmara to get some building supplies and other gear not available in Gondar, the nearest town to the Simien Mountain National Park in Ethiopia where I was then a game warden.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 20, 2005

'S wonderful: Wiling away the time with Caetano Veloso

Caetano is here. Caetano Veloso. The man who has been hailed for decades in his native Brazil as a singer, composer, poet and revolutionary, and commonly celebrated abroad as the 'Bob Dylan of Brazil,' despite his dislike for such labels.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 27, 2005

Ten years of tero in Japan: Notes on usage

Japanese language purists carp about the surfeit of katakana, but as with all cultural manifestations, from bossa nova to breakfast cereals, the Japanese manage to make these linguistic borrowings their own in an unmistakable way, the most obvious being abbreviation.
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2005

A flock of Emiews

I t must say something about the times when a news release heralding yet another piece of cutting-edge Japanese technology makes us scratch our heads and think how quaint and last-century it sounds. That happened last week when we read about Hitachi Ltd.'s rollout of a wheeled humanoid robot that it...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Mar 6, 2005

76ers must be patient while Iverson, Webber try to mesh

NEW YORK -- You can lead a compulsive scoring point guard to a recognized reservoir of talent but you can't make him feed it or feed off it.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan