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Japan Times
Features
Jul 31, 2005

Speaking up for a 'right-size' city

In their search for the soul of Nagoya -- a city some dub "Japan's best kept secret" -- staff writers Setsuko Kamiya and Yoko Hani met up with five long-term foreign residents. All five happened to be American, and all have been in business there for between five and 10 years. Settling down for a chilled-out...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 30, 2005

The benevolent Uncle Yama

Monday morning I awoke at 7 a.m. to chanting flowing through the window from the mountain in the back of my house. But something was strange -- the voice was not quite right. It wasn't the familiar deep voice of the priest, nor the younger voice of the priest's son. It was scratchy. Perhaps the locusts...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2005

Africa: moving beyond chronic emergency

NEW YORK -- The current crisis in Niger, where 3.6 million people are at risk of starvation, shows how badly prepared the country is to respond to the emergency. The food shortage is affecting 800,000 children under age five in some 3,815 villages. Acute malnutrition rates have risen to 13.4 percent...
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2005

ASEAN is let off the hook

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has dodged a bullet. Myanmar's decision to give up its turn as chairman of the group in 2006 saves ASEAN from international embarrassment. Myanmar's status as a pariah state threatened to seriously hurt ASEAN as its dialogue partners vowed to avoid the group...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jul 29, 2005

Weekend trance party picks 07.29

Saturday 07.30
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 29, 2005

Caving in to the gods

If a foreigner happens to know just one Japanese myth, it's usually the one about Amaterasu and the cave. Amaterasu had long been tormented by her brother, Susanoo. But Susanoo, who believed there was no such thing as too elaborate a brotherly prank, went too far when he flung a flayed piebald colt into...
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2005

New Komeito exec signals willingness to jump LDP ship

New Komeito's secretary general said Wednesday his party would entertain forming a coalition government with the Democratic Party of Japan if, in a snap election, the DPJ took a majority in the House of Representatives.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Jul 28, 2005

Oriental long-headed locust

* Japanese name: Shouryou-batta * Scientific name: Acrida cinerea antennata * Description: Although it is called the long-headed locust, this member of the grasshopper family of insects has a stranger appearance than the more familiar swarming locust. "Shouryou" refers (bafflingly) to the Buddhist...
EDITORIALS
Jul 27, 2005

Bolder way of thinking small

In June, the Cabinet Office's Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy stressed the need for smaller and more efficient government in its 2005 basic guideline for economic and fiscal reform. Earlier this month the fiscal 2005 Annual Report on the Japanese Economy and Public Finances also called for smaller...
EDITORIALS
Jul 26, 2005

Narita fiasco: never again

A tragedy has clouded the history of the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita. The place names Narita and Sanrizuka have been associated with Japan's longest and fiercest political struggle against the government, a struggle that has seen 13 deaths, five of them policemen, and thousands of arrests....
COMMENTARY
Jul 25, 2005

Condoleezza Rice's unfortunate decision

HONOLULU -- The recent decision by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to skip the annual ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) ministerial-level dialogue this Friday in Vientiane represents a setback for U.S. efforts to persuade Southeast Asians that Washington really cares about their region. Rice plans...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 25, 2005

Depredation of species that get in our way

NEW YORK -- "Protected Birds Are Back, With a Vengeance: Cormorants Take Over, Making Some Enemies." This headline in the New York Times earlier this month, inset in a photo showing a few black birds atop a tree, struck me with the thought: So it has come to pass. Hadn't the same daily some years back...
JAPAN
Jul 24, 2005

Japan-China-U.S. ties said vital

Scholars and experts from Japan, China and the United States agreed in a recent meeting in Beijing that stable and cooperative relations among the three countries "will be in the best interests" of them and the rest of the world, according to organizers of the event.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 24, 2005

It's the black comedy of Japan: 'Don't mention the war . . .'

A point that tends to be overlooked in the debate over textbooks that whitewash Japan's actions during World War II is that Japanese junior high school history classes rarely make it past the Meiji Restoration. Whether or not "comfort women" or the Rape of Nanking is mentioned in textbooks becomes an...
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2005

TSE outsiders panel meets, has yet to ponder regulatory spinoff option

A special advisory panel to the Tokyo Stock Exchange held its first meeting Wednesday with an eye toward submitting recommendations by fall on whether the bourse should spin off its regulatory functions.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 20, 2005

Lenders must reveal what's paid

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that moneylenders must disclose debt records to borrowers and that refusal to do so is an illegal act that constitutes a responsibility to pay compensation.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2005

The most dangerous civilian job in Iraq

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- In the translation world, the Italian phrase "traduttore, traditore" (translator, traitor) is used to suggest the inability to capture all the meaning in the original text and transfer it into another language because something inevitably gets lost in translation. Insurgents in...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Jul 17, 2005

Dining where no solo woman dared

Reiko Yuyama believes that adventures are there to be had in daily life without having to go out into the wilderness. In that sense, she says she might be "more of an adventurer than Christopher Columbus or Naomi Uemura," the late, great Japanese explorer and climber who disappeared on Mount McKinley...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 17, 2005

Indelible mark of the tattoo

THE WORLD OF TATTOO, by Maarten Hesselt van Dinter. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers/Hotei Publishing, 304 pp., 720 color illustrations, $80 (cloth). Charles Darwin averred that there was not one country in which the inhabitants did not tattoo themselves. From the ancient Briton to the plains Indians, through...
COMMENTARY
Jul 17, 2005

The international terror lab

NEW DELHI -- The July 7 London bombings, suspected to be the handiwork of British citizens of Pakistani origin, should serve as a reminder that major acts of international terrorism have first been tried out by Islamists in India before being replicated in the West. Such acts include attacks on symbols...
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2005

Preventive care for the elderly

A revision in the nursing-care insurance law, which passed the Diet in late June, will go into effect in April 2006, representing a significant turn in the direction of the government's approach since the insurance system was introduced in fiscal 2000.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2005

Upper House postal foes add LDP 10

Ten House of Councilors members from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party attended a meeting Thursday of the party's opponents to a set of postal privatization bills now before the chamber.
BUSINESS
Jul 15, 2005

Pension program invested into black

The public pension program cleared its books of red ink in fiscal 2004, with a weak yen helping it offload foreign stocks and bonds for a profit, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Thursday.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2005

NPA finds 51 trafficked women

The National Police Agency said Thursday that 51 women were trafficked into Japan and forced to work in the adult entertainment industry in the first half of 2005, the highest figure on record for the first six months of a year.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 15, 2005

Hatsuogawa: The days of eel are upon us

Tradition is comforting, no matter whose culture it is. We eat plum pudding for Christmas, mochi at New Year and moon cakes to mark the Autumn Festival. We throw beans at setsubun and, on Valentines' Day, we will gladly accept as much chocolate as comes our way.

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