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JAPAN
Aug 31, 2007

Merkel, Ozawa clash on MSDF mission

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa clashed Thursday over the Maritime Self-Defense Force's mission to provide logistic support for the NATO-led antiterrorist campaign in Afghanistan, with Merkel urging Japan to extend the operation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 31, 2007

'Because I Said So'

As a longtime fan of Diane Keaton, it's always disheartening to see her in roles that seem inadequate for the Oscar-winning, lean and brainy hipster icon of the 1970s ("Annie Hall," "Manhattan" and "Interiors," to name just a few). But her most recent foray into mainstream rom-com is just plain painful....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 31, 2007

A great escape to Biwako

Jasmine, a writer who hails from Hiroshima and is much older than me but has a refined magnetizing beauty that cannot be ignored, pours me a cup of green tea on my first ever junket. It's just before the world turns blue; just before I'm dropped into a Marc Chagall painting by an invisible but all-seeing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 31, 2007

Jack Peñate

Jack Peñate wants to inject human feeling into pop music again. And not just in the vocals — he wants it in every last note played. He and his crack band, Joel Porter (bass) and Alex Robins (drums), play a lively, sometimes frenetic mix of rockabilly, country, rock 'n' roll, Latin, lounge jazz and...
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 30, 2007

Medalists look to Beijing '08

OSAKA — Politicians and athletes have more in common than many people may realize.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 30, 2007

Cities in the dust

The Fascist dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco wasn't everyone's cup of tea — but he did manage the unusual feat of transcending time.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 29, 2007

Let's (try to) get serious about silliness

August is known as the "silly season" in the media in the United States and the United Kingdom, as newspaper editors faced with legislators all gone on holiday struggle in vain to fill their pages and resort to, well, silly stories.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2007

Nationwide quake alert in offing

It's still beyond the reach of science to predict exactly when an earthquake will strike, but Japan will soon get the next-best thing — televised warnings that come before the shaking starts.
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Aug 29, 2007

Save the planet: wind-powered toys and PC ways to catch insects

A nimal rights are as important to me as they are to the next Homo sapien. But I draw the line at in sects inflicting their unwanted presence on me, mosquitoes most especially spring to mind. Frankly, the first solution that comes to mind is finding use No. 1,001 for a newspaper. Those who prefer a less...
EDITORIALS
Aug 28, 2007

Learning from a summer of disasters

With an airplane exploding, bridges collapsing, and a nuclear plant shutting down, it has been a summer of disasters. Around the globe since May, no continent has been left untouched — whether by fire, flood, tornado, airplane crash or a collapsing mine. Disasters, clearly, do not take summer vacations....
LIFE / Language
Aug 28, 2007

To maintain your honor, keep your pecking up

First of two parts
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Aug 28, 2007

Kyosho's MANOI PF0, IDEA International's MACINARI-TAKUMI collection, etc.

Your new best friend
MORE SPORTS
Aug 27, 2007

Steeplechase kings

OSAKA — Few things in life are guaranteed, but there seems to be one automatic occurrence in athletics: a Kenyan-born athlete will win a major international steeplechase race.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Aug 27, 2007

'Lucky bag' binge turns into Pandora's box

Japanese retailers like to offer "fukubukuro" (lucky bags) to customers as an added attraction. The bags, sold at a fixed price, are filled with an assortment of goods that are supposed to be worth more than what you paid for the bag.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Aug 26, 2007

Embarrassing celebrity game show, children in poverty special, honeybee nature show

The risk of being publicly embarrassed is one that all TV talent run when they appear on variety shows. It's part of the job. However, you are virtually guaranteed to be embarrassed on the health-related variety show "Saishu Keikaku: Takeshi no Honto wa Kowai Katei no Igaku (Final Warning: Takeshi's...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 25, 2007

A sprint to keep up with the slow life

The people who work in our post office are, to use the politically correct term, "a little slow." Long before I moved to this island, the government had a plan that worked. They sent those workers who were "a little slow," to work on a small island where hardly anyone one lived and where they could do...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2007

'Salvador'

Now that the bio-pic genre has become as familiar as a worn beach towel, it seems to have spawned a sub-genre — as yet still in the embryonic stages — which can perhaps be described as the "bio-pic of death."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2007

'Sicko'

In the space of merely a few years, director Michael Moore has seen his reputation morph from "the guy who made documentary films truly popular" to "the guy who plays fast and loose with the truth." His moment of greatest triumph at the box office — "Fahrenheit 9/11," which raked in some $120 million,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 23, 2007

Late to the art party in the 1980s

"Place" and "presence" were two of the core concerns of Minimalism, the last thread of Modernism before it collapsed into Postmodernism's stylistic confusion in the 1970s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 23, 2007

Behind the mask

Noh is Japan's most inscrutable performing art. A tremendous influence on kabuki and bunraku puppet theater, it is a household name across the nation, yet relatively few Japanese have ever been to a show. Culture vultures marvel at the elaborate costumes and the esoteric, chantlike music; the plays are...
Reader Mail
Aug 22, 2007

Pieces of the lunar/solar calendar

The July 23 Japan Times front page features a wonderful photo of a polar bear chewing on an icy treat at Tennoji Zoo in Osaka, but the tail end of the caption misleadingly says, "The ice was a present ahead of 'Taisho' . . . the hottest day of the year under an old variation of the lunar calendar."...
Japan Times
SOCCER
Aug 22, 2007

Beckham returns to form with perfect timing

CARSON, Calif. (AP) A month into his hugely hyped arrival with the Los Angeles Galaxy, David Beckham has finally made a splash on the field.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 21, 2007

Troubled Vick should seek mercy of the court - and Goodell

Michael Vick has more to worry about at the moment than just what Roger Goodell thinks. Or so it would seem.
SOCCER
Aug 20, 2007

Spurs find form against Derby

LONDON (AP) Tottenham lifted the pressure on manager Martin Jol by scoring three goals in the first 14 minutes on Saturday on the way to a 4-0 Premier League victory over Derby.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 20, 2007

Why can't Americans give up their guns?

NEW YORK — Is there anything comparable to the numbing obstinacy, the utter blindness to reality, that politicians display toward the consequences of untrammeled gun ownership in this country? So I wondered, once again, when I stumbled upon President George W. Bush's answer to what some now call "the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / WEEK 3
Aug 19, 2007

Beauty beheld in brutalism

No matter how wild or wacky their hobbies or obsessions, in the age of the Internet no one need feel isolated any more, and by casting all inhibitions aside almost anyone is assured of finding like-minded others out there in cyberspace — if not just around the corner from home.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?