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BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Nov 12, 2006

Hammies victorious again

Facing the China Stars on Saturday, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters charged into Sunday's championship game with their perfect Konami Cup Asia Series record intact.
SOCCER / J. League
Nov 12, 2006

Yamada boosts Reds' championship aspirations

Urawa Reds moved closer to their first-ever J. League title with a 1-0 win against Yokohama F. Marinos on Saturday, as championship rivals Gamba Osaka and Kawasaki Frontale both lost.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 12, 2006

Slugger Lee's four-year contract with Giants a big surprise

The news about Korean slugger Lee Seung Yeop signing a four-year contract with the Yomiuri Giants, announced Nov. 5, seemingly came out of the blue and is rather surprising, considering the first baseman's longtime aspirations to play in the major leagues.
COMMENTARY
Nov 12, 2006

Time-warp fantasies about Nicaragua

LONDON -- "Ortega is a tiger who has not changed his stripes," warned U.S. ambassador Paul Trivelli before the former revolutionary leader won back the presidency of Nicaragua in Monday's election. Retired U.S. Marine Col. Oliver North, who took the fall for President Ronald Reagan's administration in...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 12, 2006

Sticking to the invective is less effective

NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN: North Korea Takes on the World, by Gordon C. Chang. Random House, 2006, 327 pp., $25.95 (cloth). Gordon Chang really can pick 'em. In 2001, as the world awakened to China's incandescent rise, he made a stir with "The Coming Collapse of China." Earlier this year he published "Nuclear...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 12, 2006

NHK's "Ashita wo Tsukame," Fuji's "Tokyo Tower" and more

Every week, NHK's "Ashita wo Tsukame (Grasp Tomorrow)" (NHK-E, Monday, 7 p.m.) profiles a specific occupation as a way of inspiring young people toward career choices.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 12, 2006

No ordinary guide to China

SHENZHEN: A Travelogue From China, by Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2006, 152 pp., $19.95 (cloth). Surely those dinosaurs who believed that comics were suitable only for stories of men in tights have all died off. With the popularity of comics growing by leaps...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 12, 2006

Political piper moves to call some of NHK's editorial tunes

NHK, Japan's national broadcaster, is under siege -- and with it this country's commitment to freedom of speech.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 12, 2006

Vatican places state of limbo in limbo

HONG KONG -- Theologians of the Roman Catholic Church are recommending the abolition of a special place that has existed for more than 2,000 years and enriched the world of literature and politics, as well as theology. Pope Benedict XVI himself has given his clear opinion, as an eminent theologian, that...
EDITORIALS
Nov 12, 2006

'Very happy, super horse'

It was an Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, who definitively captured in words the magic that attends a great horse race. In his poem "At Galway Races" (1909) he wrote:
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 12, 2006

Cameron Diaz presses all the right buttons for SoftBank

For some insight into the ruckus that SoftBank kicked up when it relaunched its mobile phone service with a zero-yen-per-call plan, check out its new ads and compare them with the competition's. NTT DoCoMo's ads showcase no less than seven famous personalities (eight if you count female comedy duo Othello...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 12, 2006

SF hero conjures memories old and new across the generations

A few months ago, Hiromasa Kaneko noticed that his son Hibiki had started pretending he was characters from "Ultraman Mebius" that he said the other children at his nursery in Tokyo's Meguro Ward were all into. But rather than just let his 4-year-old son copy his friends, Kaneko figured it would be better...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 12, 2006

Ultraman . . . forever

The "Ultraman" live-action science-fiction series has been a rite of passage for Japanese boys (and a few girls) and their families for four decades now, since the first show was aired in 1966.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 12, 2006

Serious toys for serious fans

Ultraman is often cited as an example of just how different the Japanese outlook is from that of Westerners. While the bug-like eyes and clingy bodysuit of the hero himself may strike the uninitiated as ridiculous, it is the outlandish aspect of the monsters from whose wrath Ultraman is perpetually saving...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 12, 2006

Alien star flies off the shelves

Children's books typically feature anything from frogs or cats or pigs to dinosaurs and sometimes even people. Those authored by Tatsuya Miyanishi have all those -- but he's also written several books featuring Ultraman.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes