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JAPAN
Feb 26, 2009

Deadline nears for Filipino family

Opponents of the deportation order against an undocumented Filipino family in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, are mounting a last-ditch effort to win a reversal.
Reader Mail
Feb 26, 2009

Abolish English entrance exams

Gregory Clark is wrong about the possible solutions to Japan's English problem. Japanese university students are usually motivated only for the first three months of study. After that, overwhelmed by the large number of courses covering a hodgepodge of different materials, influenced by the emphasis...
EDITORIALS
Feb 21, 2009

Third strike against smoking

As if there already weren't enough good reasons for kicking the cigarette habit, doctors have found yet another: thirdhand smoke. That's the term doctors at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston have given to the invisible particles and gases that linger on clothing, hair, carpet, furniture and...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2009

'Progress' clause a tangible threat

The agreement Japan and the United States signed Tuesday on relocating U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam notes that the move is dependent on "tangible progress" toward completing a replacement facility for Air Station Futenma in Ginowan and on Japanese money to fund the development of facilities and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Feb 17, 2009

Job taken on a whim leads to 35 years in Tokyo

Peter Barakan, 57, wears many hats. He is a radio DJ, a TV program host, an author of books on music and English language education, a long-time Tokyoite fluent in Japanese, husband to a Japanese woman, and the father of a college boy and high school girl. Barakan said he never imagined spending more...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 15, 2009

From a master of versatility

The last page of Donald Richie's most recent offering, "Botandoro," reveals that he has, in his long and productive life, published no fewer than 35 books. The word "prolific" is unavoidable.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 15, 2009

From a master of versatility

BOTANDORO: Stories, Fables, Parables, and Allegories — a Miscellany, by Donald Richie, edited and with an introduction by Leza Lowitz. Printed Matter Press, 2008, 272 pp., $20 (paper) The last page of Donald Richie's most recent offering, "Botandoro," reveals that he has, in his long and productive...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 13, 2009

An abandoned history of Chinese influence

Edo Period (1603-1868) paintings from Osaka have been relatively neglected in comparison with paintings from Tokyo and Kyoto. A canonical list of works and a historical framework were written up in Tokyo in the 1890s in a series of influential lectures by scholar Okakura Tenshin, setting the directions...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2009

U.S. expert urges death penalty rethink

While 80 percent of the Japanese public is in favor of capital punishment, support for executions would drop if life without parole sentences were also an option, according to an American criminologist who visited Tokyo recently.
Reader Mail
Feb 12, 2009

Any foreign tongue gets short shrift

I agree with many of the comments made by Gregory Clark in his Feb. 5 article "What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan." Based on my own teaching experiences, lack of motivation on the part of students and teachers is a driving force for poor English-language ability. That said, I've also...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2009

Fight prostitution by punishing the solicitors

AMSTERDAM — Prostitution is virtually the only part of the personal services industry in the Netherlands that works. One can't get a manicure in Amsterdam without booking an appointment two weeks in advance, but men can buy sex anytime — and at an attractive price. The legalization of prostitution...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 11, 2009

Egg-on-face bloopers can make a yolk or worse of any translation

Many readers will be familiar with the infamous guarantee said to have been spotted on the menu of a Hong Kong restaurant: "All the water used in our soups has been personally passed by the chef." Some may also have heard of that creepy assurance printed in the catalog for an art exhibition during the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 26, 2008

Kicking back in Kurohime

A school friend of mine did his in Nagoya. An American I met the other day did hers somewhere in Kyushu. I was sent to central Hokkaido, where I did my one-month home stay in a tiny town called Otofukecho. I occasionally check the map to make sure it's still there. But, I have to admit, I've never been...
EDITORIALS
Dec 23, 2008

Scoring the ability to think

The education ministry says that a halt to the recent slide in Japanese children's scholastic ability is indicated by the relatively high scores of Japanese fourth and eighth graders who took international achievement tests in 2007 for math and science. But it should not be proud.
JAPAN
Nov 20, 2008

Internet translation site takes a humorous turn on fathers

Bring up the subject of fathers with Japanese people studying the English language and you might find their locutions a little on the strange side.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Nov 11, 2008

One year after the collapse, what are your thoughts on Nova Corp.?

Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 8, 2008

Translating in the spirit of samurai

Iehiro Tokugawa arrives at the publishing house Kobunsha, for which he works on occasion as a translator, accompanied by his Vietnamese wife. He is all in black; she is in blue jeans with a waterfall of shining hair down her back, and very lovely too. Speaking in fluent English, he extends his hand to...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Nov 1, 2008

Second time a charm for reunited couple

Michael Claxton, 61, and his wife, Rieko, 43, are living proof of the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2008

Japan extends claim to undersea territory

Japan will file a request with a U.N. commission to claim rights to continental shelves in the Pacific Ocean beyond its Exclusive Economic Zone in hopes of tapping into greater undersea natural resources, a government panel on ocean policies said Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2008

Obama, McCain all but ignore poverty issue

PRINCETON — Barack Obama worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago's blighted South Side, so he knows all about the real poverty that exists in America. He knows that in one of the world's richest nations, 37 million people live in poverty, a far higher proportion than in Europe's...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2008

Addiction to the worst of worlds

COPENHAGEN — Have you noticed how environmental campaigners almost inevitably say that not only is global warming happening, but that what we are seeing is even worse than expected?
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 19, 2008

A video archive that is music to the ears

JAPANESE VOICES: A Video Archive of Singing Styles and Techniques in the Japanese Language. Compiled, written and edited by Ichiro Nakayama. English translation by Mika Kimula under the supervision of Christopher Yohmei Blasdel. Osaka: Ad Popolo, 2008, Vol. I, 148 pp. (paper); Vol. II, Musical Examples,...
BUSINESS
Oct 18, 2008

Blood thinner prasugrel still on track, drugmakers say

Drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Co. and U.S. partner Eli Lilly & Co. sought to reassure investors Friday that a highly anticipated blood thinner remains on track for approval, despite escalating concerns of further delays by federal health regulators.
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2008

Cigarette price of ¥1,000 a pack would save 190,000 lives, health studies say

Cigarettes should cost at least ¥1,000 to discourage young people from smoking — a price that would also help sharply reduce deaths caused by the public nuisance, according to two research groups funded by the health ministry.
COMMENTARY
Oct 17, 2008

A way for North Korea's leaders to revamp

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Sometimes Americans give North Korean officials far more credit than they deserve for allegedly outsmarting us. Just how smart, really, are they?

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