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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 1, 2007

Blasting off for Golden Week

Tired of sitting in front of computers all day long? Sick of sucking up exhaust as you walk down the street? Have you been pondering life's meaning and, above all, our meager existence in this world?
EDITORIALS
Apr 29, 2007

Global population is graying

The 2006 revision of the United Nations population estimates and projection recently made public shows that the world population, now 6.67 billion, will reach 9.19 billion in 2050. This increase of 2.52 billion people is equivalent to the world's total population in 1950. During the same period, the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 26, 2007

The satellite in the room

The NSAT-110 is a Japanese telecommunications satellite built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems and launched in October 2000 from French Guiana on an Ariene 4 rocket into a geostationary orbit some 35,000 km above Indonesia.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 24, 2007

Yuji Sato

Marine, a 5-and-a-half year-old black Labrador retriever, just might be one of the world's most unexpected heroines in the fight against cancer. Marine's nose is capable of detecting 18 different types of cancer on a person's breath and has already been mechanically replicated as a sensor the size of...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 13, 2007

Vienna Boys' Choir pay homage to trad, pop worlds

Vienna Boys' Choir, known for their exquisite voices and on-stage charm, return to Japan to give 23 performances across the country from April 27 to June 17.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 7, 2007

Latest violence likely to cost Italy 2012 European C'ships

LONDON -- Quentin Tarantino would no doubt have been delighted by the horrendous scenes of gratuitous violence in Rome's Olympic Stadium on Wednesday night had they been for his latest movie.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 6, 2007

'Everyone Stares/The Police Inside Out'

It's been more than 20 years since Stewart Copeland ended his tenure as drummer for The Police after a string of platinum albums and era-defining singles. The band members went their separate ways: Sting, to a solo career and mainstream celebrity; guitarist Andy Summers, to the relative obscurity of...
COMMENTARY
Apr 5, 2007

Giving soft power some teeth

LONDON -- "Speak softly and carry a big stick" -- that was the advice of ebullient U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in the early part of the 20th century. It may still have some relevance today.
EDITORIALS
Mar 31, 2007

Iraq, four years later

This month marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. To the surprise of virtually all the war's supporters, coalition forces are still present in Iraq. They are working to stabilize a country that appears to be on the brink of civil war. The continuing chaos and ever-growing number of fatalities...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2007

New postal giant raises competition fears as birth approaches

The planned privatization of the postal system, which doubles as the world's biggest savings bank, was hailed around the globe as a watershed free-market reform that would streamline the world's No. 2 economy.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 29, 2007

Globalization made manifest at Midtown

Hooray. Another high-rise office tower. Another five-star hotel. Another premium shopping mall. Another Starbucks. And don't forget culture. With this new development, Tokyo will show the world the richness of Japan's civilization and society.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 28, 2007

Hail to the '3-alarm' Chief

It must be tough being Al Gore.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 23, 2007

ISU honors Ito, Carroll

After Thursday afternoon's original dance competition concluded, Japanese skating legend Midori Ito and American coach Frank Carroll were honored by the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame during an on-ice ceremony at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.
COMMENTARY
Mar 21, 2007

Crusading to cut carbon emissions

LONDON -- The obvious route is not always the best one. Throughout Europe the governments and political parties, as well as the central European Union Commission in Brussels, are all vying with each other to prove who is the greenest. The simplest way of doing this is to produce ever more ambitious plans...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 18, 2007

As London shows, assimilation is what migration's about

LONDON -- I have been coming to this city every few years for more than four decades, and this visit, of 10 days' duration, has, in some ways, been the most startling. Not that the mid-Sixties weren't. The Beatles, with every challenge to staid British routine that they personified, were in the ascendancy...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 13, 2007

Mamoru Oshii

Animation and live-film writer and director Mamoru Oshii, 56, is best known for making the animated 1995 movie "Ghost in the Shell," which was a strong influence on the Hollywood movie "The Matrix" (1999). The work Oshii is most satisfied with is the 2004 sequel to that film, "Innocence" (which was nominated...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 4, 2007

What is becoming of my grandfather's wisdom?

These days it's tough to be a journalist. This may sound like a whinge, but whinges may sometimes reflect a real situation. Oh, it's fine if you agree with the line of thought acceptable to governments, religious organizations or interest groups. But if you dare hold up a mirror to them, you may run...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2007

Europe sleeping through a cocaine siege

NEW YORK -- European leaders need to get serious about Europe's cocaine problem. The "white lady" is seducing a steadily growing number of Europeans, and remaining in a state of denial will only worsen the consequences.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 25, 2007

Will strategic retreat soon signal Australia's tardy advancement?

Apolitical wrangle, with Prime Minister John Howard as the prime wrangler, has begun in the rodeo ring of Australian politics -- and it certainly looks as if someone is going to take a spill.
JAPAN
Feb 20, 2007

Two years down the road, Nepali cyclist wheels solo through Japan

country and to the public," Chhetri said. "I have no academic skills, but I was confident in my physical strength. . . . So I did what I could do -- ride my bicycle to tell the world about Nepal, and to learn about the world from other countries." Why a bicycle? Chhetri said he couldn't afford a car...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2007

Cotton prices wrecking Indian farmers

MADRAS, India -- The western Indian state of Maharashtra, whose capital is the nation's financial capital Bombay, has made great strides in lifting cotton production. Land dedicated to growing cotton increased from 92,000 hectares in 2003 to 480,000 hectares in 2004, according to government sources....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 20, 2007

Upping the fear factor

The government and media would have you believe that Japan has lost its mantle as a safe country. Apparently we live amidst a spree of heinous crimes. Accurate? Not very, according to a new academic study. But before we get to that, let's take stock of one alleged cause of this "crime wave," this decade's...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 18, 2007

Whose Japan deserves youth's patriotism now?

'I for one, cannot believe that love of one's country must consist in blindness to its social faults, in deafness to its social discords, in inarticulation of its social wrongs. Neither can I believe that the mere accident of birth in a certain country or the mere scrap of a citizen's paper constitutes...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 11, 2007

Remarkable return: Hingis happy with comeback

Former world No. 1 Martina Hingis won a record-breaking fifth Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo last Sunday, adding the title to the ones she won in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002. It was her third Tier 1 title since returning to the WTA Tour in January 2006 after coming out of a three-year retirement because...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 11, 2007

Mammon and myopia: Japan's governing '70s legacy

Over the past three weeks I have looked back in this column at the decades leading up to the 21st century, which has to date seen a marked shift in Japanese domestic and international policy back toward a not-so-new form of nationalism. In this last article I discuss the 1970s, when critical decisions...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 11, 2007

Siege mentality fuels 'sustainability' claims

At the government's Fisheries Agency in Tokyo, which drives the prowhaling campaign in Japan, there is thinly disguised contempt for the antiwhaling finger-wagging of New Zealand, a country with boundless rich farmland and a tiny population to support.
COMMENTARY
Feb 9, 2007

India's vulnerability bared

NEW DELHI -- Whatever may have been China's motivation, its Jan. 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test is bound to have lasting global impact like no other military event in recent years.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 9, 2007

'Freesia'

Back in the 1990s there was a spate of Japanese movies about alienated young guys who roamed the streets or countryside with a gun, a girl and an attitude. But "Nihonsei Shonen (The Boy Made in Japan)" (1995), "Secret Waltz" (1996) and other films inspired by Hollywood criminal-couples-on-the-road movies...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2007

Declining tolerance of dangerous words

NEW YORK -- Nowadays, words are often seen as a source of instability. The violent reactions last year to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper saw a confused Western response, with governments tripping over their tongues trying to explain what the media should and should...

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