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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2008

Mugabe averts collapse with Chinese help

WATERLOO, Canada — Disillusioned Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of price increases that will put the most basic of food essentials even further out of their reach.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Boom time for Hokkaido ski resort area

NISEKO, Hokkaido — Playing golf on a clear summer day in the shadow of Mount Yotei, otherwise known as Ezofuji, or Hokkaido Fuji, may be an ideal way to spend a vacation. But simply walking around the premises of Hilton Niseko Village, which opened July 1 in Hokkaido's resort area of Niseko, seems...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 8, 2008

Japanophiles wind up in jam

An interior designer in California is wondering how she can get some fabric — "preferably the Kyoto brocade known as Nishijin-ori" — woven to order in Japan. "I'm working on a house owned by a couple of Japanophiles, and they have very specific ideas for what they want."
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 8, 2008

Japan's last frontier took time to tame, cultivate image

Hokkaido, where the Group of Eight summit is taking place in Toyako, is known for its hot springs, ski resorts, seafood and magnificent scenery.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 8, 2008

Cardboard coffins boast eco-merit

As more consumers pursue environmentally friendly lives, businesses are introducing products and services catering to those quests.
EDITORIALS
Jul 8, 2008

Nursing care in trouble

Nursing care establishments are suffering from a severe labor shortage as many workers quit each year because of low wages and harsh working conditions. The government should realize that if this trend continues, the nation's nursing care system could collapse. Improving the wages and working conditions...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jul 8, 2008

How do you feel about the Narita incident and "guinea pig" foreigners?

Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 8, 2008

Cherry farmers Mitsuyo and Shunji Ono

Shunji Ono, 71, and his wife Mitsuyo, 70, are farmers in Yamagata Prefecture's Sagae City. Besides taking care of the rice paddies their ancestors have tended for hundreds of years, the Onos are famous for growing Sato Nishiki, the sweetest and most expensive Japanese cherries. Developed about 90 years...
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

New EU fund takes aim at food crisis

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — To address the ongoing international food crisis, which has sparked violent, deadly riots in several parts of the world, the European Commission hopes to make euro 1 billion available to support agriculture in developing countries, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2008

Thickheadedness on African debt

ACCRA, Ghana — In the runup to the Group of Eight meeting in Japan last week, activists of all stripes were working hard to ensure that their issue would be on the agenda. While the agenda changes from year to year, one item has become a mainstay: debt relief. The fact that this issue repeatedly resurfaces...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 8, 2008

Beware the foreigner as guinea pig

Anywhere in the world, noncitizens have fewer legal rights than citizens. Japan's Supreme Court would agree: On June 2, in a landmark case granting citizenship to Japanese children of unmarried Philippines mothers, judges ruled that Japanese citizenship is necessary "for the protection of basic human...
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Ainu artist, activist has spent a lifetime fighting prejudice

Shizue Ukaji was born in March 1933 in a small southern coastal area of Hokkaido known as Urakawa.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 8, 2008

How green are Japan's urbanites?

The Group of Eight summit began Monday at the Windsor Hotel Toya, an exquisite, maximum- security resort in Hokkaido. There, the world's top leaders are holed up in conference rooms, trying to strike last-minute deals on various global issues, the most disputed of all being climate change.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Food crisis, Africa aid at center stage

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — The three-day Group of Eight summit kicked off Monday in Toyako with Japan's leadership of the G8 being tested by a raft of new global challenges.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Indigenous peoples hold unique fear of climate change's impact

SAPPORO — Indigenous peoples will be the hardest hit by climate change because of their dependence on "Mother Earth," Ben Powless, a native Mohawk from Canada, told a convention of nongovernmental organizations Monday.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Souvenir press kits aim to drive environmentalism theme home

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — A resolution against global warming may not be issued at the Group of Eight summit, but journalists covering the Toyako gathering will at least head home with eco-friendly wristwatches and rechargeable batteries.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

Fukuda, Brown urge G8 rebuke of Mugabe

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and British counterpart Gordon Brown agreed Monday that the Group of Eight industrialized nations should send a strong message about Zimbabwe's political chaos.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 8, 2008

G8 leaders cast Tanabata wishes

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — Everyone has hopes for the future, a reflection of their past experiences. The world leaders gathered for the Group of Eight summit are no exception — as evidenced by what they wrote on pieces of paper hung Monday from bamboo trees in the Japanese wish-making tradition of the July...
JAPAN
Jul 8, 2008

DoCoMo developing next-generation 'wearable' gadgets

Rolling your eyes to turn up the volume on a portable music player and tapping your fingers to turn on a DVD player are among technologies Japan's top mobile carrier is testing to make "wearable" gadgets.

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped