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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2008

Toy makers cast their gaze on the future: talking dolls for grannies

Primopuel is a knee-high Japanese doll with soft, apple cheeks and big black button eyes. It comes in green and pink. When you cuddle it or talk to it, it talks back. It is for grandmothers.
EDITORIALS
Jun 30, 2008

Tokyo: a livable megacity

A recent United Nations Report on World Urbanization found that Tokyo remains the world's largest city. That will come as no surprise to anyone, but London-based magazine Monocle's ranking Tokyo as the third most livable city in the world just might astonish many.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 29, 2008

Getting high and then horizontal in Langkawi

Ask any question you want in Langkawi and you will get a friendly response. But you may not get an answer. Take the following exchange I had with a musician who was leaving the Beach Garden restaurant as I was strolling in there in search of a late supper on my first night in the hot spot of Pantai Cenang:...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

Foreigners flourish in the realm of Japanese arts

Japan has come a long way since the era of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), arguably the world's most famous and certainly the first Western Japanophile. Before Hearn, a Greek-Irishman who married the daughter of a local samurai in remote and rural Shimane Prefecture, and also took on Japanese citizenship,...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 27, 2008

Teenage pop stars know how to operate

"It's kind of embarrassing," says Taylor Henderson, violinist with teen sensations Operator Please, as she recalls the Australian release of the Queensland band's breakthrough single, "Just a Song About Ping Pong."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 27, 2008

'In the Valley of Elah'

Iraq War movies are dying at the box office one after another. It doesn't matter if they're brutal expose ("Redacted"), touching family story ("Grace Is Gone"), or high-firepower entertainment ("The Kingdom") — nobody's buying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 27, 2008

'One California Day'

All over California people move encased in metal and chrome, going from house to office in their cars. It's a contradiction of California living that, despite the beautiful weather and spacious streets, no one is outside.
COMMENTARY
Jun 21, 2008

Security versus freedom

How to maintain a fair balance between national and individual security and traditional freedoms and human rights is an important political issue in Britain. We have been forced to accept increasing intrusion into our private lives by government agencies. Some fear we are living in a world similar to...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 21, 2008

Gaijin of the Inland Sea

Believe it or not, I am not the only foreigner living on an island in the Seto Inland Sea. Allow me to uncover other insane gaijin "doing it" island style. And these are no ordinary people, mind you.
BUSINESS
Jun 20, 2008

Toy show offers plenty for the kid in all of us

Why should kids have all the fun? That's an attitude on display at International Tokyo Toy Show 2008, which kicked off Thursday at Tokyo Big Sight, where people of any age are bound to find something fun to play with.
JAPAN
Jun 19, 2008

Radical immigration plan under discussion

Foreigners will have a much better opportunity to move to, or continue to live in, Japan under a new immigration plan drafted by Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers to accept 10 million immigrants in the next 50 years.
Reader Mail
Jun 19, 2008

Condolences to quake victims

On behalf of my family here in China, I would like to express my deep condolences to all the affected people in Saturday's strong (7.2-magnitude) earthquake in northeastern Japan.
EDITORIALS
Jun 17, 2008

Earthquake sends reminder

The earthquake that hit inland areas of the Tohoku region Saturday morning serves as a strong reminder that Japan's central and local governments, and its individual citizens must take earthquake precautionary measures in earnest. If a quake with the power of the Saturday temblor had hit a populous area...
EDITORIALS
Jun 17, 2008

Media can't bow to expectations

The Supreme Court last week ruled that even if people who have become the subject of coverage by a broadcaster come to have expectations concerning a broadcast program, such expectations, in principle, are not subject to legal protection.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 17, 2008

A vanishing Europe and lifestyle

BRUSSELS — What will it mean to be European 25 years from now? Unlike the United States, whose history as a "melting pot" has given Americans a truly multiethnic character, native Europeans are becoming an endangered species. Europe badly needs immigrants, yet is not culturally prepared to welcome...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2008

Plaque honoring U.S. airmen who died in raid unveiled in Shizuoka

SHIZUOKA — A retired U.S. Air Force pilot and his friend unveiled a memorial plaque in Shizuoka on Saturday honoring 23 American airmen who died in a mid-air collision during a 1945 raid on the city.
Reader Mail
Jun 15, 2008

Remembering the source of food

The other day I watched an instructive TV program, "Inochi no Kusa no Kabuwake (Multiplying the Roots of Life)" on NHK. Sidama people in the southern part of Ethiopia live on ensete, banana-shaped plants. One ensete plant provides enough food for a family of five for a month. When a Sidama...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 15, 2008

War and propaganda: a Japanese narrative

CERTAIN VICTORY: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media, by David C. Earhart. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2008, 552 pp., with photographs, maps, illustrations, $74.95 (cloth) One way to induce people to kill other people is to dehumanize "the enemy." And one of the ways to do this is through propaganda....
COMMENTARY
Jun 15, 2008

Dose of humility overcomes a world of hurt

LOS ANGELES — It is precisely during economic and political tension that more frequent and fervent expressions of sincere humility might serve to smooth over some tough spots. After all, being truly humble can serve to downsize egos that otherwise tend to mushroom minor molehills into major mountain...
Reader Mail
Jun 15, 2008

Adaptation of Japanese, Chinese

I agree with Frank Ching's view in his June 5 article, "Quake warms Japan-China ties," that the people of Japan and China have to change and adapt to new circumstances.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2008

Saudi embassy draws hundreds to mark World Blood Donor Day

About 200 people came to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tokyo on Saturday to roll up their sleeves for World Blood Donor Day.
EDITORIALS
Jun 14, 2008

Prepare for the worst

An expert panel of the government's Central Disaster Prevention Council recently projected that a major earthquake in the Kinki and Chubu region occurring at noon in winter would cause economic damage of ¥74 trillion and ¥33 trillion, respectively. Such an earthquake would shred heavily used traffic...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 13, 2008

Getting high with ease

The goal was a lofty one, figuratively: To climb the highest peak within the Tokyo metropolitan area.

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