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EDITORIALS
Mar 29, 2009

'Moshi-moshi' recession

You know times are hard when Japanese start giving up their cell phones! The number of cell-phone shipments in Japan have dropped by nearly half since last year, according to a recent industry report. That is no small drop since Japanese cell-phone users are estimated to be over 110 million, or about...
BASKETBALL
Mar 29, 2009

Hot-shooting Ikeda carries Albirex to win

Saturday's game will be an easy one for Niigata Albirex forward Yuichi Ikeda to remember. After all, he put as many points on the board — 32 — as his jersey number in an 81-69 victory over the Saitama Broncos on Saturday.
Reader Mail
Mar 29, 2009

Beneficial restoration of oceans

Regarding Michael Richardson's March 21 article, "Are Earth's oceanic 'carbon sinks' filling up?": The author was correct in some of his reports and observations but quite wrong in others. For example, it is well established that the loss of ocean plant growth in terms of carbon dioxide is 4 billion...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 29, 2009

Hold the SOS call on the Japanese language

Will the Japanese language die, crushed by the onslaught of English? This question has set off some heated talk in Japan recently because of a book suggesting that it may. First, a friend of mine in Tokyo, a member of a small reading club, told me about it. Then another friend wrote to say the book became...
Reader Mail
Mar 29, 2009

Churlish treatment of a visitor

Letter writers to The Japan Times are such a curmudgeonly lot. In his March 19 letter, Amit Chaturvedi writes "Welcome to the real world" in response to Mikako Hayashi's March 17 complaint about the United Kingdom's marriage visa procedures ("I am not a Pakistani child bride"). His attitude is that others...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Mar 29, 2009

Catch a falling star

Overhung by funky plastic streetlights, enlivened by piped music, and flanked with small stores, Shinohashi Shirokane Shotengai is exactly the kind of shopping street that once served as the commercial hub of many postwar Tokyo neighborhoods.
EDITORIALS
Mar 29, 2009

Supporting single mothers

As the economy worsens, some people will suffer more than others. For the first time ever, the number of Japanese single mothers receiving child-care allowances to supplement their low income has topped 1 million, the health and welfare ministry reported in March. These single-mother households greatly...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 29, 2009

Uncovering an ukiyo-e master in Obuse

The small town of Obuse nestles quietly in the foothills of the Japan Alps, a 30-minute ride on a local rail line from the prefectural capital of Nagano City.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Mar 29, 2009

The Japanese way carried the day in World Baseball Classic

Baseball may have been invented in the United States, but it's being perfected in Japan.
Reader Mail
Mar 29, 2009

Japan's bureaucrats do the same

As a fellow Japanese citizen and a graduate of the University of Manchester who was deeply impressed by the warmth of British people, I'd like to kindly ask Mikako Hayashi if she has taken the time to reflect on how visa applicants from places outside "agreeable" countries such as the United Kingdom...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Between modernism and modanizumu

When reading William J. Tyler's anthology, "Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938," one realizes that "modanizumu" (modernism) is a very broad term. It seems to mean, for Tyler anyway, any work produced during the years he designates that is not absolutely reactionary in its style or concerns....
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Between modernism and modanizumu

MODANIZUMU: Modernist Fiction From Japan, 1913-1938, compiled and edited by William J. Tyler. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 605 pp., $47 (cloth). When reading William J. Tyler's anthology, "Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938," one realizes that "modanizumu" (modernism)...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Searching for a sense of 'home'

The first I knew of the actress Ri Koran, otherwise known as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, was in 1985, while staying in a grubby hotel in Beirut. An old face-cream advertisement for the cosmetic company Shiseido had been tacked onto the bedroom wall. The image showed a woman with jade earrings dressed in a silk...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Searching for a sense of 'home'

THE CHINA LOVER by Ian Buruma. The Penguin Press, 2008, 392 pp., $26.95 (cloth) The first I knew of the actress Ri Koran, otherwise known as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, was in 1985, while staying in a grubby hotel in Beirut. An old face-cream advertisement for the cosmetic company Shiseido had been tacked onto...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 29, 2009

Make room in the scrapyard of history for those quaint TV sets

When regular television broadcasts in America started in 1939, the intrinsic evils of the medium were already being discussed, and by the '50s the term "idiot box" had been coined.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo