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Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
Dec 7, 2008

Antlers repeat as champs

Defending champions Kashima Antlers held their nerve to clinch the 2008 J. League title with a 1-0 win over Consadole Sapporo on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Dec 7, 2008

What's behind all the funny car names?

Over the years, Japanese car names have been a source of unending comedy, frivolity and perplexity in international motoring circles.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 7, 2008

Past events' bloodstained light casts a long and lasting shadow

On Dec. 7, the day of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 in Hawaii, the thoughts of many turn to wars, how they begin and the course they take.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 6, 2008

Keane stood by his convictions

LONDON — It was always going to end like this.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Dec 6, 2008

Sending out smoke signals to the gods

While November is fire prevention month in Japan, on our island we are out deliberately starting fires. And during this dry time of year with crispy leaves and fallen twigs, the likelihood of setting the entire island on fire is at its highest. But fire is one of the many ways the island people communicate...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2008

Terror threat to civilization

HONG KONG — The death toll of nearly 200 from the carnage in Mumbai last week is small compared with the 5,400 people who die every day from AIDS-related illnesses or the 2,500 mostly children who die daily from malaria. Three hundred Zimbabweans died of cholera while the gun battles in India raged....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2008

Politicians failing to engage youth

One of the oldest rules in politics the world over is that young people stay away in droves.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2008

'I Served the King of England'

Watching Czech waiter Jan Dite in "I Served the King of England" traipse through some of the most tragic years his country had ever known (Nazi intervention, Soviet invasion), you're reminded of another Czech cinema antihero: Tomas (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 5, 2008

Orchestra brings best of Venezuela's youth

The miraculous Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela will delight Japanese audiences during their first performances in this country, from Dec. 17 to 19.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 5, 2008

In Fukuoka, we're walking in a winter ramen land

Winter whistles through the streets, slips its icy fingers down your coat, and you search for something, just about anything, to ward off the damp chill of a Japanese winter. Suddenly, you know with all certainty the one true cure — ramen.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 5, 2008

'Magic Flute' adapted to South African beat

A new collaborative opera that blends Mozart's "The Magic Flute" and African music is coming to Tokyo this month, performed by South Africa-based Isango Portobello Productions.
Reader Mail
Dec 4, 2008

Consider culling bull whales

A beached whale is synonymous with desperation. Pods have limited sources of krill and beach through hunger. Yet, historical records relating to Bass Strait, when pods were plentiful, mention large whales beaching singly and natives gathering to feast over many days. Now that marine life is significantly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 4, 2008

An audience with Miyazaki, Japan's animation king

Hayao Miyazaki says he doesn't like giving interviews, but the Oscar-winning, megahit-making animator has strong opinions he isn't shy about sharing, as a packed room of reporters learned when he appeared at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo on Nov. 20.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 4, 2008

Pink thrills: Japanese sex movies go global

As the last wave of vengeful female ghosts inspired by "Ring' "s Sadako fade from cinema screens worldwide, either in their original J-horror manifestations or the obligatory Hollywood remakes, more adventurous foreign-film fans have begun turning their heads Eastward in search of a new frisson. Their...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2008

Failed governance allowed attacks

MUMBAI — In most cities of South Asia, hidden beneath the grime and neglect of extreme poverty, there exists a little Somalia waiting to burst out and infect the body politic. This netherworld, patrolled and nourished by criminals who operate a vast black-market economy, has bred, in Mumbai, a community...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2008

Time for Europe to fill a fading NATO's shoes

LONDON — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose foreign ministers will meet later this week, is dying. Death, of course, comes to all living things. And, as NATO approaches its 60th birthday next spring, there seems no immediate urgency about writing its obituary; 60-year-olds may reasonably...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2008

End the violence against women and girls

NEW YORK — The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was commemorated Nov. 25, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is spearheading a global campaign, "UNiTE to end violence against women."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2008

Loudness rock star Higuchi dead at 49

Munetaka Higuchi, the leader of Loudness, which in the 1980s became Japan's first hard-rock band to break into the U.S. market, died of liver cancer at an Osaka hospital Sunday. He was 49.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Dec 2, 2008

How has the global financial crisis affected you?

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 30, 2008

Kabuki rescued by national defeat

KABUKI'S FORGOTTEN WAR: 1931-1945, by James R. Brandon. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 466 pp., with photographs, $52 (cloth) The role that Japan's "classic" drama, kabuki, played during the 15-year "Sacred War" is largely undiscussed, and even in Japan itself it is usually ignored. Indeed,...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 30, 2008

Tsurube and Nakai's travels, Detective Takemura, and a famous cross-dressing spy

It's impossible to turn on the television now without seeing SMAP leader Masahiro Nakai, who is working overtime to promote his new movie, "Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai" ("I Want to Become a Seashell"). And since he was just chosen for the fifth time to cohost NHK's New Year's Eve song contest, "Kohaku...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 30, 2008

Gems of Asia: hotels worth the splurge

I admit to an incurable travel addiction, which I have been lucky enough to feed by journeying around Asia since 1980, driven by an abiding interest in the wonders and troubles of the region.
Reader Mail
Nov 30, 2008

Extend the lives of unwanted pets

I was surprised, as I'm sure many people were, to read that public health centers dispose of unwanted and lost animals so quickly. According to the Nov. 26 article "Was wrong bureaucracy targeted?," a pet owner can bring a pet to a public health center and the animal will be put down within a day. That's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 30, 2008

Drawing new life out of an old story

RED COLORED ELEGY by Seiichi Hayashi, translated by Taro Nettleton. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 235 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Here's a rough synopsis of the plot of Seiichi Hayashi's "Red Colored Elegy": A young couple, committed to their art, struggle to keep themselves, their art, and their love alive....

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