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COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 2012

Setting the record straight on marriage

Late spring is upon us, and with it comes wedding season, the time of year that inspires a peculiar mix of sentimental stories about chance meetings leading to love alongside gloomy commentaries about the chances of marital happiness. Both the sentiment and the gloom are based on misguided ideas about...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 29, 2012

Your haiku: the good, the bad and the ugly of Japan

The following are the winners of the haiku competition launched to mark the Community section's 10th anniversary. The five recipients of the top prize, a copy of Debito Arudou and Akira Higuchi's "Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants and Immigrants," are marked by an asterisk. Other winners will receive...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 26, 2012

Desperate Kurd plays final asylum card

The 42-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker's wife and four children fled back to Turkey more than a year ago, terrified about the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear crisis, but he stayed on, in limbo, hoping beyond hope that he would be permitted to remain in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 22, 2012

The elephant in the foreigner's room now has a name: microaggression

Some positive and negative readers' reactions to Debito Arudou's provocative and widely read May 1 Just Be Cause column, "Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down":
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
May 16, 2012

Tokyo Green Space

What do you see when you look at Tokyo? Hypermodern constructions of steel and concrete? Cubic, characterless office buildings? Jared Braiterman sees green ... in the back streets, in the small cracks of dirt on the sidewalks and on his balcony. He finds patches, slivers and swaths of nature that tourists...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 15, 2012

Readers vent over 'Bread and becquerels'

Some readers' responses to the April 17 Zeit Gist column by Gianni Simone, "Bread and becquerels: a year of living dangerously":
BUSINESS
May 3, 2012

Japan firms to help create Myanmar bourse

Myanmar, the so-called last frontier for business opportunities in Asia, will be establishing a stock market by 2015 with the help of Japan's Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and Tokyo Stock Exchange Group Inc.
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2012

Rocket failure an embarrassment for North

North Korea on Friday defied warnings from the international community and launched a rocket — which then exploded about a minute after takeoff — scattering debris over the Yellow Sea off South Korea.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Apr 3, 2012

Little houses crammed in a big city

The neighborhood of Minami Senju in Tokyo's Arakawa Ward is serviced by three train lines that provide easy, quick access to all parts of the city and beyond. East of these lines is an area called Shioiri, highlighted by a relatively new urban development complex centered around high-rise condominiums...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Apr 1, 2012

Naohiko Jinno: Master of public finance brings life to numbers

Born the grandson of a once-prosperous textile manufacturer in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, Naohiko Jinno says that when he was growing up he was told by his mother, over and over again, that money was not important.
JAPAN
Mar 30, 2012

Liquefaction driving away Chiba residents

Chiba's population is declining for the first time in 66 years as residents in bedroom communities damaged by last March's liquefaction decide to abandon the prefecture, fed up with authorities' failure to repair their homes and fearful of radioactive fallout.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 30, 2012

Forging a Syrian opposition worthy of support

Syria's crisis is now a year old, with close to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, dead — and no end in sight. The country is at a stalemate: The opposition is unable to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, and Assad's forces are unable to quash the resistance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 27, 2012

False eyelashes, an authentic Eid, but we're not in Karachi anymore

As soon as I told any of my friends in Pakistan I was going to study for a semester in Tokyo, it was as if my facial features suddenly started turning Japanese.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 20, 2012

Reflections on 3/11: reporters' dispatches

Initial hopes turn to frustration In the immediate aftermath of 3/11 I penned several optimistic pieces for European newspapers predicting that the disaster might jolt Japan out of its long period of economic torpor and social ennui. I wouldn't write the same today.
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.
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.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2012

Urban pride key to our modern sense of self

What is the big story of our age? It depends on the day, but if we count by centuries, then surely humanity's urbanization is a strong contender. Today, more than half of the world's population lives in cities, compared to less than 3 percent in 1800. By 2025, China alone is expected to have 15 "mega-cities,"...
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
ASIA PACIFIC
Jan 29, 2012

Tsunami lessons for Tohoku from Tamil Nadu

On Dec. 26, 2004, a massive tsunami blasted across the Indian Ocean, cutting a swath of destruction through communities in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India that claimed a staggering 230,000 lives.
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2012

Foreign Ministry hires interpreters for media

Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba has begun providing simultaneous interpretation in English at his weekly press conferences to provide more information to the international community about Japan's diplomatic activities.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 15, 2012

Graffiti brightens Tohoku housing units

Almost all the temporary public housing units in the disaster-hit Tohoku region of northeast Japan look the same — like little, soulless boxes, in fact.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 10, 2012

Local Japanese school is the obvious choice if you want your child to fit in

The first day of elementary school, a milestone in a child's life, brings a mix of emotions for parents. The pride and joy of seeing their child taking his first steps into the world are tempered with feelings of anxiety in moms and dads everywhere.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 31, 2011

Used bookstores turn to Internet sales for a lift in turbulent times

Last of two parts
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2011

Foreign residents and religion

This month, two common questions were heard among many foreign residents here: "What are you doing for Christmas?" and "Are you going home or staying here?"
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2011

Nisei vets, 92, unite via parallel lives

The lives of George Nakamura and Yukio Kawamoto have followed amazingly parallel paths.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2011

Paradoxes pervade gender issues' public face in Japan

Transgender people are popping up everywhere in the current Japanese media landscape. Whether it's appearing on variety shows or hawking soft drinks or makeup in TV ads, the current crop of "new-half" celebrities have established themselves in the mainstream in a way that has surprised many onlookers....
BASKETBALL
Nov 6, 2011

Road to recovery: Sendai 89ers help healing

March 6, 2011, was a typical Sunday for the Sendai 89ers.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2011

Wall Street mans the barricades

In spite of the current economic turmoil, some Americans do not have any problems with jobs, money or housing. Indeed, Houston oil executive John Schiller built a new Cape Cod house for just $50,000 a couple of years ago. A bargain, you might think, except that this was a play-house for his four-year-old...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Oct 25, 2011

The ridiculously frightening world of Japanese spooks

Halloween is that time of the year when the occult, macabre and humorous come together to create a festival of fear and fun for all the family. A celebration of death and demons with its roots in pre-Christian Europe, the summer's-end spook-fest has morphed over the centuries into a highly commercialized...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji