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November 2014
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JAPAN

Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 1, 2014
Media whips up fuss over S&M bar claim
First came what the tabloids referred to as "W-jinin," the resignations of two female Cabinet members — Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yuko Obuchi and Justice Minister Midori Matsushima — on the same day.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 1, 2014
Debating the merits of lifetime employment
Some years ago I worked for a language-teaching service that offered in-house classes for companies. One client was a major electronics manufacturer, and many of the students were trained engineers assigned to the sales division.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Nov 1, 2014
New tech brings cinema to the deaf and blind
The lights dimmed inside the theater at the Tokyo International Film Festival and the audience quieted down. As Masayuki Suo's film "Maiko wa Lady (Lady Maiko)" began, the viewers were ready — with glasses-shaped head-mounted displays and earpieces designed to make cinema accessible to the deaf and...
Japan Times
That vexatious 'so desu ka'; Dalai Lama installed; Ikeda picked to be prime minister; Shibuya police box top lender nationwide
100 YEARS AGOTuesday, Nov. 10, 1914
The uncomfortable truth about 'comfort women'
Question: How did you view those people (that you infected with bubonic plague and dissected while still alive)? Didn't you have any feelings of pity?

ASIA PACIFIC

Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Nov 1, 2014
Thousands denounce HSBC board member's likening of Hong Kongers to freed slaves
Thousands have signed an online petition denouncing reported comments by an HSBC Holdings board member in which she likened Hong Kong protesters' demands for democracy to the emancipation of slaves.

WORLD

WORLD / Science & Health
Nov 1, 2014
New U.S. rockets to include launch-escape systems
Heeding a lesson from history, designers of a new generation of U.S. rockets will include escape systems to give crew members a fighting chance of surviving launch accidents such as the one that felled an unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares rocket on Tuesday.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Nov 1, 2014
Congo crowd kills man, eats him in retaliation for militant massacres: witnesses
A crowd stoned to death a young man in northeast Congo on Friday before burning and eating his corpse, witnesses said, in apparent revenge for a series of attacks by Ugandan rebels.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 1, 2014
Christian right still key to GOP plans in South
If Republicans win control of the Senate in the midterm elections they should say a prayer of thanks for Christian conservatives.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 1, 2014
Migrants' lives in peril as Italy ends sea rescues
Italy said Friday it will close a sea rescue mission that has saved the lives of more than 100,000 migrants from Africa and the Middle East, a move one rights group warned could lead to a "surge of deaths" in the Mediterranean.
WORLD
Nov 1, 2014
'Plastic' skulls found in Connecticut home are human remains
A pair of Connecticut junk haulers was stunned to learn on Friday that two skulls picked up at the cluttered home of a deceased man on the day before Halloween were human remains, not made of plastic as they had thought.

ENVIRONMENT

Japan Times
What's 'weasely' about wonderful weasels?
One of the mammals we're most likely to see in our Afan woods up here in Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture hills is the Japanese weasel (Mustela itatsi). These wonderful little animals, known as itachi in Japanese, are master hunters that can run, climb trees, swim and dive and take down birds or other...

Opinion

EDITORIALS
Nov 1, 2014
Spirit of giving to hometowns
The Abe administration plans to expand the system in which taxpayers contribute money to local governments of their choice — ideally their own hometowns — in return for tax reductions in the places where they currently live.
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 1, 2014
Commemorating wartime Soviet spy Sorge
Seventy years ago on Nov. 7, the Japanese authorities executed Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy who became a member of the Nazi Party and was operating as a journalist in wartime Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2014
Commercial rockets go boom like NASA's
There's no risk-free way to launch 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment to the International Space Station. As Orbital Sciences found out last week, some ways are far more dangerous than others.

Sports

Japan Times
NPB's quirky playoff rules recipe for confusion
Did the Hanshin Tigers deserve to play in this year's Japan Series? The team finished second in the Central League pennant race, seven games behind the league champion Yomiuri Giants, but the Tigers advanced to the CL Climax Series Final Stage with a controversial victory over the Hiroshima Carp in the...
BASKETBALL
Nov 1, 2014
Iwate crushes Tokyo, improves to 8-1
Nothing the Tokyo Cinq Reves did on Saturday could slow down the Iwate Big Bulls, and nothing could stop them from taking an insurmountable lead.

LIFE

Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 1, 2014
Hello Kitty: still fabulous at 40
Who is only five apples high and has no mouth — yet is one of the country's biggest cultural ambassadors?
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 1, 2014
Cultivating shrunken worlds in Bonsai-mura
Omiya is one of greater Tokyo's rare pockets of residential comfort that can accurately be defined as middle class — a trait it shares with places such as Chiba's Ichikawa Mama or southwestern Tokyo's Denenchofu district.

CULTURE

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014
Fuminori writes noir, but not as we know it
Fuminori Nakamura has won many of the major literary prizes in Japan and is quickly making the same kind of impact in the English-speaking world. His third novel to be translated into English, "Last Winter, We Parted," is out now. It's a tense, layered story centered around a young writer commissioned...
Japan Times
Hokkaido Highway Blues
Sake and sakura can be a dangerous combination. Drunk on both, English teacher Will Ferguson made a bet that he could hitchhike the length of Japan, from the southernmost tip in Cape Sata to the northernmost in Cape Soya, while following the cherry blossom as it burst into life in each part of the country....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014
Malice
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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014
The Sarashina Diary
...

COMMUNITY

COMMUNITY / Voices / OVERHEARD
Nov 1, 2014
Lost in translation
Dad, are we lost?

Longform

A woman passes an "akichi" (vacant lot) in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. The capital is littered with such small lots in part because of Japan's aging and shrinking population.
Dealing with rising land vacancies as Japan shrinks