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Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 10, 2011

Japan's attention to detail is all in the delivery

While in California recently, I saw a reality program called "Undercover Boss," in which the president of a company disguises himself as a new hire and works beside his frontline employees. The boss thus comes to appreciate how important those people are to the success of his business. At the end of...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Jul 9, 2011

Bringing the focus back to the rikishi and sumo

On July 25, yokozuna Hakuho, barring major injury, or another basho-cancelling scandal, will mount the dohyo at around 5:45pm to be presented with his 20th Emperor's Cup to date.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 9, 2011

Don Morton raises a mug to bicycles and cold beer

Film buffs may know American Don Morton for the reviews he writes for Metropolis magazine. During a recent interview in his apartment, though, he mostly talked about bicycles. In fact the 67-year-old native of San Francisco is the founder of the Tokyo-based Half-Fast cycling club.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 9, 2011

On rock worship and the Shinto gods

On my morning jogs on Shiraishi Island, I pass many things: some scary (spiders and snakes), some interesting (what's been washed up on the beach overnight) and some spiritual. The other day I had to take a detour to avoid a Shinto priest and a procession of men climbing the stairs to Myoken Shrine for...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 8, 2011

Water treatment, cooling systems finally working

After suffering numerous problems, the newly installed treatment system for decontaminating radioactive water at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant and another system designed to recirculate that water to cool the reactors are finally working.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jul 8, 2011

Live from Tokyo, it's Saturday Night!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Saturday Night Live Japan!
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 8, 2011

"Daido Moriyama: On The Road"

Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) is one of Japan's leading photographers.
BUSINESS
Jul 8, 2011

Machinery orders up most in four months

Machinery orders rose in May at their fastest pace in four months, government data showed Thursday in a sign that companies are increasing spending to restore businesses and production disrupted by the March 11 quake and tsunami.
Reader Mail
Jul 7, 2011

Sensible transfer goes begging

I was glad to see the June 28 article "Daylight savings is it finally time to convert?" I have been a summer resident and law teacher in Kyoto for six of the past eight summers and have found many things about Japanese life that are more sensible than in America, my home country.
EDITORIALS
Jul 7, 2011

Minister chokes on hard tack

Reconstruction minister Ryu Matsumoto resigned Tuesday — his ninth day as minister in charge of rebuilding of the Tohoku region hit by the March 11 quake and tsunami and the nuclear crisis — over his remarks that offended many Tohoku people.
COMMENTARY
Jul 7, 2011

Lebanon: another frame-up

Here we go again. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a United Nations-backed body investigating the killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, has accused four people of his murder. They all belong to Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite movement that Israel and the United States define...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Jul 7, 2011

Public to benefit from art indemnity system

If you've ever thought that the ¥1,500 admission ticket at the average touring exhibition in Tokyo is too expensive, consider this: The cost of insuring artworks for trips to Japan is around 0.2 percent of their appraised value.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 5, 2011

Okozukai vs. hesokuri: An alternate view of home economics

Wives traditionally control Japanese household finances, but that doesn't mean they have financial freedom.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2011

Sendai girls end healing Aloha home-stay

The brightly colored markers and the construction paper are ready. Stamps and stickers, prepped to be peeled. Scissors sit on piles of magazines spread out on the table.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jul 5, 2011

Lives such as Daniel's deserve to be honored in these pages

I had a shock in May with the death of a close friend, Daniel, a long-term Japan resident in his sixties who had been in bad health. We were close and I'll miss him.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 5, 2011

'English interface' could be key to Japan's revival

Japan is not No. 1. After 20 years of stagnation-punctuated decline, it should not be news to anyone that Ezra Vogel got it wrong in his 1979 best-seller, "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America." Yet, in their endless navel-gazing and wheel-spinning (which, sadly, continues even in the face of natural...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Jul 5, 2011

North America midway destination

Kim and Junko Knudsen's house is full of American primitive country decor they brought back from their honeymoon in the U.S. South. The couple love country music, too, and plan to live in the United States or Canada in the near future.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jul 5, 2011

Your dream home could become a quake nightmare

Like other people in the Tokyo metropolitan area who were living in a high-rise when the March 11 earthquake struck, we subsequently decided to move.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jul 5, 2011

Disunited 'English-speaking diaspora' bites back

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Debito Arudou's June 7 Just Be Cause column, headlined " 'English-speaking diaspora' should unite, not backbite."
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2011

The risks of 'disaster nationalism'

A common sight seen throughout Japan these days are signs that read Ganbaro Nippon (translated "Don't give up Japan").
Reader Mail
Jul 3, 2011

Grief not the same as mourning

When tragedy and loss occur, when people vent their sad emotions, we cannot say that we are witnessing their grief. That is what we commonly say, what is written and spoken in the media, and even what professionals loosely say.
EDITORIALS
Jul 3, 2011

The dying oceans

Oceans are at dire risk, a consortium of scientists, the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), warned in early June. The interdisciplinary group of specialists gathered at the University of Oxford in April examined the synergistic effects of diverse factors on the oceans for the first...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2011

Kotaro Horiuchi: A life spent in uncharted waters of boat design

Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 3, 2011

Have a hideously good time in Tono's past and present

The professor's snoring had kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. When I awoke, the reading light in the hostel's upper bunk was still on and a copy of "The Legends of Tono" lay open at the page where I had dozed off. With that book being full of hobgoblins, ravaging wolf packs and rural satyrs,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2011

Doubled sales tax by '16 gets nod

Yielding to strong opposition from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the DPJ president, approved a social security and tax reform plan Thursday that will enforce a 10 percent consumption tax "by the mid-2010s," instead of its initial target of fiscal 2015....
EDITORIALS
Jul 1, 2011

Mr. Kan's thoughtless headhunting

Following the Reconstruction Design Council's submission last weekend of proposals for the reconstruction of areas affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear disaster, Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Monday appointed Mr. Goshi Hosono, one of his aides, as minister to deal...
BUSINESS
Jun 30, 2011

Factory output rises, extending rebound

Industrial production rose for a second month, government data showed Wednesday, as manufacturers restored operations at plants and supply chain disruptions eased after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

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