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Reader Mail
May 26, 2013

Weighing the costs and benefits

Judging from Chris Flynn's May 16 response, "Secondhand smoke is the enemy," it appears that the debate on the socialization of health care costs is off the table. Flynn states: "The main thrust behind banning smoking in most places is to reduce the harmful effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers."...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 20, 2013

The shadow biosphere: life on Earth, but not as we know it

Across the world's great deserts, a mysterious sheen has been found on boulders and rock faces. These layers of manganese, arsenic and silica are known as desert varnish and they are found in the Atacama desert in Chile, the Mojave desert in California, and in many other arid places. They can make the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 6, 2013

Who turns a company into a 'wonderful place to be'?

Kazuhiro Tsuga, president of Panasonic Corp., addressed his new recruits on Monday telling them that he hopes they will turn the company into "a wonderful place to be." President Akio Toyoda encouraged his recruits at Toyota Motor Corp. to exhibit "the strength seen in cherry blossoms that can persevere...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 17, 2013

Tohoku coast faces man-made perils in wake of tsunami

One day in October 2011, marine ecologist Masahiro Nakaoka donned his scuba gear, paddled into the waters of Funakoshi Bay in Iwate Prefecture, and braced himself for his first glimpse of its underwater communities since a massive tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake swept through seven...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 16, 2013

War on the seabed: the Hebridean shellfishing battle

The problem with bottom-trawling is that it lacks discrimination. The gear plows through the seabed, taking or breaking nearly everything in its path.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 25, 2013

I still haven't found what I'm looking for ...

Thinking about Google over the last week, I have fallen into the typically procrastinatory habit of every so often typing the words "what is" or "what" or "wha" into the Google search box at the top right of my computer screen. Those prompts are all the omnipotent engine needs to inform me of the current...
WORLD / Politics
Dec 28, 2012

CIA's security group emerges from shadows

FOCUS
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2012

A Borgesian look at a fictional Hong Kong

ATLAS: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, by Dung Kai-cheung, translated by Anders Hansson and Bonnie S. McDougall. Columbia University Press, 2012, 192 pp., $24.50 (hardcover).
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 28, 2012

Paid leave, advice for foreign parents, JET's value: readers' views

Uncompetitive Japan Inc. Not being a Japanese person employed in a private Japanese company, it is hard for me to imagine the hardship experienced by the writer of the July 17 Have Your Say letter ("Working employees to death"). I can, however, say with a high degree of confidence that laws mandating...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 7, 2012

Poisons in the Pacific: Guam, Okinawa and Agent Orange

The day after 19-year-old Sgt. Leroy Foster arrived on Guam's Andersen Air Force Base, one of America's largest Pacific military installations, in 1968, he was assigned to what his superior officers called "vegetation control duties."
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2012

The corruption and hypocrisy of China's Communist Party

Some 3,000 young Chinese "princelings" have apparently been placed in prestigious British "public schools" (meaning fee paying and private!) and at universities including Oxford and Cambridge.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 15, 2012

Readers vent over 'Bread and becquerels'

Some readers' responses to the April 17 Zeit Gist column by Gianni Simone, "Bread and becquerels: a year of living dangerously":
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 2, 2012

Intelligent urban design that'll let people bloom

Two months ago, I was introduced to a startup called CityMart, a for-profit marketplace dedicated to helping vendors and city managers find one another — and to spreading municipal innovations outside of their home turf.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2012

Freedom of press hurt by nuclear crisis: group

Freedom of the press in Japan fell last year to a ranking of only 22nd in the world, from 11th the year before, due to "excessive restrictions" on reporting the Fukushima nuclear crisis, according to the global nonprofit group Reporters Without Borders.
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Jan 5, 2012

First-class final caps fine year for second tier

FC Tokyo and Kyoto Sanga's all-J2 Emperor's Cup final on Sunday was a high-profile showcase for the J. League second division, but away from the spotlight there is plenty to suggest the lower tier is in rude health.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2011

French researchers seek raison d'etre of hikikomori

Is the hikikomori phenomenon unique to Japan — or does it exist in other societies, too?
JAPAN / Q&A
Nov 9, 2011

Scrub homes, denude trees to wash cesium fears away

Worried about radioactive fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant? Don't wait for the government to help.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 3, 2011

When people ask, 'Do you remember me?'

Believe it or not, many Japanese people go to the beach just once a year, go skiing for one day a year and have a BBQ . . . once a year! It's no wonder Western holidays such as Valentine's Day and Christmas have become so popular in Japan — they happen just one time a year! And it's no wonder that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 25, 2011

Tsuneo Enari Exhibition — Japan and its Forgotten War: Showa

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography Closes Sept. 25.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 20, 2011

Fate's path led Canadian to Kamakura

Rarely does life offer a clear-cut crossroads, but Heather Willson, a 34-year resident of Japan, faced one squarely when she was 22 years old.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jun 7, 2011

Kamakura: Should vending machines be turned off to save energy this summer?

Yohei KachiSalaryman 34 (Japanese)They should be turned off in places like Tokyo — where there are lots of them — and many shops, if there is not enough electricity, but they should be kept on where people need them.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 31, 2011

English magazines run gamut from poetry to prose, Kanto to Chubu

We received several additional English-magazine suggestions in response to our May 17 column, "Print is suffering, but English readers have never had it so good."
Reader Mail
Mar 6, 2011

Socking away national treasures

Regarding the March 2 Kyodo article "Yakushiji pagoda (in Nara) open first time in 1,300 years": As a long-term resident of Japan, I have a very strong passion for Japanese history, arts and places of significant historical interest. I have found, though, on numerous occasions that historical places...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's first pop culture

Pop culture. Japan's today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 6, 2011

Tsumago: Living off its past

Tsumago is, indisputably, a charming place. Low mountains swing the former post-town's main street around in a curve of weathered wooden houses, backdropping the scene with the dark green of the firs that cloak the hills.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 5, 2011

Less is more for Japan travel buff

Harry Cheng, a globe-trotter who travels about 320,000 km a year, believes a simple list of names is enough to stir people's interest in scenes they haven't seen before. With this belief, he will soon launch a unique travel guide dedicated to recording travel experiences in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2011

Facing the specter of famine

SINGAPORE — In India, a potentially huge economic and social crisis is in the making, involving extensive rewriting of recipe books to exclude a favorite ingredient. Onions are in short supply and their prices have risen by 80 percent, too expensive for many Indians to afford as part of their daily...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jan 18, 2011

Mind the gap, get over it: readers' views

Following are are a selection of readers' responses to "Mind the gap, get over it" by Charles Lewis (Zeit Gist, Dec. 28):
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Nov 18, 2010

Shrine tags

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
JAPAN / HANEDA COMEBACK
Oct 20, 2010

Ota Ward hopes hinge on airport

For many foreigners visiting Tokyo, places like Akihabara and Harajuku are the must-see spots.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan