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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Dec 3, 2000

More testing times for students of Japanese

Today, many foreigners have put on their armor and have sharpened their swords in preparation for battling through the Japanese Proficiency Test. I wish you all luck and survival. I recently spoke with the god of the Japanese Proficiency Test, who lives on Uranus and appeared on my TV screen via my satellite...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2000

2002 World Cup: Soccer without fear?

BRUSSELS -- The first world cup of the new millennium is to be staged in Japan and South Korea in the summer of 2002. Both countries want to use this billion-dollar sporting showpiece as a global shop window allowing those watching, both in the stadiums and on TV, to see the real Japan and the real South...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 3, 2000

The cutting edge of sound and vision

For some, myself included, the U.K. Sound Design exhibition, held Nov. 23-27 at the Ground in Harajuku, was a stroll down memory lane. Organized by the British Council in Japan, the show assembled record sleeves from seminal British designers of the last 30 years. Seeing many old records that had made...
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

UA accident laid to crew miscommunication

Poor communication between crew members triggered panic aboard a United Airlines jumbo jet involved in an accident in 1998 at Narita airport that injured 24 people, according to a Transport Ministry report released Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

Easier entry to Japan urged for participants in big events

An advisory panel to the Transport Ministry on Friday urged the government to introduce a "preclearance" system for customs, immigration and quarantine procedures for foreign participants in major international events, such as the planned soccer World Cup in 2002.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2000

Bill foot-dragging belies pluralist goal

The postponement of debate on a bill that would grant limited suffrage to foreigners until next year at the earliest has prompted long-term foreign residents of Japan to question whether the nation is serious about embracing the foreign population.
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2000

BOJ pushing 2,000 yen notes

Tellers at the Bank of Japan and its 33 branch offices will change money into 2,000 yen bills from Monday to encourage use of the neglected notes, officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2000

13 billion yen squandered by officials in '99: audit

The government and state-affiliated corporations squandered 13.38 billion yen in public money in 268 cases during fiscal 1999, the Board of Audit said in a report submitted Thursday to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2000

Swedish bazaar to benefit charity

The public is invited to the Swedish Christmas Charity Bazaar Dec. 9, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Embassy of Sweden in Roppongi, Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 1, 2000

Are class differences widening in Japan?

Along with increased pressures for deregulation and a free-market economy have come wider questions of what Japanese society should be like in the new century. Has the Japan in which 90 percent of the people considered themselves middle class ended? Is Japan becoming a class society of winners and losers...
EDITORIALS
Nov 30, 2000

Help society's youngest victims

It is a sad commentary on today's adults that the physical and psychological abuse of children is a growing and increasingly troubling phenomenon in Japan more than half a year after the Diet enacted a law prohibiting chronically abusive parents from meeting or corresponding with offspring they have...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Nov 30, 2000

Ignore the skipper and go west, young men

What on earth has Bobby Valentine been smoking these days? The guy is a great manager and he keeps us sportswriters in business with witty quotes and humorous antics. But this time he's gone too far. We're talking Siberia here. In a recent interview with the Boston Herald, Valentine expressed his feelings...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 30, 2000

The Russian Far East reaps peace dividend

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- Bunkered in a hillside above the port city where Russia's Pacific Fleet anchors, Slavyansky Khleb may be one of the most secure bakeries on the planet.
JAPAN / FREEDOM OF PRESS IN THE BALANCE
Nov 29, 2000

Media considering best way to handle public's loss of faith

An amendment in June to Japan's 54-year-old Canon of Journalism apparently reflects the sense of crisis within the nation's news organizations over the apparent growing public dissatisfaction with the industry.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2000

U.S. blocks the road to a greener planet

LONDON -- The Canadians and the Australians were just as bad, really, and the Saudi Arabians were outrageous: They want the world to compensate them for every barrel of oil they don't sell if it cuts back on burning fossil fuels to slow global warming. But the Americans were the real reason that the...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2000

Shaky finances threaten to sink KEDO

Sinp'o is a quiet coastal town on the edge of the Japan Sea in North Korea, almost two hours by helicopter from the capital Pyongyang. There is a beautiful swath of unspoiled beach, edged with bushes and shrubs typical of marine margins, and clusters of shabby houses and farms littered across the landscape....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 26, 2000

Barry Duell

Last year Barry Duell published a book that he wrote in Japanese. This year he is putting it out in English. Its title indicates its unusual content: "The Other Potato: Sweet Potato in the U.S.A." Duell said that when he was considering the book he found few sources of information. "The biggest source...
CULTURE / Music
Nov 26, 2000

Looking up so tears won't fall

Tragedy crushes some people, twists and mangles them in ways from which they never recover. Others emerge stronger, as if all the pressure had fused to produce a diamond. Violin prodigy Diana Yukawa shows such sparkle.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 26, 2000

The modernist innovations of Mackintosh

Tall, dark and handsome, the chairs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh are international objects of desire. Belying their age, they stand in design studios, hotel lobbies and private homes like stylish question marks.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 25, 2000

In Peru, the strong man takes his leave

LONDON -- Alejandro Toledo, the man who would have won the Peruvian election last spring if President Alberto Fujimori had not cheated at every stage of the process, got it exactly right: "Alberto Fujimori's government will be illegitimate, a source of permanent instability, and I don't think it can...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 25, 2000

Jury is back on Mashiko exhibition

Mashiko is a name that many of you are familiar with, I'm sure. It is the name of a town in Tochigi Prefecture, as well as an internationally recognized pottery style made famous by the late Shoji Hamada. Today hundreds of potters reside there, and many come from around the world to study or pay their...
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2000

Young people called on to help end exploitation of children

The active participation of young people is key to the successful global effort to fight sexual exploitation of children, according to an adviser to an international conference on the issue scheduled next year in Yokohama.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 23, 2000

Awakening the spirit of voluntarism in Japanese youth

Seventeen students gathered in their clubhouse at Kansai University of International Studies finish reviewing enlarged photos for an exhibition at their autumn campus festival. Then they move on to the next important task -- who should draft the text to accompany the photos and how it should be worded....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 23, 2000

A night at the culinary opera

Let it be stated unequivocably and from the outset: The Food File is not a great fan of gastrodomes and flashy new mega-restaurants where style outweighs substance and quality is sacrificed at the altar of fleeting fashion. Nor are we enamored of restaurant chains, where menus -- no matter how titillatingly...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 22, 2000

Two countries, one system?

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Last week, Willy Wo-Lap Lam lost his job as the China correspondent on the South China Morning Post. That technically he resigned rather than be "promoted" to a non-China-related job is irrelevant, as it was clear that he was not going to be allowed to continue writing his weekly...
JAPAN
Nov 21, 2000

Fujimori confirms resignation intent

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori Monday confirmed he intends to resign within 48 hours, just hours after all 14 members of his Cabinet tendered their resignations in protest of his surprise decision.
SUMO
Nov 20, 2000

Akebono king of Kyushu

Akebono, facing a potential playoff with No. 9 maegashira Kotomitsuki, overwhelmed fellow-yokozuna Musashimaru in the final bout of the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament on Sunday at Fukuoka International Center to take his 11th yusho with a 14-1 record.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2000

Transparency crucial to corporate survival

Most companies will face a crisis at one point, but it's not necessarily the crisis itself that will dictate that company's future, but rather how it is handled.

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