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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jan 3, 2003

A dark day for ducks

A Niigata sake brewery that would prefer to remain anonymous in this context, asked me to sit on a committee for an environmental trust they had just set up. They do brew the most excellent sake, so I happily agreed.
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Recruiters adapt to a changing job scene

Are the days of the job-offering "recruiter" numbered? In Japan, recruiters are young employees who help their companies woo recent graduates from their alma maters. But the long-standing practice -- criticized for favoring students from a small circle of select universities -- is giving way to more...
JAPAN
Jan 1, 2003

Nippon Yusen collared over huge tax dodge

Nippon Yusen K.K., Japan's biggest shipping company, failed to declare about 5.8 billion yen in taxable income in the five years through 1999, sources said Tuesday.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 1, 2003

2002: The sound of a year

Chickens Coming Home to Roost Award Last fall, Dr. Dre was sued by an Indian composer who said the producer used a sample of the composer's music in Truth Hurts' hit single "Addictive" without permission and without giving credit. The composer accused Dre of "cultural imperialism" and "perpetuating...
EDITORIALS
Dec 31, 2002

Making sense of the mess of 2002

2002 will be remembered as a year of spectacular failures. The political mistakes that became front-page news were glaring, but they were often the product of miscalculation. Those that dominated the business headlines were the result of greed and larceny. Painful as all those blunders were, there are...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2002

Modernization model for Islamic nations

HONOLULU -- With all due respect to his office, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia got it wrong when he suggested in Tokyo in mid-December that the Japanese help Americans and Europeans to understand Islam.
EDITORIALS
Dec 27, 2002

Resuscitate local economies

Japan's economy for 2003 poses inevitable questions. Will deflation get worse or better? How far will banks go to shed their dud loans? If the United States goes to war with Iraq, how will it affect the economy? In these increasingly uncertain times, forecasting is a tricky business. Offering stock answers...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 27, 2002

Let us raise a toast to six of the best in 2002

Just as, after a leisurely banquet, conversation inevitably turns to storytelling and reminiscing, in much the same vein we like to devote our final column of the year to the highlights of the past 12 months. During the course of 2002, we have cast our spotlight on more than 60 restaurants, bars and...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Dec 26, 2002

Thirty years of environmental progress, but . . .

Yet another year is tugging impatiently at the sleeve of closure and within days will be history.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Dec 26, 2002

Arcade gem returns to glory

This is the time for bringing games back from retirement. Sega came out with new a new "Shinobi." Konami has a new "Contra." And Tecmo has brought back two great blasts from the past: "Ninja Gaiden" and "Rygar."
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2002

Put America's Korea policy on track

WASHINGTON -- With South Korea's critical presidential election decided, the Bush administration's Korea policy is in need of a midcourse correction.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 22, 2002

The Christmas business

Japanese marketers are well aware that Christmas ranks second in popularity only to New Year's -- above even the Bon holiday in August, when people flock back to their hometowns to pay respect to their ancestors.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 22, 2002

A little something for the god

GRACIOUS GIFTS: Japan's Sacred Offerings, photographed by Gorazd Vilhar, text by Charlotte Anderson. Tokyo: Shufunotomo-sha, 1999, 128 pp., 172 color plates, 4,000 yen (cloth) All religions encourage gifts. From Catholic prayer boxes to Protestant collection plates, from the donation repositories of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 22, 2002

Home sweet family Christmas

It's almost Christmas, and children all over the world are getting more excited with each passing day, dreaming and chattering about what presents will await them on Christmas morning.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Dec 21, 2002

You call that twig a Christmas tree?

The Japanese have adopted Christmas with great zeal, in the same manner they have adopted other Western things such as Snoopy and Disney. The holiday -- with glittery trees, sparkly lights and fairy-tale songs -- is irresistible to the Japanese. This, along with the "If it blinks I want it!" mentality,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Dec 20, 2002

'Top 100' bargain-hunters, on your marks

Whether or not you always agrees with its contents, one of the most widely studied wine rankings is Wine Spectator magazine's annual "Top 100 Wines in the World" listing.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2002

Lifetime of serving humanity helps nurse survive stint in Indonesian jail

BANDA ACEH, Aceh -- On a lonely stretch of road in the midst of a distant war, Joy Lee Sadler, a 57-year-old nurse from Iowa, did what she has done all her life.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Dec 19, 2002

'Machiya' morphs into IT incubator

KYOTO -- What do traditional Kyoto and broadband Internet access have in common? Not much, which is the problem. The solution is the Kyoto Nishijin Machiya Studio.
EDITORIALS
Dec 18, 2002

A collapse of fiscal balance

Japan faces a clear and present danger in public finance, epitomized by a crushing debt load equal to 140 percent of its gross national product. In this light, changes to the tax code for fiscal 2003, proposed by the ruling coalition last week, fall far short of expectations. It is essentially a patchwork...
COMMUNITY
Dec 17, 2002

What are Japan's teens on about?

Why do Japan's teens sound so incomprehensible these days?
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 16, 2002

Sicily's sobering message for grandparents

SYRACUSE, Sicily -- Sicily is an ideal place to ponder the fate of civilizations and to reflect on the future. This island off the boot of Italy, with a population of 5 million, has been a crossroads of civilizations for almost three millennia. The Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Normans, Catalans, French,...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2002

Withholding food aid only kills innocents

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara does not like Japanese charities sending dog biscuits and old rice to North Korea to feed its hungry people.
COMMENTARY
Dec 16, 2002

Highways amid the shambles

In its final report submitted Dec. 6, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's advisory commission for privatizing four road-related public corporations called for a halt to runaway highway construction. The report warns against the "triangle of collusion" among "road tribe" legislators, related bureaucrats...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 16, 2002

The thorny topic of 'office flowers'

Nowadays the term "OL (office lady)" is seen as semiderogatory (about time, too), and some companies have trashed it completely and started using simply jyosei shain (women employees). This is to differentiate them from sogoshoku (general worker), which is not gender-specific but is used to describe...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 15, 2002

From jobs to robots it's all about chance

It's that time of year again, when hundreds of people can be seen lining up in front of the shopping arcades in Ginza and Shinjuku. No, we're not talking about Christmas. We're talking about the big Yearend Lottery.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 15, 2002

Screen dreams of the good old samura days

With the stock market heading south and the political situation taking an uncanny resemblance to the last sclerotic days of the Soviet Union, no wonder Japanese moviegoers want to be anywhere but here and now. Even so, the number of new and recent Japanese films set in the past is extraordinary, given...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 15, 2002

To eat or not to eat -- here's some advice

One of the big best sellers of the season is "Taberu na, Kiken" (Don't Eat! Danger!), which was first published in October and is now in its third printing. Unlike most books that enjoy such good sales, it isn't getting much attention in the media.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 14, 2002

No surprise tourism suffers

LOS ANGELES -- The government plan to privatize Narita airport in 2004 is welcome news to international travelers who know what good travel service is. The plan, which also includes a halt to building new airports, upgrading existing airports and improving customer service, could go a long way toward...

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