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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LEARNING BY HEART
Apr 27, 2001

Toddlers' dance: freedom within structure

In fluffy tutus and silky ballet slippers, a circle of pink angels do back-bends in a circle. They dance like storks, skip to my lou and fly backward. It's obviously fun, but the pace is quick.
JAPAN
Apr 27, 2001

Impact of hotter planet seen locally

The effects of global warming have become visible in ecosystems around the country, according to the latest research released Thursday by an advisory group to the Environment Ministry.
SOCCER / World cup
Apr 27, 2001

Spain slips past Japan 1-0 in friendly

CORDOBA, Spain -- Substitute midfielder Ruben Baraja scored in injury time Wednesday to give the home team a 1-0 win and deny Japan a draw in a friendly international with Spain at Cordoba's Arcangel Stadium.
COMMUNITY / THE PARENT TRIP
Apr 27, 2001

Being completely fair

When I brought my children to Japan a year ago, I expected they'd pick up on certain things faster than me. I did not, however, anticipate that they'd so quickly succumb to the Japanese national obsession with janken.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2001

Drugs, lies and policy debate

Traffic Rating: * * * * Director: Steven Soderbergh Running time: 148 minutes Language: English and Spanish (with subtitles in Japanese and English)Now showing It's rare enough that Hollywood makes an issue film, rarer still when it's an ongoing debate and not one where history has already decided...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2001

Riding roughshod over planet and people

While many of us were celebrating Earth Day on Sunday, environmental activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera spent another day in a Mexican jail. Soldiers arrested the pair in May 1999 and, says Amnesty International, tortured them until they confessed to guerrilla ties. Amnesty rejects this, saying...
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2001

Wake up, it's just a bad movie

The Family Man Rating: * * Director: Brett Ratner Running time: 125 minutes Language: EnglishNow showing This is Kafka's nightmare scenario: One morning, a man wakes up and finds he's turned into a giant bug. He must deal with the inner turmoil that follows. This is writer/director Brett Ratner's...
COMMENTARY
Apr 23, 2001

Textbook serves Japan poorly

A junior high-school history textbook edited under the direction of a nationalist group, the Japanese Society for Textbook Reform, continues to stir controversy both here and abroad. The textbook recently received the green light from the Education and Science Ministry after the editors accepted all...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Apr 23, 2001

Moscow exiles a mogul with good taste

The Kremlin wins one: President Vladimir Putin's bitter critic, Media-Most media empire, is dead. Its assets have been transferred to pro-Kremlin stockholders, its journalists have been fired or silenced and its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, is hiding abroad.
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2001

Poetry and the people

When the poet Chaucer saw that it was April, one year in the late 1300s, he wrote cheerily about its sweet showers piercing the drought of March to the root. When T.S. Eliot saw that it was April, some five and a half centuries later, he wrote bleakly about it being the cruelest month, "breeding lilacs...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 22, 2001

Europe seeks a greater role in Korea

SEOUL -- Whatever their personal opinions about U.S. President George W. Bush may be, supporters and foes must agree that his foreign policy has not received good grades in European capitals.
COMMENTARY
Apr 22, 2001

LDP must reform for the nation's good

For the past decade, the Japanese political scene has remained extremely unstable. Things have gone from bad to worse since the Liberal Democratic Party formed a coalition government. The root cause of the instability was the LDP's loss of majority status in both Houses of the Diet.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Apr 22, 2001

Real block-rocking beats

With dance music gaining more of a presence on the charts and more play on many people's CD players, rhythm rather than melody is supreme. Granted, much of it -- from fey pop to dance crossovers -- is soulless. It is mechanical, not just in the way it is produced, but also in the way it sounds.
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 22, 2001

Yukio Ninagawa: Now that's the fighting spirit

In the theater world, director Yukio Ninagawa is a living legend. Practicing his craft for more than 30 years and in the international spotlight for 20, he has yet to exhaust his renowned creativity and energy.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Apr 22, 2001

Underground Mr. Zoogunzoo: A cave of wonder, down under

Underground Mr. Zoogunzoo has an interior to match its singular name. The walls are daubed with adobe designs, as if decorated by aboriginal dot artists. Light diffuses from opaque lamp shades resembling irregular crystals or the seed pods of an alien life form.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 21, 2001

China faces a dilemma in ties with U.S.

HONG KONG -- In the end, China released those 24 members of the crew of the U.S. EP-3E reconnaissance plane just in the nick of time. The end of the crew's detention -- plus China's decision not to put any of the crew on trial, as some hardliners had advocated -- came just in time to undercut a growing...
COMMENTARY
Apr 21, 2001

Koizumi takes an early lead

Political turmoil is brewing as the governing Liberal Democratic Party gears up to elect its next president April 24. Whoever is elected will replace the unpopular Yoshiro Mori as prime minister.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 21, 2001

A time of rapid change and slow speech

Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Japanese workforce? Like cards, you have been shuffled and dealt out to a different department or location within your company, as if you worked for Trump.
JAPAN
Apr 20, 2001

Foreigners face long slog to Japanese citizenship

Seven years after he became the first foreign sumo wrestler to win the revered Emperor's Cup in 1972, Jesse "Takamiyama" Kuhaulua applied for Japanese citizenship.
JAPAN
Apr 19, 2001

Mori to quit in bid to boost faith in LDP

Finally announcing his resignation to the public, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said Wednesday he is leaving office so his Liberal Democratic Party can win back the public's trust after a string of embarrassing scandals and his own gaffes.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Apr 19, 2001

Calling all Internauts...

www.zingasia.com An Asia travel site that for some reason wants to be a portal. The only other shopping experience on the Net that offers so much to contemplate is Amazon. But looking for vacation possibilities just isn't the same as browsing through books, and the reams information and suggestions can...
EDITORIALS
Apr 18, 2001

Mr. Mori's year in review

A new prime minister of Japan will take office later this month, following the election of a new Liberal Democratic Party president next Tuesday. It does not matter that Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has not yet publicly announced his resignation. His exit has been a foregone conclusion for some time....
CULTURE / Film
Apr 18, 2001

That's, like, what living is like, in'it?

Ratcatcher Purely Belter Rating: * * * * 1/2 Japanese title: Boku to Sora to Mugibatake Director: Lynne Ramsay Running time: 93 min. Language: English Now showing Rating: * * * * Director: Mark Herman Running time: 99 min. Language: English Opens April 28 So often, children in British cinema are...
BUSINESS
Apr 18, 2001

Bad loans are not the problem, says banking bigwig

The head of the Japanese Bankers Association on Tuesday denied international and domestic assertions that banks' bad loans are responsible for the nation's economic woes.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Apr 18, 2001

The Japan Blues Carnival

Some things in life are constant: the power of good music, the satisfaction of spicy food, the cathartic effect of a plainly told story. The annual Japan Blues Carnival will bring all that wrapped up in the blues for two great, long outdoor shows, plus three gigs at smaller indoor venues.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 18, 2001

Leaves left by the divine wind

When England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, it was profoundly changed. We might expect the same to have been true in Japan's case if it had fallen to the invading Mongols and their Chinese and Korean auxiliaries in 1274 or 1281.
JAPAN
Apr 17, 2001

Stress hits 80%, mars lives of 40%

Nearly 80 percent of Japanese surveyed say they experience stress in work and in human relations, with about 40 percent saying it has an adverse effect on their lives, according to a recent survey by the health ministry.
SOCCER / World cup
Apr 17, 2001

Talk straight, chew gum

Give us more backup to win the World Cup. That was the message manager Philippe Troussier had for Japan's soccer fans Sunday.
JAPAN
Apr 17, 2001

Women stride toward parity in Shimamoto assembly poll

SHIMAMOTO, Osaka Pref. -- A small office near Minase Station on the Hankyu Line was filled with applauding women late Sunday night as eight female candidates triumphed in the Shimamoto Municipal Assembly election.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat