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Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

Traditional foods losing favor

On one of my family visits to Osaka, I met a nutritionist from Kobe, and during a meal she had prepared I told her I had made miso. She didn't understand why that should be anything special. I told her I made it from soybeans and aspergillus rice and kept it in a large crock in my garage for three years....
Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

Suicide image is misrepresented

Some recent letters, and to some extent the May 8 editorial, "Help to live instead of die," reflect how suicide in Japan continues to be misrepresented in the press as extraordinary.
JAPAN
May 15, 2008

Denials start Chongryon property trial

A former chief of the Public Security Intelligence Agency pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of fraud, denying that he masterminded an investment scam to swindle the pro-Pyongyang group Chongryon out of the ownership of its Tokyo headquarters building.
JAPAN
May 15, 2008

Clark, Fukuda concur on all but agriculture

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda agreed Wednesday to cooperate on global warming, security and other areas but failed to make progress on signing a free-trade agreement, according to a joint statement issued after their summit in Tokyo.
BUSINESS
May 15, 2008

Internet businesses try luck in overseas markets

While Japanese products from cars to TVs are known throughout the world, the country's Internet services have so far been conspicuously absent abroad.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 15, 2008

School reborn as museum to help kids learn the joy of low-tech toys

A defunct 100-year-old elementary school in Tokyo that boasted 1,000 pupils in its heyday has been reborn as a museum that hopes to revive the passion of playing with toys that don't require batteries.
Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

More of Koizumi? No thank you

Regarding Tom Plate's May 10 article, "Japan needs a dose of Koizumi's old magic": Let me have a say as a son of a small shopkeeper. Since the Koizumi administration, in our neighborhood, a big supermarket has opened, two middle-size supermarkets have closed and a small shop near the big one has closed....
Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

Beware future memory meltdown

I'm getting over a huge letdown -- like being told by the doctor that you have Alzheimer's with only a few years of lucidity left. Fortunately, I've nothing so dire. What brought me down was an NHK television news report on CD and DVD digital storage. I (and apparently many others) had taken for granted...
EDITORIALS
May 15, 2008

Devastating quake in China

The death toll from the massive earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province Monday has neared 15,000, and more than 20,000 are reportedly still trapped under rubble. This is China's most devastating earthquake since the July 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, Hebei Province, which killed about 242,000 people....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2008

Julie madly, deeply

It's always interesting to meet someone you've seen on the screen so many times. You always wonder: Are they like their movie image? I know, I know — actors are just playing a role, that's not really them up on the screen.
EDITORIALS
May 15, 2008

Contradictory road-tax law

Resorting to a two-thirds majority in the Lower House on Tuesday, the ruling bloc enacted by revote a bill to use revenue from gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas taxes for road-related projects for 10 years from fiscal 2008. The action was taken after the opposition-controlled Upper House had voted...
BUSINESS
May 15, 2008

Latest car-nav checks home lights, locks

Drivers can check on their pets, turn their home lights off and on and lock the front door — all from inside their cars — with a new car-navigation system from Panasonic.
CULTURE / Art
May 15, 2008

"Hatakeyama Naoya: Ciel Tombe"

Taka Ishii Gallery
COMMENTARY / World
May 15, 2008

Getting Japan to capitalize on its innovation

BOSTON/TOKYO — As they lament the West's obsession with China and prepare to host the Group of Eight in July, Japanese fear becoming a minor planet in the Chinese orbit. Trouble is, Japan still sees manufacturing as the key to prosperity, despite the fact that it is vulnerable to offshoring.
BUSINESS
May 15, 2008

Sony logged record sales, net profit in '07

Sony Corp. said Wednesday its sales and net profit reached record highs in the business year that ended on March 31, suggesting the company is heading for a steady business recovery as its restructuring efforts take hold.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years