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COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2000

Russia's back window onto North Korea

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- In the Davydova neighborhood in the northern part of town, one apartment block after another has been under construction for years. Thus, there are always North Korean laborers around.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 1, 2000

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has changed most of all?

When I look in the mirror each morning, I pretty much see what I expect . . .
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2000

The rising price of knowledge

BEIJING -- It should have been party time on the bright summer day 18-year-old Li Junliang was accepted by prestigious Beijing University. Fewer than one in 10 of China's students secure places at any of the country's crowded colleges and universities, let alone the Oxford University of China. But the...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 1, 2000

A stroll through ceramic country

FUKUOKA -- Driving from Fukuoka to the fertile northeast of Saga, the landscape suddenly changes. Gently stepped rice terraces and fields give way to short hills that rise abruptly like sugar lumps and end in craggy, chalky rocks. Towns with square brick chimneys loom, and signs begin pointing to artsy...
EDITORIALS
Oct 31, 2000

A medical advance fails in its promise

Some desperately ill children in Japan are dying because the smaller organs they require for transplant surgery are unavailable here. When their families can afford it, children needing such operations must travel to the United States or other countries where the use of organs from brain-dead donors...
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Teito unveils derailment safety plan

Tokyo subway operator Teito Rapid Transit Authority on Monday announced a set of new safety measures to prevent derailment, worked out in accordance with a recent Transport Ministry panel report urging the operator to strictly manage wheel load balance.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Pyongyang came to us for aid: Fukuda

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda on Monday insisted that North Korea in 1997 proposed that Japan provide 500,000 tons of rice to the famine-stricken country.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Coughing Empress to get checkup

The Empress, who has been coughing since earlier this month, will at her own request undergo a special X-ray checkup later this week, the vice grand steward of the Imperial Household Agency said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Environment may enter corporate equation

An Environment Agency advisory committee has drafted a plan that would provide a standard for companies in gauging their environmental performance and that could then be used as a yardstick for environment-conscious consumers and investors, agency officials said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Former KSD chief faces accusers

The former head of KSD, a government-linked insurance group under criminal investigation for alleged lending irregularities, has voluntarily visited prosecutors to deny the allegations against him, sources close to the case said Monday.
SOCCER / J. League
Oct 31, 2000

Japan edges Saudi Arabia to become Asian champion

BEIRUT -- Japan survived a hostile "away" crowd, an early penalty and a second-half barrage by Saudi Arabia on Sunday to win the Asian Cup final 1-0 on a neatly taken goal from Kyoto midfielder Shigeyoshi Mochizuki.
JAPAN / LIFE OFF MIYAKE
Oct 31, 2000

Evacuees long for home, gird for worst

Namiko Morishita did not expect it to last this long. She and her family fled their home on Miyake Island in late August as volcanic activity on Mount Oyama intensified.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Japan to create fauna, flora database

Japan will create a database covering 1.75 million species of plants and animals in Japan and 11 other Asian countries, Environment Agency officials said Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Bilateral talks on social security to open

Japan and the United States will begin negotiations in Tokyo next week on a social security pact to improve living and working conditions for nationals working in each other's countries, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 31, 2000

Matsui, Matsunaka scoop MVP honors

Yomiuri slugger Hideki Matsui has been voted the Central League's Most Valuable Player for the season two days after leading the Giants to the Japan Series championship, the Professional Baseball Organization of Japan announced Monday.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Alleged rapist of foreigners was fined for obscenity in '98

A businessman accused of raping two foreign women in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1996 and 1997 was detained and fined in 1998 for videotaping a woman in a restroom, police sources said Monday.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Hard lessons Japan failed to learn

JAPAN'S FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ITS PARALLELS TO U.S. EXPERIENCE, edited by Ryoichi Mikitani and Adam S. Posen. Washington: Institute for International Economics, Special Report 13, Sept. 2000, 228 pp., $20. There's an old joke about a politician's plea for a one-handed economist, one who can't say, "but...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Hot off the press

THE JAPANESE PRESS 2000. Nihon Shinbun Kyokai, 2000, 154 pp., 2,000 yen. Nihon Shinbun Kyokai, the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association, has released its annual survey of the Japanese press. As always, it includes a summary of industry trends, as well as a media directory.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 31, 2000

Speechless, but never silent

JAPANESE BEYOND WORDS: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker, by Andrew Horvat. Foreword by Jan Walls. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 176 pp., $14.95. As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . ....
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2000

Just the facts, ma'am

FACTS AND FIGURES OF JAPAN, 2000 edition. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 116 pp., 1,300 yen. SOCIAL SECURITY IN JAPAN, by Go Miyatake. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 80 pp., 1,800 yen (paper). CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE RELIGION, by Nobutaka Inoue. Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 73 pp., 1,000 yen (paper). For people...
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Standards for GMO foods mulled

A working group for an international task force on standards for foods made from genetically modified organisms kicked off its second meeting Monday in Tokyo to discuss general principles and guidelines for assessing the risks of such foods.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

Singer appointed UNEP ambassador

Singer Tokiko Kato on Monday was appointed as the first Japanese goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

The tea with chewy marbles from Taiwan gains foothold

What's got chewy, marble-size balls, tastes like ice milk tea and gets sucked through a big, fat straw? The answer is pearl tea -- a wacky and tasty snack-in-a-beverage from Taiwan now being served in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2000

French light Tokyo torch of friendship in Odaiba

A sculpture that rises like a knife blade has found a place in Tokyo's fashionable Odaiba district.

Longform

Capsule hotels were created as a way to deal with the amount of overwork employees tend to do in Japan. Can't commute home? Then spend the night in an tiny, affordable sleeping space.
Japan wakes up to the market for a proper sleep