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COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 14, 2012

Firms have few grounds to refuse staff paid leave

Reader KA writes: "In a recent Lifelines column ("All employees in Japan are entitled to paid leave, period," Dec. 13) it was stated that all employees have the legal right to take paid vacation providing they meet certain basic criteria. Whilst that is legally correct, employers can often prevent paid...
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 12, 2012

Are supercomputers worth their super price tags?

"Why do we have to aim for the world's No. 1 — what's wrong with being the world's No. 2?"
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 12, 2012

Family reunion special; medical mystery 'Shi no Tenteki'; CM of the week: Takasu Clinic

TV Tokyo presents the latest in its series of attempted reunion specials. Though this sort of show is common on Japanese television, "Umi wo Koeta Kazoku Ai" ("Family Love Beyond the Sea"; Mon., 8 p.m.) goes a step further by reconnecting loved ones separated by international borders.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Feb 10, 2012

New to sake? Here's where to start

"Is it always this crowded?" I ask a happi-coat-clad clerk at the Meishu Center sake shop in Hamamatsucho, as she pours me three glasses of sake from hefty, 1.5-liter isshōbin bottles.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 10, 2012

Met's mayhem hits the screen

What do you get when the four young lovers from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" become stranded on Prospero's island from the Bard's "The Tempest"? A lot of fun, mayhem and magic in The Metropolitan Opera's original creation "The Enchanted Island," which had its world premiere Dec....
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 10, 2012

Dancer goes through time in new show

Inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five" and stoic philosopher Seneca's letters gives character to an upcoming performance in Tokyo by Izabela Chlewinska, a rising choreographer and dancer from Poland.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 10, 2012

Popular Chekhov play gets fresh treatment for audiences in Tokyo

Despite being 112 years old, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters" is still one of the most popular translated plays to be staged in Japan.
EDITORIALS
Feb 10, 2012

Selecting a 'platinum' carrier

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is expected to select by the end of this month a telecom carrier that can use a 900-megahertz (MHz) frequency spectrum for high-speed mobile phone communications. By Jan. 27, four telecom carriers — NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, SoftBank and eAccess — submitted...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 10, 2012

NNTT hopes Generation 2.0 hears 'Silence'

The late classical composer Teizo Matsumura, American film director Martin Scorsese, and playwright/director Keiko Miyata may seem an unlikely trio, but they share a reverence for "Silence," the 1966 novel by Shusaku Endo.
Reader Mail
Feb 9, 2012

Wider road to family medicine

Regarding the Jan. 10 editorial "Improving medical services": In order to achieve better medical services, Japan needs to create an effective family medicine system. Because of (1) distorted medical school curricula that place too much weight on specialization and (2) an educational system that enables...
Reader Mail
Feb 9, 2012

Initiative beats kanji knowledge

Regarding Franz Pichler's Feb. 5 letter, "Only Japanese-speaking nurses": What Pichler seems not to appreciate is that it is not a question of Indonesian nurses being unable to speak Japanese. After three years in a Japanese environment, I'm sure that most of them have a level of Japanese proficiency...
COMMENTARY
Feb 9, 2012

Dubious reasons to attack Iran

It is hard not to be impressed by the one-dimensional reasons the United States gives for its various animosities.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2012

Hashimoto group claims union tried to tip election

Osaka Municipal Assembly members from Mayor Toru Hashimoto's Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) group are pursuing allegations that a city labor union attempted to gather votes for Hashimoto's opponent in last November's election in possible violation of campaign laws.
EDITORIALS
Feb 7, 2012

Questions over stress tests

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) on Jan. 18 judged "appropriate" the results of the stress tests of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture. On Jan. 31, an International Atomic Energy Agency team determined that Japan's stress...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2012

Battlegrounds for bringing Wall Street to justice

What shall we make of the surprise pronouncement in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address that a belated investigation has been launched into the role of fraud in the financial crisis?
EDITORIALS
Feb 6, 2012

Less respect for credit rating agencies

Italian investigative authorities have started investigating credit rating agencies on suspicion of manipulating markets by issuing ratings without a solid basis. The investigation appears to be retaliatory action for the agencies' downgrading of bonds of European countries.
Reader Mail
Feb 5, 2012

Higher level of political discourse

Kevin Rafferty's Feb. 1 article, "President Obama's dreams are suffering nightmares," reads like a love letter to Barack Obama, calling him the "young, intelligent, telegenic president."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 5, 2012

Yakushima free-stay takes some fearful turns

"Oh, if you want to pee you can just do it out the front door," my host Yuki says as he gives me an introductory tour of the house and points out the powder room — merely a pit with a long drop and an unconnected toilet pedestal covering the hole.
BUSINESS
Feb 4, 2012

TSE glitch no payday for platforms

Japan's alternative trading platforms missed out on a potential payday as regulators stopped them from fielding orders when a computer error caused the biggest trading disruption in six years Thursday at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 3, 2012

Ice sculptures, snow slides at Hokkaido fest

The City of Sapporo will be hosting the 63rd annual Snow Festival this month. The event is considered a "must see" for tourists and about 2 million people visited the festival last year.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2012

Execs indicted for N. Korea exports

Two executives from small trading houses in Nagoya and Tokyo were indicted Wednesday for allegedly violating government trade sanctions by exporting used personal computers to North Korea.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2012

Genba meets AKB48 China envoys

Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba met with members of all-girl idol group AKB48 on Thursday and thanked them for taking part in a campaign to attract Chinese tourists and dispel harmful rumors about the safety of Japanese food products.
BUSINESS
Feb 3, 2012

System glitch halts some trading on TSE

The Tokyo Stock Exchange suffered its biggest system glitch in six years Thursday, temporarily suspending trade of 241 stocks and other financial instruments for more than three hours.
BUSINESS
Feb 3, 2012

Net loss forecast shoots to ¥220 billion

Sony Corp., Japan's largest consumer-electronics exporter, widened its full-year net loss forecast to ¥220 billion from the ¥90 billion loss predicted in November, the company said in a statement Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 2, 2012

Tokyo Jihen "Color Bars"

Tokyo Jihen's first five albums have titles relating to types of television programming, "Sports" or "Variety" or "Adult." The Shiina-Ringo-led group's sixth album, though, is titled "Color Bars," after the rainbow lines that grace the TV screen during technical difficulties or dead-air time. It's a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 2, 2012

The rootless woodblock prints of Kuniyoshi

There have been several exhibitions of the 19th-century ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi in recent years. In 2009, there was "Woodblock Prints of Eccentricity and Laughter" at the Fuchu Art Museum and last year we had "Utagawa Kuniyoshi: Unparalleled Ukiyo-e Artist" at the Ota Memorial...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 2, 2012

The rootless woodblock prints of Kuniyoshi

There have been several exhibitions of the 19th-century ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi in recent years. In 2009, there was "Woodblock Prints of Eccentricity and Laughter" at the Fuchu Art Museum and last year we had "Utagawa Kuniyoshi: Unparalleled Ukiyo-e Artist" at the Ota Memorial...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2012

Privacy and Net cafes — a tale of two cities

Kazushi Takahashi, a 22-year-old student in Tokyo, likes the privacy provided by closed individual rooms in Internet cafes, where he can surf the Web, play online games and read manga.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami