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JAPAN
Sep 12, 2000

Economy up 1% in quarter: EPA

The staggering nature of Japan's recovery was reflected Monday by the latest gross domestic product report, which showed that the economy grew 1 percent during the April-June quarter.
BUSINESS
Sep 12, 2000

Hayami urges structural change

Bank of Japan Gov. Masaru Hayami on Monday said Japan's economy requires additional structural reforms to put it on a sustainable growth path.
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2000

Sales of electronic dictionaries enjoy rocketing growth

OSAKA -- Portable electronic dictionaries are enjoying rocketing sales in Japan, largely among middle-aged and elderly customers attracted by the devices' easy-to-read screens and user-friendliness, industry officials say.
EDITORIALS
Sep 12, 2000

'A hazardous occupation'

During his visit to the United States last week for the United Nations Millennium Summit, Chinese President Jiang Zemin met with media leaders and reportedly asked them to help soften his country's image. There is an easy way to do that. The Chinese government can stop harassing, arresting and imprisoning...
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2000

Post office parcel spews smoke

Forty-five people were taken to a hospital complaining of eye irritation Monday morning after a parcel being handled at Tokyo's Nihonbashi Post Office began emitting a pungent-smelling smoke, police said.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Sep 12, 2000

Intercultural influences

East-West fusions are nothing new. Nearly 100 years ago, some Western classical music was influenced by Indian classical or Javanese gamelan music. In the 1950s, violinist Yehudi Menuhin performed with Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. By the 1960s, John Coltrane was...
SUMO
Sep 12, 2000

Kotonishiki decides to retire

Former sekiwake Kotonishiki of the Sadogatake stable decided to hang up his mawashi on Sunday after struggling with a 1-6 record in the second-tier Juryo Division at the Autumn sumo tournament.
COMMENTARY
Sep 12, 2000

Japan needs a Third Way

Through the last decade of the 20th century, the Japanese economy has been in a state of confusion. After the bubble peaked in 1987-90, the economy went into a tailspin. The economy hit bottom in October 1993, according to official statistics, but since then it has shown few tangible signs of robust...
EDITORIALS
Sep 10, 2000

Old friends are the best

Reports from the United States tell us that some Americans are having their faith restored in a popular postwar Japanese export. The subject of their revived affection is not a car or a motorcycle, not a camera or an audiovisual device, not a laptop personal computer or other advanced information-technology...
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Russian attaches miss firing exercise

HIGASHI-FUJI, Shizuoka Pref. -- Russian military attaches stationed in Japan declined to attend a Ground Self-Defense Force firing drill in Shizuoka Prefecture on Saturday, apparently due to an alleged spying incident involving a Russian military attache in Tokyo, GSDF officials said.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Sep 10, 2000

That Fukuoka Dome Japan Series screw-up

While it's pretty much a foregone conclusion the Yomiuri Giants are going to win their first Central League pennant in four years, the Pacific League race is a dandy that threatens to go to the Oct. 9 wire with three teams in the running: the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, Seibu Lions and Nippon Ham Fighters.
BASEBALL / MLB
Sep 10, 2000

Hawks win seventh straight

Daiei center fielder Hiroshi Shibahara smacked a go-ahead solo homer off Lions hurler Kiyoshi Toyoda in the top of the eighth as the Hawks came from behind to beat the Seibu Lions at the Seibu Dome on Saturday.
SOCCER / J. League
Sep 10, 2000

Troussier signs new deal

A day before heading to Australia with the Japan Olympic team, Japan manager Philippe Troussier renewed his contract with the Japan Football Association on Friday at the JFA's headquarters in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Repair work starts again on Miyake

Emergency personnel remaining on the volcanic island of Miyake, some 200 km south of Tokyo, on Saturday resumed work to repair infrastructure damaged by recent mudslides.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Hatoyama elected DPJ president again

Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, was elected party president for a second term at a party convention Saturday in Tokyo, pledging to establish a new DPJ-led government after the Upper House elections next summer.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Battered wives to get better protection

The Health and Welfare Ministry plans to introduce a set of measures in the next fiscal year to protect women at shelters from attempts by their husbands to take them away by force, ministry officials said Saturday.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Quake of '23 gave Ikebukuro its Bohemian roots

When Ikebukuro Station opened on the Yamanote Line in 1903, the area around it was little more than pasture and vegetable fields.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 10, 2000

East-West cooking talent stirs with a clipping from Chives

My first day back in London, on the Food and Drink page of The Evening Standard, a headline caught my eye: Keep Jun and Beautiful. Below, a color photograph of -- it has to be said -- a truly dishy Japanese 29-year-old clad in whiter than whites with a long striped apron.
MORE SPORTS
Sep 10, 2000

Utsugi ready to fulfill softball dream with Japan

Reika Utsugi remembers the summer of 1996 -- missing out on the Japanese Olympic softball team after she changed her nationality. Four years later, the former Chinese captain will play for Japan in Sydney.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Diplomat in spy scandal leaves Japan

A Russian military attache at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo left Japan on Saturday after a senior officer of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force was arrested early Friday for allegedly passing defense secrets to him.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 10, 2000

Cambodian art regains its youth

"It's my everyday passion," says Phloeun Prim, the 24-year-old commercial manager of Les Artisans d'Angkor, a Siem Reap-based school which is training young people in skills such as silk weaving and stone carving.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 10, 2000

Chris McDonald

To commemorate his having lived for 50 years in Japan, Chris McDonald produced an engaging book of memories. In it he wrote: "If I were asked to single out one aspect of Japan that I have found more rewarding and enjoyable than any other, I would not hesitate to answer quite simply: 'Its people.' From...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2000

High costs a barrier for foreign students

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- An editorial in The Japan Times a few weeks ago focused on the Japanese government's efforts to increase the number of foreign students in Japan. No one would disagree with the government's dual aims of assisting in the development of human resources of poorer Asian countries...
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Lake Biwa water supply reduced

OSAKA -- Following months of fierce heat and below-average rainfall, authorities ordered a reduction in water taken from Lake Biwa and the Yodo River from Saturday, affecting Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka and Hyogo prefectures.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 10, 2000

A philosopher behind the video camera

Hitherto, people confronted by "video art" would mentally steel themselves to be bored by an alienating experience that excluded rather than included. This is the reason why an artist such as Pipilotta Rist, originally a rock-video director, has gained such enormous popularity for being the easy and...
CULTURE / Music
Sep 10, 2000

Long trip from Kiev to Tokyo justified by 'Pathetique' results

Kiev National Opera and Ballet Theater Orchestra July 25, Vladimir Kozhukhar conducting in Takemitsu Memorial Hall -- Ballad (Pormbescu), Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor, Op. 99 (Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, 1906-75), featuring Atsuko Tenma; Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 "Pathetique"...
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Unemployment adds to Miyake Island evacuees' woes

With an end to the volcanic activity on Mount Oyama nowhere in sight, evacuees from Miyake Island are facing an uphill battle in trying to secure sources of income upon settling into temporary housing in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Longform

The students at Mitaka Municipal No. 7 Junior High School have access to various cooling devices for when they play sports.
Japan's extreme heat is causing a rethink of school sports