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BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Mar 12, 2000

New Fighters skipper Oshima faces foreign slugger dilemma

Nippon Ham Fighters freshman manager Yasunori Oshima will be faced with a dilemma of sorts when the 2000 Pacific League baseball season begins April 1. He's got three quality foreign hitters but, once the exhibition schedule comes to an end, he'll only be able to play two of them. Japanese baseball rules...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 12, 2000

NHK Symphony Orchestra performs American classics

The world of music is global indeed. Great musicians have originated from a bewildering array of places, studied far from home and made their careers around the world. The United States of America can claim its share of eminent instrumentalists and singers, giving birth to some, training others and nurturing...
BUSINESS
Mar 9, 2000

Cell phone users to eclipse subscribers to fixed lines

Mobile phone subscribers in Japan are likely to outnumber fixed-line subscribers this month, ending the dominant role of conventional phones in telecommunications, the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2000

A new dawn for marketing in Japan

and MASAAKI KOTABE The Japanese market holds much promise for U.S. firms as new forms of doing business evolve. Mail-order and nonstore retailing are becoming part of the daily consumer landscape. Likely to be even more prominent is the ability to conduct business in "market space" rather than the traditional...
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2000

Police-watchers earn 26 million yen

Four of the six members of the National Public Safety Commission, the body that oversees the National Police Agency, each earns a salary of 26.67 million yen a year, although the commission meets only once a week, NPA sources said Wednesday.
COMMUNITY
Mar 2, 2000

All in the name of the perfect cut

We live in an age where technology pushes us to be faster, more efficient and more connected than ever. We make phone calls while walking down the street. We send e-mail messages from handheld electronic organizers. We have oceans of informations just on the other side of a mouse click.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 29, 2000

Asia's real entrepreneurs shine

THE NEW ASIAN CORPORATION: Managing for the Future in Post-Crisis Asia, by Michael Hamlin. Jossey-Bass, 1999, $21.95. There are few more compelling subjects than the future of the Asian corporation.
BUSINESS
Feb 28, 2000

E-consumers' habits reveal low-tech solution to recession

Major supermarket operator Nagasakiya Co. has just gone bankrupt, and reports say many department stores are taking heavy losses.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Feb 27, 2000

Saint days

I wonder how many of you know what famous man was brought up in Henfynyw in Ceredigion, the kingdom of Ceredig. Any Welshman would tell you it was David, patron saint of Wales, who is closely associated with spreading the faith of the Celtic Christian Church. His sermons emphasized joy, faith and discipline....
CULTURE / Art
Feb 26, 2000

Fair and flea market pot-hunting

"How can I learn more about Japanese pottery?" is a question I'm often asked. The answer is simple: Get out and see as much as you can.
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2000

DPJ's Kumagai sees yen in the Net

In what appears to be the first such attempt in Japan, Hiroshi Kumagai, deputy secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, has begun soliciting political donations through the Internet. Kumagai, a veteran Lower House member, said the move is an attempt to secure more funds from individual donors...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 6, 2000

Philip Harper

To be billed as Japan's only foreign sake brewer conveys a claim unusually intriguing. Even the man in question, Philip Harper, expresses some surprise at the way things have gone for him as he gets close to achieving the status of master brewer in Japan.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2000

Sony to sell appliances directly over Internet

Sony Corp. will begin online sales of home appliances for the domestic market by the end of March, the major electronics manufacturer announced Tuesday. It will be the first time a major Japanese electronics maker has sold home appliances directly to consumers over the Internet. Japanese electric appliance...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2000

Voting on Taiwan's future

Taiwan's presidential campaign is moving toward the final stretch. It is being fought among three top contenders: Vice President Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party, Chen Shui-pien of the Democratic Progressive Party and James Soong, an independent. The second free, direct presidential election on March...
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2000

Opposition parties continue Diet boycott

The Lower House on Monday entered a two-day, question-and-answer session on policy speeches delivered Friday as the opposition camp continued its boycott in the face of last week's turmoil over a seat-reduction bill. It marked the first time in the past 33 years that a question-and-answer session on...
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2000

Team attempts Khmer software to computerize Cambodia

Staff writer When you send e-mail, either in English or Japanese, you assume it can be read on the recipient's computer screen without any problems. But if the message is in Khmer, chances are that it will be turned into a series of symbols that make no sense. "What is common in Japan (and other industrialized...
COMMUNITY
Jan 27, 2000

Overcoming blind discrimination

In the past 10 years, 71-year-old Atsuko Yasumoto has fulfilled many lifelong dreams. She has swum with dolphins in Hawaii, climbed mountaintops in Japan, traveled to the United States, and won first prize in a ballroom dance contest in Tokyo.
COMMUNITY / How-tos
Jan 23, 2000

Buried in time

A woman writes of her problem. It is likely to remain one. She has a collection of what she calls bark pictures, produced in Japan after World War II. She describes them as landscapes composed of mountains made of tree bark, trees made of moss, and painted water and skies. She doubts if they were considered...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Navajo fights relocation, sees coal interests at work

Staff writer An American Indian recently visited Japan to solicit support for the Dineh people, also known as the Navajo, facing relocation from their home in the Big Mountain area of northern Arizona. Lecturing in English and saying a prayer in his native tongue, Bahe Yazzie Katenay, 42, spoke about...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Vietnamese set up residents' network

Some 60 exchange students and former refugees from Vietnam met in Kawasaki on Monday to launch the first nationwide network of Vietnamese residents of Japan. Members of 10 different support groups for people who fled to Japan after the Vietnam War ended in 1975 marked the start of the Network of Vietnamese...
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2000

Ceramic greats spotlighted

New Year's Greetings to all Ceramic Scene readers! In Japan there are innumerable artistic groups that allow their members to exchange ideas or research, sponsor lectures or workshops and to acknowledge outstanding work in their respective fields. The Japan Ceramic Society (Nihon Toji Kyokai) is one...
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2000

Suspect often listed suicide drugs on Net

NAGOYA -- A woman arrested Thursday for selling sleeping pills to a woman for use in a suicide attempt has frequently posted messages about suicide drugs on a Web site, police alleged Friday.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 7, 2000

Japan's cultural underground exposed in edgy new guide

The slow days of winter are upon us, making an evening on the couch with a good book or tune more enticing than the sweaty confines of a live house or club. As folks slowly stream back into town from the New Year's holidays, there isn't a lot happening in the first few weeks of January anyway, so kick...
COMMUNITY
Jan 3, 2000

Picture-book village looks to the children

Once upon a time, sometime in 1992, there were two communities, Kijo-cho and Ishikawauchi, nestled high in the mountains of Miyazaki Prefecture. As in many such rural communities, the sound of children's voices was becoming a rarity as young families left to find their fortune in the city of Miyazaki,...
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Japanese consumers opting for riskier, more rewarding investments

Staff writer Are the Japanese changing the way they save money, turning to risky but potentially rewarding financial investments? The rising popularity of investment trusts may provide a clue. Net assets of investment trusts, or mutual funds, amounted to 53.3 trillion yen at the end of November, up...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Titanic bell to ring in Nagoya's new year

Staff writer A bell recovered from the RMS Titanic will be rung for the first time in 88 years in a unique event to usher in 2000 in Nagoya. The brass bell was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic, at a depth of more than 4,000 meters, in 1998. Andrew Quinn, the U.S. consul general to Nagoya, will...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 1999

Bungling bureaucrats just another day at work for Ishihara

Staff writer The harried city official sighs as he looks at a poster designed to promote the Year 2000 countdown celebrations in Tokyo's Odaiba district. "He didn't like it," the Port and Harbor Bureau official says, bewildered. "He said we should think it out more, be more creative." A little while...
COMMUNITY / JAPAN LITE
Dec 26, 1999

Forget this year, and the last 999 as well

At the end of the year now, Japan is in the throes of "bonenkai," or "forget the year" parties. I wonder, though -- shouldn't we be having "forget the millennium" parties?
COMMUNITY
Dec 23, 1999

A cry to help children in need

If Joseph Lam were to take a vocational aptitude test, the results would no doubt point to a career in either politics or tele-evangelism.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 22, 1999

The accidental ambassador

Stop me if you've heard this one: A mustachioed fun-loving Turkish guy throws up a personal Web page that, in simple, bad English, depicts him as a regular Renaissance stud muffin, who loves to travel, plays numerous instruments, is single, and -- the kicker -- he states, "I like sex." He offers a picture...

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?