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LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 3, 2001

Walking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Approaching Machu Picchu on foot along Peru's 32-km Inca Trail might sound the stuff of legend. Or, better still, the stuff of Tin Tin. In all honesty, however, it can be more trial than trail.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jan 3, 2001

Asian continent in league of its own

First of three parts As the third millennium dawned, the light of the rising sun swept westward across the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. It brought a gray half-light that crept slowly across the dark ice-locked wastes of northeast Asia. Farther south, the sun's fiery-orange disc rose majestically...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 1, 2001

Odd echoes of the Meiji Restoration

JAPAN'S EMERGENCE AS A MODERN STATE: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period, by E. Herbert Norman, 60th Anniversary Edition, edited by Lawrence T. Woods. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, Sept. 2000, 336 pp., $75 (cloth), $25.95 (paper). It's hard to fault E. Herbert Norman's analysis of Japan....
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

Japan needs open, clear agenda in an age of life science

The 21st century will be called the century of life science. In fact, an enormous amount of money has already been reinvested for research in this field on a global scale. A representative example is the human genome project, which is closing in on the complete deciphering of human DNA. In addition,...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 1, 2001

Yang offers up portrait of 'real' family life

Family dramas are a movie staple, but few have the texture of real family life, in which individual destinies unfold and interact in ways too messy and complex for the usual movie ad copy. What we usually get instead is either melodrama or caricature -- i.e., something that can be easily packaged and...
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2000

Cities set to merge divided over new leader

It looked like a match made in heaven when, on Aug. 10, the two beaming mayors of Hoya and Tanashi shook hands on a deal to merge the two western Tokyo cities.
JAPAN
Dec 27, 2000

Education panel hits individuality, stresses Japanese-language focus

An Education Ministry advisory panel is calling for increased Japanese-language study and reading opportunities for children, saying a good command of the language provides a solid platform for education and cultural literacy.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Dec 27, 2000

Reay for the end of the year?

www.nenga.co.jp One of the biggest New Year's traditions is entering your friends in a lottery by sending them special nengajo greeting cards printed by the post office. This year it moves to the Internet. Sort of. You're not gonna make any of your friends a millionaire, and the prizes come from the...
COMMUNITY
Dec 27, 2000

Hard for many to fight the big chill

Winter is a painful season for Satoko Kojima (not her real name), a Tokyo office worker who says she cannot tolerate cold temperatures.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 27, 2000

Common interest warms KMT-CCP ties

TAIPEI -- The reopening of the so-called three links -- trade, transportation and communication -- between Taiwan and China may still be some way off, but in the meantime it appears Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party (KMT) has sidestepped the ban and forged its own direct link with China.
COMMENTARY
Dec 25, 2000

China's U.S. envoy is no stranger to Bush

WASHINGTON -- How many nations can send to America an ambassador who has been a personal friend of the Bush family for nearly a quarter-century?
CULTURE / Art
Dec 24, 2000

Rene Lalique: the magic of design

"Siren and Frogs" carafe by Rene Lalique Some of the best window shopping this Christmas season is being enjoyed at an exhibition of jewelry and glassware by Rene Lalique (1860-1945), currently on display at Tokyo's most elegant art gallery, the Teien. Held in the Art Deco building that was once the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Dec 24, 2000

Jazzchor Freiburg

Germany's award-winning, unconventional 25-member Jazzchor Freiburg recently made its second tour of Japan. The choir is characterized by unpredictability, as its founder-conductor believes it is boring for audiences to know what is coming next. He throws into a typical concert as much variety as he...
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2000

'Open source' forums search for new models in post-IT era

KYOTO -- "Open source," a now familiar term on the Internet, originates from a method of developing computer software that has enabled the creation and continuous improvement of the successful Linux system.
CULTURE / Music
Dec 24, 2000

Vatican hears a different drummer

The fax came from Rome. It said: "Your name has been forwarded to us by Richard Geoffroy of Dom Perignon and Clair Panzer, director of the film shot at Epernay. . . . We are keen to invite M. Shonosuke Okura to perform in our upcoming event." It was signed by Marisa Marcella of Prime Time Promotions,...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 24, 2000

MoT's 'Gift' gets every visitor involved

Eleven Japanese and foreign artists are featured in "The Gift of Hope," the third exhibition in the "MoT Annual" series, which previously only showcased emerging Japanese artists. It was decided to expand the format this year because of the transition from the 20th to the 21st century. The artists were...
COMMENTARY
Dec 22, 2000

The EU gets ready to grow

LONDON -- The recent European Union summit at Nice seems to have been bad tempered and acrimonious. Yet it eventually, even if only after days of wrangling, ended in an agreement of sorts and the way is now open to the admission of new members from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, leading in due...
BUSINESS
Dec 21, 2000

Economists unhappy with latest budget

In its attempt to formulate a budget with the dual and dueling purposes of bringing about an economic recovery and preparing for painstaking reform, it seems the government has managed to do neither.
JAPAN
Dec 21, 2000

83 trillion yen budgeted for 2001

Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa on Wednesday unveiled a draft general-account budget for fiscal 2001 that is smaller than its predecessor for the first time in three years but will nevertheless leave Japan 666 trillion yen in debt.
JAPAN
Dec 21, 2000

Ministry proposes record-high defense budget

The Finance Ministry on Wednesday proposed a record-high defense budget of 4.955 trillion yen for fiscal 2001, which is a 0.4 percent rise over the initial budget for fiscal 2000, a ministry official said.
ENVIRONMENT
Dec 21, 2000

One tall organic latte, please

If you started your day with a cup of coffee, think about how you selected the beans for your brew. Perhaps they were on sale, or your favorite roast from Brazil or Colombia. Chances are, however, you didn't have the option of buying organically farmed coffee.
JAPAN
Dec 20, 2000

Nationwide network eyed to combat eating disorders

The Health and Welfare Ministry will set up a nationwide network of medical centers within three years to treat eating disorders such as anorexia and hyperorexia, ministry officials said.
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2000

Korean residents demand protection in wake of credit unions' insolvency

OSAKA -- Pro-Seoul Korean residents in Japan marched to the Finance Ministry's Kinki Finance Bureau in Osaka on Tuesday, seeking protection for customers of a credit union that was declared insolvent Saturday.
JAPAN
Dec 19, 2000

Switch China's ODA terms to project basis, panel urges

Japan should start providing its official development assistance to China on a project basis and terminate its habit of multiyear disbursement programs, a report released Monday by a Foreign Ministry advisory panel says.
JAPAN
Dec 19, 2000

120 nations sign treaty targeting top toxic threats

In a recent set of marathon talks that went down to -- and past -- the wire, delegates from more than 120 countries hashed out the first international treaty designed to eliminate some of the world's most toxic chemicals.
EDITORIALS
Dec 18, 2000

Myanmar in the middle

Relations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Europe are moving forward. The fact that foreign ministers from the two blocs held their two-day meeting in Vientiane, Laos, last week is a sign of progress. The relationship had been frozen for two years amid mounting acrimony. Divisions...
JAPAN
Dec 18, 2000

Local civil servants grow fewer

The number of local public servants across Japan as of April 1 was 3,204,297, down 27,861 from a year earlier, the largest decline since the Home Affairs Ministry began surveying their numbers in 1975, the ministry said in a report released Sunday.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past