Search - information

 
 
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2002

Suzuki bribe info faxed to property firm

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office mistakenly faxed a witness account about indicted lawmaker Muneo Suzuki's bribery case to a Tokyo real estate firm in June, a top official of the office said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2002

Ministry's new climate atlas designed to cool cities

The Environment Ministry is creating its first climate atlas, a fledgling attempt to chart atmospheric trends to spur more environmentally friendly city planning.
BUSINESS
Aug 7, 2002

Mitsui sees group profits fall 24.6%

Trading house Mitsui & Co. said Tuesday its group pretax profits for the April-June quarter fell 24.6 percent from a year earlier to 22.16 billion yen, while revenues slipped 7.9 percent to 2.92 trillion yen.
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2002

Immobilizer credited for fall in auto thefts

Automobile thefts have decreased noticeably as more cars are equipped with systems to protect them from being stolen, according to the Marine and Fire Insurance Association of Japan.
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2002

ARF comes back to life

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has signed up in the war against terrorism. That is the key development from the annual meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum, or ARF, Asia's premier security institution, which convened last week in Brunei. The U.S.-ASEAN agreement was the most notable outcome...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 4, 2002

Can you celebrate? Not yet, Amuro- chan

It's generally assumed by the media that pop singer Namie Amuro's recent divorce from dancer Masaharu "Sam" Maruyama is the first step in an earnest attempt to reinflate a career that lost a lot of air after the 24-year-old dance-music diva took a year's maternity leave. If that sounds like a cynical...
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Aug 4, 2002

The sweet, soft option

Fukuoka sake, in general, hovers just below the surface of mass attention. You don't hear about it too much, and it doesn't have an image of overall style in the minds of most folks. But this belies its historical significance and, more importantly, ignores the fact that great sake can be found in Fukuoka....
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2002

Law eyed to prevent 'wangiri' phone scams

Toranosuke Katayama, the minister of telecommunications, said Friday his ministry may submit a bill to the Diet in the fall to put an end to the phone scam known as "wangiri."
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2002

S&P lowers credit ratings of Fujitsu and Toshiba

Standard & Poor's Corp. said Friday it has cut the corporate credit rating of electronics maker Fujitsu Ltd. to BBB minus pi from BBBpi, citing weak earnings from sluggish sales of telecommunications equipment and semiconductor products.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2002

NTT units plot 'wangiri' crackdown

NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp. plan to stiffen the terms of their telephone service contracts to prevent phone callback scams known as "wangiri" from paralyzing their networks, company officials said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Aug 2, 2002

Telecom panel tells NTT to slash network fee

An advisory panel to the telecommunications minister called Thursday for an 8.2 percent reduction to the interconnection fee that Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. charges other carriers to access its phone lines.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2002

North Korean agent sought in abduction

Tokyo police obtained an arrest warrant Thursday for a North Korean agent who is suspected of acquiring a Japanese passport by pretending to be an Osaka man he abducted and spirited away to North Korea in 1980, police sources said.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2002

Textbook makers given freer hand in curricula

The education ministry announced Wednesday that it will allow textbook publishers to stray from its guidelines under certain conditions beginning next year.
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2002

Domestic shipments of DVD units jump 84%

Domestic shipments of DVD machines jumped 84.4 percent in June from a year earlier to 264,000 units, an industry association said Wednesday.
COMMUNITY
Aug 1, 2002

TV news move boosts campaign to secure international channel

On July 25th, in a stunning about face, News Corporation announced the continued broadcast of the 24-hour news channel, Foxnews.
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2002

Panel calls for universities to be involved in foreign aid

A government panel proposed Tuesday the creation of a government-run institution to involve universities in international development assistance projects.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2002

As plasma-display TVs come down in price, sales go up

After an inauspicious debut just a few years ago, plasma-display TVs have become one of the hottest home appliances around.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2002

Sharp bucks trend with plan to hire 130 midcareer staff

Sharp Corp. will hire 130 midcareer workers this year, despite a general trend among consumer electronics companies to downsize amid stagnation in the information technology sector, company officials said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2002

Attack-response law dead in the water?

When the government submitted a set of emergency-response bills to the Diet in April, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was breaking a decades-long taboo under the war-renouncing Constitution.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2002

Opposition parties to bring no-confidence motion to vote

The four main opposition parties agreed Monday to jointly submit a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2002

Osaka phone service disrupted

OSAKA -- NTT West Corp. said Monday that phone services were temporarily disrupted after a massive number of calls were placed by a firm suspected of operating a "wangiri" callback scam.
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Jul 28, 2002

Tokyo planetary science professor doubles as ramen guru

Although the fields of extraterrestrial activity and ramen may seem to be worlds apart, these disparate subjects have provided one Japanese academic with widespread recognition.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 28, 2002

Images of harmony between man and nature

THE SIGN OF LIFE, photographs by Yoshiko Seino, text by Asako Imaeda. Tokyo: Osiris, 2002, unpaginated, 60 full-page plates, 7,000 yen (cloth) In her text to this important collection of photographs, Asako Imaeda writes of its "strange harmony, a precarious harmony that is the result of the introduction...
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2002

Fixed-point environmental checks to start in 2003

The Environment Ministry decided Saturday to conduct fixed-point environmental observations starting in fiscal 2003 in an effort to ascertain the impact of global warming and other factors on the environment, ministry officials said.
JAPAN
Jul 26, 2002

Law enacted to ensure safety of nation's blood products

A law requiring the state to ensure safe, domestically produced supplies of blood products was enacted Thursday following approval by the House of Representatives.
JAPAN
Jul 25, 2002

Suzuki tied to illegal payments to cover bureaucrat's meal bills

The office of indicted lawmaker Muneo Suzuki illegally paid the restaurant bills of a former Foreign Ministry bureaucrat -- who is also under arrest -- by disguising them as political activity expenses at Suzuki's political fund management organization, sources said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Jul 25, 2002

UFJ to spin off computer operations

UFJ Holdings Inc. plans to spin off the running of its computer system to a joint venture it will create with Hitachi Ltd. in the fall, UFJ officials said Wednesday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 25, 2002

Health insurance, pension cash claims and odd-job search

It's been quite surprising to receive so many "thank yous" from readers, but more surprising has been that they come not only from Japan but from all over the the world. It seems a lot of people who have lived in Japan in the past and moved on read the column at www.japantimes.co.jp to keep up on things...

Longform

It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.
Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?