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Reader Mail
May 18, 2008

Horrific conditions at Odawara Zoo

I recently visited the Odawara Zoo near Tokyo and was horrified by the conditions in which the animals are kept. In particular, there is a beautiful elephant who lives on a concrete pad roughly the size of half a tennis court. My family and I think of this poor creature frequently and don't know who...
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2008

More expensive school lunches

Everyone who has attended school retains memories of school lunches. The simple experience of eating together with other students and teachers is almost as important as learning inside the classroom. Social skills, informal interaction and a sense of shared community are basic to school lunches. However,...
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 2008

Manhunt for a Chinese woman

THE FINDER by Colin Harrison. New York: Sarah Chrichton Books, 2008, 325 pp., $25 (cloth) In this tightly woven page-turner by Colin Harrison, Jin Li, a young Chinese woman with an advanced university degree, engages in industrial espionage, setting off a series of violent events.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 17, 2008

Portsmouth-Cardiff City F.A. Cup final fails to inspire

LONDON — No matter how much purists try to argue that it sums up the magic of the F.A. Cup, regardless of the "ideal" David vs. Goliath matchup and, to the relief of some, the fact that none of the Big Four clubs is involved, the final between Portsmouth and Cardiff City is the least interesting most...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 17, 2008

Annual GDP pace hits 3.3% in quarter

Despite growing signs of a global economic slowdown, Japan's gross domestic product expanded at a better-than-expected 3.3 percent annualized rate in the January-March quarter as exporters continued to increase shipments to emerging countries, the Cabinet Office said Friday.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2008

What if Barack Obama were a real Muslim?

LOS ANGELES — A significant number of West Virginians (and some others in America) evidently take the view that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. In a surpassingly depressing report from the coal-miner state on the eve of Tuesday's West Virginia primary, The Los...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 16, 2008

Celebrity DJ Goldie returns to drum and bass

After a stint in the acting business that saw roles as a gangster in British soap opera Eastenders and a villain in a James Bond movie, Goldie has returned to DJing and will be in Japan on May 16 and 17.
Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

Traditional foods losing favor

On one of my family visits to Osaka, I met a nutritionist from Kobe, and during a meal she had prepared I told her I had made miso. She didn't understand why that should be anything special. I told her I made it from soybeans and aspergillus rice and kept it in a large crock in my garage for three years....
Reader Mail
May 15, 2008

Beware future memory meltdown

I'm getting over a huge letdown -- like being told by the doctor that you have Alzheimer's with only a few years of lucidity left. Fortunately, I've nothing so dire. What brought me down was an NHK television news report on CD and DVD digital storage. I (and apparently many others) had taken for granted...
CULTURE / Art
May 15, 2008

"Hideki Kuwajima: Vertical/Horizontal"

Radi-um von Roentgenwerke AG
COMMENTARY
May 14, 2008

Protectionism won't solve crisis

LONDON — The devastating cyclone that hit lower Burma (Myanmar) has caused horrific loss of life and largely destroyed what was once the rice bowl of Asia. There is an urgent need for food, clean water and shelter for those affected, but the Burmese authorities would apparently rather maintain their...
JAPAN
May 14, 2008

G8 seeks environmentally friendly workplaces

NIIGATA — Labor representatives of the Group of Eight industrialized nations agreed Tuesday that they must take measures to deal with the impact climate change will have on the labor market.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 14, 2008

Astronauts tell kids about life on shuttle

Orbiting the Earth is not all fun and games. But when it is, the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour passed the time during their 16-day mission in March to the International Space Station doing flips in zero gravity and filling balls of water with chocolate candies, its pilot confided Tuesday...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 14, 2008

Space defense no reason to ax gentler projects

For a country with a constitution "forever renouncing war" (Article 9), Japan spends an awful lot of money on its military. In 2005 it was the fifth largest military spender in the world. And now there is the unsettling news that Japan is expanding its powerful self-defense capability into space.
JAPAN
May 13, 2008

G8 talks take up labor inequalities, green role

NIIGATA — The Group of Eight industrialized nations must place more emphasis on a better work-life balance when drafting employment policies, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe said Monday at a G8 conference on labor.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 13, 2008

Hopes of silence in Tokyo undergo brutal assault

The concept of chinmoku wa kin (silence is golden) isn't a Tokyo thing. Like a lot of other nifty modernities, such as buttered pancakes and the subway system, it was imported into Japan and adopted into city living when the country opened up to the West in the late 19th century.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
May 13, 2008

Are you prepared for the next major earthquake?

Louis Chan Nurse, 30 (Hong Kong) I would try to stay up to date with the news and special announcements — if possible, I would check the Internet — but in terms of emergency supplies, I don't have anything prepared.
COMMENTARY
May 12, 2008

Row that demonized China

So now we know, officially, that the U.S. military contemplated a nuclear attack on China during the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis. But what few realize is how this then led to a violent slanging match between Beijing and Moscow, which in turn was to lead to the Vietnam and other Indochina wars, which in...
COMMENTARY
May 12, 2008

Clinton's surprise appeal on campaign trail

LOS ANGELES — How much suffering must a nation and its people go through before everyone says enough is enough?
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2008

1968 French revolution left an elusive legacy

BRUSSELS — "Dany, you have been so successful. But don't let yourself be manipulated by those far-left forces that would lead you to destroy everything that could arise from what you are creating."
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Measure of Christian influence

I read with great interest Florian Coulmas' May 4 article, "Japan as a land of many religions," which was a review of the book "Prophet Motive" -- about the important role played by Oomoto founder Deguchi Onisaburo, founder of the "highly successful syncretistic sect" Oomoto.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 11, 2008

The authorities gain complete control of the stories

Prior to the recent retrial of a man who was eventually sentenced to death by the Hiroshima High Court for killing a woman and her 1-year-old child in 1999, the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization complained about the coverage of the case. The BPO said that media outlets concentrated...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
May 11, 2008

Japan's gourmands should hit the highway

At the beginning of the postwar period of economic growth in Japan, highways were more for transporting parts and goods to jump-start the economy than for going on a Sunday drive. Even into the 1980s, pit stops in highway rest areas were still the stuff of nightmares. Surrounded by trucks belching acrid...
Japan Times
LIFE
May 11, 2008

Reaching from the skies

One of the classic images from Japanese anime — immortalized in the famous post-apocalyptic "Neon Genesis Evangelion" franchise — is of a child-pilot sitting at the controls of a robot that's so huge it stands head and shoulders above the surrounding buildings. It's the key to the genre's escapist...
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 2008

Who says there's no poetry in a game?

BASEBALL HAIKU: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball, edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura. W.W. Norton, 2007, 214 pp., $19.95 (cloth) In Ueno Park in Tokyo, among the museums and other attractions, there is a baseball ground. It is not large, and its name is not...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
May 10, 2008

Kamei, Sakamoto capitalize when given chance to shine with Giants

While the Yomiuri Giants' All-Stars have gotten off to a slow start this season, two unheralded players have stolen the spotlight.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 10, 2008

Documenting the divide between rich and poor

She was 3 when she first stood in the spotlight — on the stage of Tokyo's National Noh Theater — as the apple of her father's eye.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / FREEWHEELIN' ACROSS JAPAN
May 9, 2008

Green and to the heart of the matter

First of two parts

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