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Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 15, 2012

Paragliding fanatic chronicles Iwaki's postdisaster shoreline

Footage of the Tohoku region's tsunami-ravaged coast has been broadcast constantly over the past year, allowing viewers a closeup view of obliterated communities.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 13, 2012

Celebrating friendship with Japan and 100 years of U.S. hanami

Once an activity for the nobility of the Imperial court in Japan, hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) became a popular tradition among the elite ruling class during the Heian Period (794-1185), and then later, with the encouragement of Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684-1751), among commoners.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2012

Thousands rally at Hibiya Park

Thousands converged on Tokyo's Hibiya Park over the weekend to hold candlelight services, play music and offer prayers to commemorate the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, one of the largest of many such rallies and gatherings across the capital.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2012

Reconstruction a golden opportunity for eco-communities

While rebuilding the Tohoku coast progresses at a snail's pace, experts say hints for re-creating the region into a leading area that relies on reusable energy can already be found in many communities across the globe.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Mar 11, 2012

Disaster had major impact on NPB

Here we are, exactly one year after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011. Japanese baseball has been greatly affected by the quake, the tsunami triggered by it and the subsequent radiation threats from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
JAPAN / QUEST FOR RECOVERY
Mar 7, 2012

Fisheries rebound at sporadic pace

On a late February afternoon, 66-year-old Masakazu Haga prepared mackerel at his new temporary fish processing compound, erected on elevated ground in the Akahama district facing Otsuchi Bay in Iwate Prefecture. The compound stands out because it's one of the few new structures in this town devastated...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Mar 6, 2012

Shinchi, Fukushima: Why did you volunteer to come to Fukushima with Photohoku?

Kana Suzuki
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2012

Stories inspired by Japan's March 11 disasters

Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction (Anthology of Japan Teen Stories), edited by Holly Thompson. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 384 pp. , $14.95. Holly Thompson, a Kanagawa-based novelist, worked alongside other volunteers in the months after the March 11, 2011, tragedy, shoveling tsunami sludge, clearing away...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 3, 2012

'Alternative labor' helps Ishinomaki rebuild

Jamie El-Banna, 27, is a self-professed "cynical Londoner" who says he's "not a nice guy" and admits he is known to many as something of a party animal interested mostly in getting drunk. But a look at his recent track record reveals he's now spent over nine months volunteering in tsunami-ravaged Ishinomaki,...
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2012

In rare case of bipartisanship, Diet cuts bureaucrats' pay

A bill to slash national civil servant salaries by an average of 7.8 percent for two years was enacted Wednesday after clearing the opposition-controlled Upper House.
JAPAN
Feb 26, 2012

Skepticism grows over scientists quake forecasts

When two University of Tokyo seismologists recently released a study forecasting that a major earthquake would strike the capital and its 13 million inhabitants sometime in the next four years, they made front-page headlines.
LIFE / Longform
Feb 26, 2012

Danger zones: What are Japan's coastal communities doing to avert a disaster like March 11?

Teruo Saito has lived most of his 79 years within a couple of hundred meters of the Pacific, in an area that has been overwhelmed by massive tsunamis twice in the last 600 years.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Feb 19, 2012

Surfing the silent waves

As a young documentary filmmaker, Ayako Imamura had been wrestling with feelings of emptiness. Deaf since birth, the 32-year-old Nagoya native has shot about 30 short films documenting the lives of deaf people in Japan since 2000. But at one point in her career, she realized that her creative energy...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 18, 2012

Nagoya aid for tsunami-hit city starts to pay off

A shiitake grower farmer in disaster-hit Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, is working to cultivate a sales channel in the Chubu region, while a Nagoya-based civil engineering company launches an office near the Tohoku city.
JAPAN
Feb 10, 2012

Will shrinking the Diet solve anything?

A company saddled with a hefty debt load might try to get back on a healthy track by laying off employees or reducing pay.
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2012

Record lows recorded at 38 locations

The country experienced severe cold weather Friday and morning temperatures dropped to record lows at 38 locations nationwide, the Meteorological Agency said.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2012

Genba meets AKB48 China envoys

Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba met with members of all-girl idol group AKB48 on Thursday and thanked them for taking part in a campaign to attract Chinese tourists and dispel harmful rumors about the safety of Japanese food products.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 21, 2012

Sales tax shouldn't be the priority: Takenaka

Before hiking the 5 percent consumption tax, the government should first cut trillions of yen in public spending and adopt measures to spur economic growth, former economic and fiscal policy minister Heizo Takenaka says.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 20, 2012

Condors fly in the face of contemporary dance scene

The Japanese are often described as being inward-looking and stoic, with a sense of humor that often fails to connect with people from overseas. However, there are still rare birds among that bunch.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 15, 2012

Danger! Nuclear waste! Keep out — forever!

The earliest known cave paintings date from about 30,000 years ago, and the earliest bone tools found so far predate those paintings by another 40,000 years. Go back 100,000 years, and Homo sapiens — us lot — are only just emerging, though the fossil record suggests our ancestors back then had larger...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 12, 2012

Fuyuko Matsui finds vitality in decay

"Japanese culture has become too clean. Our five senses are too blunt," says artist Fuyuko Matsui in a recent interview at the Yokohama Museum of Art. "I think Japan needs some fear to stimulate the sense of pain."
CULTURE / Art
Jan 12, 2012

Fuyuko Matsui finds vitality in decay

"Japanese culture has become too clean. Our five senses are too blunt," says artist Fuyuko Matsui in a recent interview at the Yokohama Museum of Art. "I think Japan needs some fear to stimulate the sense of pain."
Japan Times
JAPAN / NUCLEAR AWAKENING
Jan 4, 2012

Mothers first to shed food-safety complacency

The disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and the threat of radioactive fallout changed the lives of many people, including Mizuho Nakayama and other mothers of young children whose primary goal suddenly became that of keeping their kids out of harm's way.
JAPAN
Jan 3, 2012

New year could prove daunting for Noda

In the four months since winning the Democratic Party of Japan presidential election, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has survived by taking a cautious approach to governing, managing to compile the 2012 budget and several bills to finance restoration of the disaster-hit Tohoku region.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 27, 2011

Time to change the way we live

Reeling off our names and nationalities between East Halls 1 and 2 of convention center Tokyo Big Sight, our group introduces itself: "I'm from Thailand," "Vietnam, hi," "We're Taiwanese", "Singapore", "Korea".
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 25, 2011

Behold! Christ's grave in Shingo, Aomori Prefecture

One line of text from Wikipedia was all it took to lure me to the town of Shingo, in south-central Aomori Prefecture. It read: "The village promotes itself as the home of the Grave of Christ after a local legend."

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb