Search - special

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 11, 2011

"100 Years of Tokyo Transportation"

Edo-Tokyo Museum Closes Sept.10
EDITORIALS
Aug 10, 2011

Improve radiation mapping

The shipments of beef cows suspected of having been fed with radioactive rice straw to all the prefectures except Okinawa have underlined the radiation hazards caused by the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plants.
JAPAN
Aug 9, 2011

Yahoo map shows real-time radiation levels

Kyodo Yahoo Japan Corp. is showing real-time radiation levels at 11 locations on a special online map based on data gathered by academics and volunteers monitoring the Fukushima power plant crisis.
COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2011

Threat from the antidemocrats

The recent massacre perpetrated by a lone gunman in Norway has made leaders in democratic countries review the threat to their societies from extremist anti-democratic elements.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2011

China could fill Af-Pak vacuum left by U.S.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have continued to fray since a U.S. Special Forces team killed Osama bin Laden in a comfortable villa near a major Pakistani military academy. But the tit-for-tat retaliations that have followed the raid reflect deeper sources of mistrust and mutual suspicion....
EDITORIALS
Aug 7, 2011

A deal struck in Washington

German statesman Otto von Bismarck is credited for pointing out that "laws are like sausages: It is better not to see them being made." Never has the truth of that old saw been more evident than during the week through Aug. 2, when the world witnessed the sorry spectacle of U.S. politicians scrambling...
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 7, 2011

The far-out Ogasawaras

The Ogasawaras are a group of lovely subtropical islands about 1,000 km due south of Tokyo, from where they are administered. As there is no airport, you reach them by taking the 6,700-ton liner Ogasawara Maru from Takeshiba Pier in Tokyo — a 25-hour journey that can be rough, so take one of the better...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 6, 2011

Another day, another murder

A snap of her wrist . . . and she has yanked back our kitchen curtains. Her eyes dart over the yard. That is, what we call a yard — a few square meters of gravel and grass that our neighbor's house now shadows from the morning sun.
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Aug 5, 2011

B-kyu boom: The magnificence of the mediocre

There's a B-kyu (class) for everything, which doesn't make it any less important.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Aug 5, 2011

Help children's summer assignments

The Royal Park Hotel in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo is offering special activity-based summer accommodation plans through Sept. 30.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 5, 2011

'Days of Heaven' / 'Nashville'

It's somewhat depressing to think that the two best films on offer this summer, by far, were made over three decades ago. Robert Altman's epic "Nashville" came out in the torrid summer of 1975, while Terrence Malick's sophomore film, "Days of Heaven," was released in '78 after two years in the editing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 4, 2011

Ziyoou-vachi bring the heat to summer festival gigs

Seeing a performance by Ziyoou-vachi (Queen Bee) is to see a performance in every sense of the word. The four-piece formed in Kobe in 2009 and played a high-energy theatrical set at last year's Fuji Rock Festival. Building on that success, the band released debut album "Majo Gari" ("Witch Hunt") on their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 4, 2011

Japan's interpretation of all creatures great and small

We still don't know the true meaning or purpose behind the earliest examples of artworks depicting animals.
COMMENTARY
Aug 2, 2011

Arab revolutions unable to waken media to revolutionary discourse

When President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried desperately to quell Yemen's popular uprising, he appealed to tribalism, customs and traditions. All his efforts evidently failed, and the revolution continued unabated.
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011

Most unlikely bedfellows

"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2011

DPJ keeps Tohoku revival plan vague

The Democratic Party of Japan-led government bowed to strong opposition within its ranks Friday and endorsed a watered-down version of its basic reconstruction policy for the Tohoku region that ultimately failed to specify the size and duration of a tax hike to fund the work.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2011

Symposium fiasco forces reclusive NISA chief to surface

After being harshly criticized for failing to appear before the media to explain an attempt to manipulate a 2007 "pluthermal" symposium, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Director General Nobuaki Terasaka held a hastily arranged news conference Friday night.
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2011

Help for those who lost a parent

The central and local governments have found that more than 200 children in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures became orphans in the March 11 quake and tsunami and, consequently, have provided them livelihood and education support.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 29, 2011

Food fest organizers aim to 'cheer up' Japan

Shady groves of fragrant trees, crisp alpine breezes and charming European-style villas — heat-addled Tokyoites hardly need more reasons to visit Karuizawa in the summer; this quiet town in Nagano Prefecture has long been a popular holiday destination for those looking for an escape from the intensity...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 29, 2011

'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'

Given enough money, almost any filmmaker could deliver a big, loud, silly popcorn movie about giant alien robots beating the living crap out of each other, but it takes the special talent of director Michael Bay to make such a movie totally repellent.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 29, 2011

Local galleries move to fore at Art Fair Tokyo

On the Japanese cultural calendar, visual-art events tend to take place in the more pleasant seasons of spring and autumn. Classical music and ballet have winter sewn up, with dozens of performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 or "The Nutcracker" being held over the Christmas-New Year period,...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years