Search - about-us

 
 
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2012

Anti-nuclear madness doesn't jibe with concern about global warming

After the loss of 10 million American lives in the Three-Mile Island calamity in 1979, the death of 2 billion in the Chernobyl holocaust in 1986, and now the abandonment of all of northern Japan following the death of millions in last year's Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, it is hardly surprising that...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Nov 25, 2012

Is the whole world worrying about Japan?; "Villain"; CM of the week: Ezaki Glico

Does Japan suffer from an inferiority complex? That's one way of interpreting the title of the variety special "Nakayoshi Terebi: Nihon no Ima wo Sekaiju ga Shimpai Shite Iru zo" ("Friendly TV: The Whole World is Worrying About Japan Now"; Fuji, Tues., 7 p.m.).
JAPAN / BULLETIN BOARD
Nov 18, 2012

Learn about Nishimachi International School scholarships

Nishimachi International School is holding an event to provide information about the institution and its scholarship program Wednesday at the school in Minato Ward, Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 13, 2012

Failing students: Japanese universities facing reckoning or reform

I had been warned of the "Circus," yet still I was unprepared.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 8, 2012

China's Hokkaido forest grab all about water

Morihiro Oguma's phone rang every day with calls from brokers representing foreign investors who wanted to buy his Japan Mineral water bottling business.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 21, 2012

All about Yo; "Words make the world"; CM of the week: Tsutaya

Kimiko Yo's career has followed a different trajectory from that of most Japanese actors. She started in theater at the age of 20 in 1976 and didn't land her first movie role until 1987. She has since made a resume of solid supporting roles but didn't gain traction as a leading lady until the dawn of...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 17, 2012

Lions star Nakajima keeps quiet about future

Everyone understood this was the end of the line for Hiroyuki Nakajima.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 5, 2012

'Casino Jack' / '4:44 Last Day on Earth'

As late-stage capitalism enters its terminal phase, democracy sees an epic fail, giving way to a kind of corporate plutocracy. The problem is all too clear: Government, in just about every country you can think of, has been bought and sold.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 25, 2012

It's not all about the mid-life crisis

Finding the solution to a difficult problem lies in asking the right questions. On the afternoon of Sept. 1, in a stylish office building in Aoyama, a gathering of Japanese life coaches practiced this Socratic skill in groups of four. It was a role-playing exercise, in which one person played the role...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Sep 19, 2012

New stats about old folks

Some new numbers about elderly household income and spending.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 1, 2012

You can swim even after O-bon — the truth about jellyfish

Despite the temperature being hot as blazes, mid-August is still considered the end of the swimming season in Japan. In our area of the Seto Inland Sea, it used to be said that after O-bon (around Aug. 15) the enko (sea nymphs) come out and can grab your legs and pull you down under the water to drown...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2012

Ten myths about the U.S. Republican agenda

There are a lot of pundits here in Tampa with no real politics to report on. So I thought now would be a good idea to do some explaining about the odd natives (well, natives for only a few days), whom the punditocracy has ventured out to poke and prod and report back, as if they are 21st-century Margaret...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2012

French never blase about the American arts

One of the more instinctive knee-jerk comments in trans-Atlantic relations is that the "French don't like Americans."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2012

'Prometheus'

My high school English teacher once assigned an essay on Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." She was pushing the idea that the novel was one big Jesus allegory, with its hero McMurphy dying for the salvation of the other patients, but I couldn't agree. Kesey had worked in a mental institution,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2012

'The Avengers'

I saw the best actors of my generation destroyed by B-movie superhero madness, slumming crummy costumed, dragging themselves through the digital streets of universe Marvel, looking for a super-size paycheck, empty-headed hipsters burning for the ancient mythic connection to the star-system dynamo in...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2012

Five myths about Obama's economic stimulus

President Barack Obama's February 2009 stimulus bill, the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was a political disaster. It helped fuel the Republican revival of 2010 and now stars in Mitt Romney's ads. The president even stopped uttering the word "stimulus."
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Aug 7, 2012

Nagoya: What is the best thing about cosplay?

This past weekend marked the 10th anniversary of the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya, so The Japan Times took to the streets to pick cosplayers' brains about why they choose to devote hours upon hours of their lives to designing, making and — finally — acting out their fantasies in elaborate costumes....
OLYMPICS / LONDON POSTCARD
Aug 4, 2012

No reason to complain about weather or traffic

Whingeing about the weather is a national pastime in England.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 28, 2012

The buzz about cicadas

Japan is entering cicada season, so let me start with a modest observation:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 2012

Just what's so brave about 'Brave'?

"Wall-E" was a brave endeavor. A kids' film where the main character can't speak: That must have been a hard sell, and a risk in itself. But it paid off, creating one of the most emotionally charged films of 2008. "Wall-E" taught a moral lesson about our consumerist behavior; a lesson that transcended...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 10, 2012

Osprey deployment heightens safety worry

The United States last month announced that the MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft will be deployed to U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa as scheduled in October.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 8, 2012

What nobody is saying about Noda's new consumption tax bill

Two weeks ago, the Lower House passed a law to increase the consumption tax to 10 percent by 2015, something Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has been pushing with blinkered, self-sacrificial dedication. Eventual final passage seems inevitable at this point, and so the only aspect deemed worthy of discussion...
Reader Mail
Jun 24, 2012

Truth about population decline

The June 19 editorial "Reversing the population decline" lists facts and figures on Japan's population decline, recently made public by the health ministry. But the editorial's solutions offer nothing new and simply make well-worn suggestions by rote: more employment for young people, shortened working...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012

'Attack the Block' / 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'

When unarmed teen Trayvon Martin was fatally shot in Florida by paranoid neighborhood-watch vigilante George Zimmerman in February, the usual flurry of American media debate ensued. One of the more heated tangents came when celebrity newscaster Geraldo Rivera stated — on Fox News, naturally — that...
Jun 21, 2012

What can be done about Syria?

The indiscriminate killing of civilians including women and children in Syria continues. All we seem able to do is wring our hands and denounce the perpetrators.

Longform

Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo