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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 26, 2012

Social-media manager Lin Qing Xiang

Lin Qing Xiang, 33, is the social-media manager of the "The Ruby Alan Show" (also known as "The RA Show"), a video blog that explores both Singaporean and Japanese culture. Lin creates travelogues of his journeys around Japan and also films Japanese-culture events in Singapore. A die-hard fan, he loves...
Jun 22, 2012

Cold War shadows Serb's win of key U.N. post

Shadows of the Cold War returned to the United Nations in the recent elections for president of the General Assembly, where a previously agreed candidate from Lithuania was challenged and subsequently defeated by a Russian-backed contender from Serbia.
COMMENTARY
Jun 18, 2012

Effective diplomacy in the age of social media

Far from being rendered irrelevant by technological progress, where governments can communicate with one another directly on a need-to basis, diplomacy has become an increasingly critical instrument in an age of interdependence and globalization.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 17, 2012

Hunting ivory netsuke carvers is like a big game

Netsuke are the diminutive works of art that dangled from cords attaching purses or other pouches to a kimono's obi sash before Western garb ousted traditional dress after the modernizing Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Jun 14, 2012

Bolt hungry to take star to new level during Olympics

Has anyone, anywhere, had a greater love of the camera than Usain Bolt? Maybe Marilyn Monroe.
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2012

China's demographic crunch

Just four years from now, China will pass a milestone. Its huge workforce will peak and start shrinking. This will make it more difficult for the world's second largest economy to continue the turbo-charged growth that has played a key role in the rise not just of China, but also its Asia-Pacific trade...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jun 10, 2012

Paradise found in Renaissance man's footsteps

Continental Micronesia airlines operates an island-hopper run to Majuro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands via Guam, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae and Kwajalein — a great way to see fantastic scenery and sample the flavors of each airport.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
OLYMPICS
Jun 3, 2012

Kitajima knows third Olympic sweep won't come easy

Sustained excellence makes a small number of Olympic athletes a special group.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jun 3, 2012

Wood you believe how good school could be . . .

Since 1980, I have made my home in Shinano, a town in northern Nagano Prefecture. However, in articles, letters and speeches, I refer to this area as Kurohime, the name of our local train station and of the great, dormant, densely forested volcano that looks down on us. I prefer to say my home is in...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 27, 2012

Japan has a role to play in environment and rights issues in Belize

"The United Nations' largest-ever conference, billed as a historic opportunity to create a greener future, appears to be going up in smoke."
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012

Turkey tacks new foreign policy course

Turkey has recently been at the forefront of international economic and political debates. On the one hand, despite the economic crisis engulfing neighboring Europe, Turkey remains the world's second-fastest growing economy, after China. On the other hand, there is almost no issue on the global agenda...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 22, 2012

The elephant in the foreigner's room now has a name: microaggression

Some positive and negative readers' reactions to Debito Arudou's provocative and widely read May 1 Just Be Cause column, "Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down":
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 20, 2012

TV: no longer the drug of the people

Last week, Japan's fifth largest discount electronics retailer, Bic Camera, announced it would soon obtain a 50 percent share of Japan's sixth-largest discount electronics retailer, Kojima, thus making the combined companies Japan's second-largest electronics retailer. Bic operates 34 stores in large...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 20, 2012

The sky's the limit

After the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 last year, the performance of the spectacularly tall Tokyo Sky Tree going up in the capital's downtown Sumida Ward became a subject of heightened interest to experts, residents and the general public alike.
LIFE
May 13, 2012

What awaits Okinawa 40 years after reversion?

On May 15, 1972, Okinawa became a prefecture of Japan once again. Up until then, for 27 years since World War II — when the islands endured some of the most intense fighting of the entire brutal conflict — Okinawa had been under U.S. military administration, so reversion to Japanese rule should have...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 13, 2012

Though spooked by new threats, Japanese accept mass killers

Before March last year, if you'd asked a child in Japan about nuclear radiation you would probably have been told about Godzilla, the monster powered by mutations caused by radiation, or Tetsuwan Atomu, aka the nuclear-powered robot Astro Boy. Not any more.
COMMENTARY
May 10, 2012

Signal honor from the lord of clips

I wanted you to be the first to know. It has just been revealed by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy in the United States that I am on a very short list of journalists (eight in Western countries and seven others in India, Pakistan and Arab countries) to whom Osama bin Laden...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
May 8, 2012

The best of Views from the Street

A pick of some of best —and the rest — of the vox pops over the years, in chronological order:
CULTURE / Books
May 6, 2012

Mistakes that line a successful road

An Unprogrammed Life: Adventures of an Incurable Entrepreneur, by William H. Saito. John Wiley & Sons, 2012, 241 pp., $24.95 (paperback) William H. Saito has enjoyed many successes in his short career as an information technology entrepreneur, but he is keen to stress the importance of failure.
EDITORIALS
May 3, 2012

Modest steps at the IMF

The biannual meetings of the world's leading financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are generally pretty staid affairs — after all, how riled up can gatherings of central bankers and finance officials really get? In recent years, the answer is "pretty much."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
May 1, 2012

Blood, beatings and the cage: the bouncer

Before The Japan Times was invited inside Nagoya's iD Cafe to speak to Thomas, the nightclub's security manager, we stopped to chat to a uniformed policeman near the club. He told us there were as many as 50 fights in a nearby park on Friday and Saturday nights. This busy area of the city, Sakae, known...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 28, 2012

Manchester derby for all the marbles

Since Manchester City became potentially the richest club in the world following their takeover by the Abu Dhabi-based business group, each time it plays Manchester United these days it is billed as "the biggest derby ever."
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 23, 2012

Capitalistic consensus moved Brazil investors

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's visit to Washington earlier this month offers an occasion to consider how some once-poor countries have broken out of poverty, as Brazil has. Development institutions like the World Bank have advocated improving business law as an important way to do so. Are they...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 22, 2012

It takes a forest, a field and a stream to raise a child

In 1996, back when the present U.S. Secretary of State was the first lady, Hillary Rodham-Clinton published a book titled "It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us," which popularized an old African proverb — "It takes a village to raise a child."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2012

'Le Havre'

Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki has always been free from a particular pressure of the modern world: the pressure to grow and change. You know, the one where we have to make more money, be better looking and forever fit, and go on better vacations than the Joneses (or Suzukis) and post the pictures...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear