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BASKETBALL
Dec 5, 2012

Ex-MVP White blasts bj-league, plans to sue Oita

Former Oita HeatDevils star Wendell White met with team officials on Tuesday and repeated his demands that the team honor his expired contract 14 days after his salary was due.
JAPAN / ELECTION 2012
Dec 3, 2012

Nippon Mirai pledges 2022 atomic phaseout, tax freeze

Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada on Sunday unveiled her new party's hastily compiled policy platform for the Dec. 16 general election, calling for the elimination of nuclear power by 2022 and freezing the government's plan to raise the sales tax.
EDITORIALS
Nov 1, 2012

Wealth and power in China

The New York Times has reported that the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao controls assets worth $2.7 billion. In response, access to The New York Times in China is now blocked and every mention of the story in the media and on microblogs is being censured. The story is a reminder of the problems...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / Japan Pulse
Sep 29, 2012

Bagel head trend is a big distortion

Bagel heads as Japanese beauty trend? It's just an ugly distortion.
OLYMPICS
Sep 21, 2012

Taiwanese IOC member assures Tokyo over vote

Relations between Japan, China and Taiwan have spiraled out of control over the past week, but a longtime Taiwanese International Olympic Committee member is not using that as a pretext for his vote for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 2, 2012

Unwanted pregnancies need to be discussed

Two weeks ago a 17-year-old girl collapsed in a shopping mall in Hiroshima and was rushed to the hospital. At the same time a dead fetus was found on the floor in the corner of the mall's food court. The girl eventually admitted that she had just given birth to the child. On Aug. 9, a cleaning person...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012

Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage

Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 25, 2012

Veterinary clinics for the rich and famous pets

I walked into the veterinarian's office with my disgruntled cat. I'd been worried about my cat for a week already. Her health was steadily declining and I knew something was seriously wrong when the 4 a.m. Kitty Alarm stopped going off — that feline screeching that takes place outside the door to our...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2012

Key crisis contact heads for London

As deputy Cabinet secretary for public affairs, Noriyuki Shikata instantly realized his workload would skyrocket when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, but admits being taken aback by the flood of requests that started pouring in from overseas media.
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 13, 2012

A day in the life of an Olympic reporter

Woke up, got out of bed. . .
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2012

Upper House passes bill to hike sales levy

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda achieved a major goal Friday when the Upper House passed his administration's social security and tax reform bills that will double the sales tax to 10 percent by 2015.
Japan Times
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 4, 2012

Sasaki's unsavory tactics bring shame on Nadeshiko

A year ago, Nadeshiko Japan captured the world's hearts, the Women's World Cup champion producing a fabulous upset over the heavily favored United States to grab the title.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 2, 2012

Media at the crossroads of profits and politics

On July 24, seven key News International personnel in the United Kingdom and one contracted private investigator were charged with 19 counts of conspiracy to hack mobile phone voice mails between 2000 and 2006. At long last, the allegations will be tested in court.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 8, 2012

Okinawa's first nuclear missile men break silence

In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war after American spy planes discovered that the Kremlin had stationed medium-range atomic missiles on the communist island of Cuba in the Caribbean, barely over the horizon from Florida.
BASKETBALL
Jun 9, 2012

Ryukyu confirms Oketani's departure

The Ryukyu Golden Kings on Friday officially announced head coach Dai Oketani will not receive a new contract for the 2012-13 season, and his tenure with the club has ended.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 5, 2012

Rumors, lies fill void left by police in Furlong case

It is one of the more ugly tasks in journalism: trying to extract a quote from a bereaved family after a violent death. By the time I called Nicola Furlong's mother on May 25, she had learned that her 21-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted and probably throttled by a stranger in a city 10,000...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 3, 2012

Hush ye not! Here's a heckle of an idea to get rich — and save the world

You gotta hand it to the Americans. By god, they invented or at least morphed into profitability just about everything that's on my desk as I write this: my landline telephone; my iPad, which is open to my Facebook page; a DVD of the director's cut of "Edward Scissorhands"; even the plastic-lidded cup...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 2, 2012

A different health standard

It was Friday the 13th. And two health officials showed up at our door.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 13, 2012

Road-death stats hide the truth

The media likes to report on victims of accidents, disasters and crimes, and while it's natural to feel sympathy for unfortunate individuals, the only imaginable benefit this sort of coverage provides to viewers and readers is catharsis, which is better served by the popular arts.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 12, 2012

Filmmaker savors being in situation where threat of the unknown looms

A surfboard mounted against a sea of sludge, whimsically defiant to the ruinous tide of debris. It's the kind of quirky beauty you might expect from Michael Arias, an American filmmaker based in Tokyo. Arias' creative work, in film through to his recent photographs of Tohoku, all paint with the same...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 27, 2012

Ozawa not guilty of fund conspiracy

Ichiro Ozawa, former president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, was acquitted Thursday of conspiring with former aides to make false financial reports in his political fund management body Rikuzankai in 2004 and 2005.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Apr 20, 2012

For Iwate's Malloy, Hurricane Katrina provided valuable life lessons

Natural disasters can alter one's outlook on life in a positive way, and give an individual a greater sense of purpose or focus in everything he/she does.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / ASEAN-JAPAN SYMPOSIUM
Apr 7, 2012

ASEAN members see mixed future; ties with Japan entering new phase

Southeast Asia has emerged from the 2008-2009 global financial crisis with a robust economic expansion that, along with China and India, makes up a new growth center of the world economy. Still, major countries in the region foresee a mixed picture in the years ahead.
Reader Mail
Mar 22, 2012

Making renewable energy feasible

Renewable energy has a Siamese twin: energy-use reduction. The two are inseparable, at least with the technologies available in the foreseeable future. The good news is that last summer's (July and August) electricity consumption was down 14 percent (see http://kaden.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20110928_480111.html),...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 20, 2012

Reflections on 3/11: reporters' dispatches

Initial hopes turn to frustration In the immediate aftermath of 3/11 I penned several optimistic pieces for European newspapers predicting that the disaster might jolt Japan out of its long period of economic torpor and social ennui. I wouldn't write the same today.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2012

Mistaken presumptions about Assad's Syria

Syria's uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began peacefully in Damascus a year ago, has become increasingly brutal and splintered. As the death toll nears 9,000, calls for international intervention have increased — but what worked in places like Libya won't necessarily succeed in Syria....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 4, 2012

Japan's lonely people: Where do they all belong?

In recent weeks, three cases of kodokushi, or "lonely deaths," have been covered extensively in the news. One involved a Saitama Prefecture family of three whose bodies were found in their apartment several months after the electricity and gas were turned off for nonpayment. Police assumed they had starved....

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?