Search - maintenance

 
 
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 8, 2012

In era of skyscrapers, group lobbies to keep Tokyo's traditional buildings

Sitting at a wooden table in the glass-enclosed sun room of the miraculously preserved 95-year-old Yasuda House, Sumiko Enbutsu, a very youthful 78, radiates enthusiasm.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 8, 2012

In era of skyscrapers, group lobbies to keep Tokyo's traditional buildings

Sitting at a wooden table in the glass-enclosed sun room of the miraculously preserved 95-year-old Yasuda House, Sumiko Enbutsu, a very youthful 78, radiates enthusiasm.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2012

How to fight in Afghanistan with fewer U.S. troops

Kimberly and Frederick W. Kagan's recent commentary in The Washington Post, arguing for a force of 30,000 or more Americans in Afghanistan after 2014, is fundamentally wrong. Although their goals are sound — preventing terrorist attacks from the region on the United States — the writers' logic and...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 4, 2012

Japan's part-time landlords are overestimating single-tenant needs

In an effort to cut costs, electronics maker Sharp has announced that it is transferring its struggling liquid crystal display business from factories in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, to factories in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. In 2004, the Kameyama facility started making large LCD screens for TVs and more...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 4, 2012

Japan's part-time landowners are overestimating single-tenant needs

In an effort to cut costs, electronics maker Sharp has announced that it is transferring its struggling liquid crystal display business from factories in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, to factories in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. In 2004, the Kameyama facility started making large LCD screens for TVs and more...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Nov 30, 2012

For teachers, the business of education has become even more of a business

Private high schools are relying more and more on part-time teachers.
BUSINESS
Nov 30, 2012

EU challenges require fundamental solutions with fiscal, energy unity

The ultimate solution to the debt crisis in the European Union will not only need a banking union but also have to involve some element of a fiscal union and a major shift of power from the national level to the European level. On the other hand, the EU budget to finance the union's key common needs...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WEEK 3
Nov 18, 2012

Moss art: growing a masterpiece

What's green, fuzzy and has a starring role in Japan's national anthem?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Nov 13, 2012

Kamakura, Kanagawa: What is your ideal pet?

EDITORIALS
Nov 13, 2012

Asian defense spending doubles

Defense spending has doubled in Asia over the past decade, according to a new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan, nonprofit U.S. think tank.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 11, 2012

Giving voice to the survivors of the unprecedented 3/11 disaster

STRONG IN THE RAIN: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, by Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 256 pp., $27 (hardcover) This is a riveting story about Japan's March 11 cataclysm told uncommonly well by two veteran Japan-based journalists who...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Nov 6, 2012

Danchi housing lets you think outside the usual box

Japanese housing experts have a list of casual terms to describe the layouts of apartments and condominiums: kamaboko (fish paste), yokan-giri (sliced bean jelly), ta no ji (rice paddy ideograph) and chocolate bars. What these terms have in common is geometrical utility. All are rectangles that can be...
Reader Mail
Oct 21, 2012

Onagawa a reason for trust

Regarding Paul Arenson's Oct. 14 letter "Quake's role in Fukushima disaster," I was an independent member of the IAEA's Mission to Onagawa, which performed a damage walkdown of the Onagawa nuclear power station in Tochigi Prefecture from July 30 to Aug. 9, 2012. In the words of the IAEA mission leader,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 11, 2012

Taking a nostalgic train of thought

Train travel inspires nostalgia. There's no escaping it. It conjures up memories of childhood — playing beside the rail track at the bottom of the garden or with a miniature railway at home. However, politics and societal change have influenced and produced more controversial images of rail travel...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Oct 2, 2012

Second homes may be cheap, but they are often in disrepair

Atami The ad said the property was 2 km from Ajiro Station on the Ito Line, but it was difficult to tell how far we were traveling in the agent's car. Most of the trip was up a steep, winding road into the hills above Atami on the Izu Peninsula, an area developed in the 1970s by the Tokyu Corporation...
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 9, 2012

Tohoku fisheries fight back from 3/11

"The facts about much of Japan's social, political, and financial life are hidden so well that the truth is nearly impossible to know," writes Alex Kerr in his acclaimed 2001 study "Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan." He continues, "A lack of reliable data is the single most significant...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EMBASSY AVENUE
Aug 29, 2012

Philippine festival in Yokohama

The best of Philippine culture will be showcased in Yokohama during the Philippine Festival Barrio Fiesta, which is free and open to all and will be held Sept. 1 and 2 at Yamashita Park.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2012

The unlikely chance of shrinking government

With the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican vice presidential candidate, it is clear that the central issue in the presidential election will be the scale and scope of government involvement in the economy. There is disagreement over what constituted "normal" levels of spending in the past and,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Aug 18, 2012

Innovative organic farming achieves sustainability in rural Hokkaido

How to endure? It's an elemental question perfectly matched to the endless, ripening fields of the organic farm Land Mann in the town of Biei, Hokkaido.
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 15, 2012

Despite flaws, Rakuten is 1-0 against Amazon in Japan's e-book wars

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall — and a head-to-head rival of Amazon Japan that also hopes to expand its business globally — launched its first e-book reader, the Rakuten Kobo Touch, on July 19, getting the jump on the long anticipated Japanese release of Amazon's Kindle.

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