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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 13, 2010

Members of Hurts, The Drums on Summer Sonic and Japan

Adam Anderson, Theo Hutchcraft, Hurts Hailing from Manchester, Hurts came prepared on Saturday with some college-level Japanese phrases to pepper their set of dense, luscious electronic pop.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2010

Japan's experience highlights perils for China

Until the global financial crisis hit, China had achieved export-led high economic growth by keeping its currency at an undervalued level. It is now abundantly clear that the growth model is not sustainable. The People's Bank of China reinstated the "managed floating exchange rate regime with reference...
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2010

Budget cutters target JET

Every year for the past two decades, legions of young Americans have descended on Japan to teach English. This government-sponsored charm offensive was launched to counter anti-Japan sentiment in the United States and has since grown into one of the country's most successful displays of soft power.
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Aug 10, 2010

Annual Yokosuka Navy Friendship Day draws 60,000

Fireworks, pizza and smoothies make a hot and humid summer day more endurable and enjoyable. With the temperature skyrocketing past 30 degrees, the 34th Annual Navy Friendship Day, an open house event of the U.S. Yokosuka Naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture, saw almost 60,000 visitors Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2010

Salvaging Britain's failed rights revolution

LONDON — The budget-cutting austerity program of Britain's new coalition government has been claiming all the headlines, but David Cameron's Cabinet is breaking with its Labour predecessor in another key area as well: human rights. Indeed, the human rights experiment that Tony Blair's Labour government...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 8, 2010

A warm embrace for ruff justice

Some years ago, a Belgian woman named An van Dienderen wondered why so many Japanese tourists visited her hometown of Antwerp, and particularly its cathedral. She learned that they wanted to see the place where the boy Nello and his faithful dog Patrasche died in the story "A Dog of Flanders." This thin...
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Aug 7, 2010

Mie's marauding macaques wreak costly havoc on seniors' farms

Macaques are causing crop damage in Mie Prefecture to the tune of about ¥150 million annually, the largest amount nationwide.
EDITORIALS
Aug 7, 2010

Faded bonds with the oldest

There are more than 40,000 people aged 100 or over in Japan and this number is expected to increase. In 2009, Japanese women had the world's longest life expectancy of 86.44 years and men the world's fifth longest life expectancy of 79.59 years. Japan is certainly a country of long life expectancy. But...
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2010

Cities scrambling to find centenarians

It all began last week when a mummified corpse was found at a house in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. If the man, Sogen Kato, were still alive he would have been 111 years old.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010

Hippies and hipsters brave a soggy Fuji Rock

When you're talking about a music festival whose inaugural event was literally wiped out by a typhoon, it can feel a bit petty to complain about the weather. All the same, campers arriving at Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba on Thursday last week might have hoped for a warmer welcome than the torrential downpour...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 6, 2010

With only a few new works a year, Ishinha is all about quality theater

Among all of Japan's many theater companies, the innovative Osaka- based Ishinha (Reformers), founded in 1970 by its current director Yukichi Matsumoto, has stood out consistently. While most companies eye their bottom line, pack their schedules with different productions and move to Tokyo to maximize...
EDITORIALS
Aug 3, 2010

Executive remuneration

From this year the Financial Services Agency has made it mandatory for listed companies to disclose in their financial statements the names of executives who receive annual remuneration of ¥100 million or more and the actual amount of remuneration each executive receives. According to Kyodo News, some...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2010

China's economic pride

HONG KONG — In international business and finance, no less than in politics, diplomacy, defense and control of tiny strategic islands and islets in the seas around it, China is showing an increasingly assertive tendency with the clear message that it will not allow itself to be pushed around by anyone....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 1, 2010

Japanese quotes cast country's life and culture in disparate lights

SECOND IN A THREE-PART SERIES — In its current issue, the popular monthly magazine Bungei Shunju has a long feature titled "Tekichushita yogen 50," meaning "50 predictions that hit the mark."
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 30, 2010

The road to digital TV is not paved with enough antennas

The government is desperately urging homeowners to make the switch to digital TV, but will promotion alone do the trick?
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 29, 2010

Fresh vegetables in heart of the city

O n Saturdays and Sundays, a small group of vendors sets up stalls filled with fresh vegetables and fruit outside the Kotsu Kaikan Building, a shopping complex in front of Yurakucho Station, in central Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward. The Kotsu Kaikan Marche, which started in April, is the latest of a growing number...
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2010

Tsujimoto quits SDP, says party has lost its way

OSAKA — Lower House member Kiyomi Tsujimoto resigned Tuesday from the Social Democratic Party over the SDP's exit from the ruling bloc amid the Futenma base row and after its poor showing in the July 11 Upper House election.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2010

Safeguarding financial stability

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Central bankers around the world failed to see the current financial crisis coming before its beginnings in 2007. Martin Cihak of the International Monetary Fund reported in July 2007 that, of 47 central banks found to publish financial stability reports (FSRs), "virtually all" gave...
EDITORIALS
Jul 27, 2010

The tragedy in North Korea

With the sinking of the South Korean Navy vessel Cheonan, the missile and nuclear tests and the fire-breathing rhetoric, it is easy to forget that North Korea is also an economic basket case. A nation that once outpaced its southern neighbor in economic development has been teetering on the brink of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Jul 27, 2010

One man's cup of tea equals a career

"Irasshaimase, dozo! (Welcome to the shop. Please have a look around!)" The high-spirited, delightful voice of a tall Frenchman echoes in the Shinjuku branch of Maruyamaen, a long-established Japanese tea shop.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 25, 2010

Savoring the wisdom of some Japanese predictions about Japan

FIRST IN A THREE-PART SERIES — I was 8 years old when we got our first television set, a 10-inch Admiral. That was in 1952, still early days for the new and exciting medium. It wasn't long before I was glued every week to my favorite program, "Criswell Predicts."
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 25, 2010

A northern odyssey

Komandorskiye Ostrova — the Commander Islands in English — are about as bleak and remote as anywhere imaginable for human habitation. Indeed, the two islands in the group, named Bering and Medny, support only one hardy community of fewer than 1,000 souls in a settlement called Nikolskoye on Bering...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 22, 2010

Pharmacist Masaaki Goto

Masaaki Goto, 83, runs a tiny pharmacy in Tokyo. Japan has the highest number of prescriptions per capita in the world and, after the United States, it is the world's second largest pharmaceutical market. There are about 50,000 community pharmacies in the country, and large drug stores and convenience...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 18, 2010

Youth is wasted on the dwindling young

What's it like to be young in this most elderly, least youthful country on Earth?
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 18, 2010

Bikes starlet of Bangkok rides high

"Instead of staying home, I like to meet many people — I like my freedom," says Chiemi Svensson. It's a feeling this 57-year-old Japanese resident of Bangkok surely has in common with most of her Harley customers.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past