Search - 2004

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2008

Bad timing hurts auctioneers' plans

One of the positive developments that Jonathan Stone, head of development in Asia for Christie's, saw in the otherwise disappointing contemporary-art auctions held this month in Hong Kong was that they "showed that Hong Kong has become the center of contemporary art in Asia."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2008

Hong Kong exports boost farmers

Japan's agriculture has long had a global reputation for protectionism and weak price competition for rice grown in its rural areas.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 9, 2008

Shinkansen about more than speed

Shinkansen stand as global symbols of Japanese technological innovation. Debuting just in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the bullet trains continue to carry people across the nation at record speed.
EDITORIALS
Dec 8, 2008

Temps weather the storm

It is becoming increasingly clear that the economy is sinking deeper. Domestic sales of new vehicles in November plunged 27.3 percent from a year earlier. The U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found that the U.S. recession had started in December 2007. As the U.S. and European economies are unlikely...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 7, 2008

Graduates' security goes to pot

Last week, a 25-year-old University of Tokyo graduate was arrested for allegedly posting death threats on his blog. The police say that the man, who has been unemployed since graduating from Japan's most prestigious university, had written that he would kill members of the education ministry for misleading...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2008

One man's theory, another's laugh

Conspiracy theories, occultism, UFOs and pseudoscience. Society abounds with the conjectures of people thinking far, far outside the box.
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2008

Pension funding expansion faces delay

The increase in the state's funding of the basic pension system to half from one-third doesn't necessarily have to happen next April, Prime Minister Taro Aso said Thursday, indicating the hike will probably be delayed.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2008

New tourism agency ambushed by high yen

When the Japan Tourism Agency opened for business on Oct. 1 to attract more Asian travelers, the timing could hardly have been worse.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 4, 2008

An audience with Miyazaki, Japan's animation king

Hayao Miyazaki says he doesn't like giving interviews, but the Oscar-winning, megahit-making animator has strong opinions he isn't shy about sharing, as a packed room of reporters learned when he appeared at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo on Nov. 20.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 30, 2008

Shades of the BBC in NHK's own 'The Office'

Two months ago I heard about a comedy sketch that appeared last May on the American show "Saturday Night Live." Actor Steve Carrell was the host and he and the cast of regulars did a parody of his own show, "The Office," an American version of the famous British sitcom about white-collar workers. SNL...
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2008

Order issued to pull ASDF from Kuwait, end airlift mission

The government finalized the order Friday to end the Air Self-Defense Force's airlift mission in the Middle East, terminating a nearly five-year Japanese military presence in Iraq.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2008

SDF mission comes to 'successful' end

Government officials expressed satisfaction Friday over the successful conclusion of the Self-Defense Forces missions in and near Iraq, but some experts complained that the pullout was long overdue.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 28, 2008

'252 — Seizonsha Ari'

Disaster pics have been big in Japan since the days of "Godzilla," the 1954 classic whose title monster served as a rubber-suited symbol for everything from earthquakes (that stomp) and fires (that breath) to atomic bombings (that city-wrecking power).
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2008

Pirates feel the sting of India's naval muscle

WATERLOO, Ontario — The rising might of India and the growing menace of piracy collided recently in the Gulf of Aden, a 2.59-million-square-km stretch of waterway between Somalia and Yemen. This came after India's demonstration of prowess in space with the successful launch of a lunar probe. As a symbol...
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2008

Tamp down the old ways

Sixty years ago on Nov. 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMT) handed down its verdict branding Japan an aggressor nation and leading to the execution of six military leaders and one politician for instigating the war. As if to substantiate the validity of this verdict,...
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2008

Deciphering the oil puzzle

What happens when the demand for oil flattens out or falls and the supply of oil continues as before or actually increases? The answer is economics at its simplest — the price plummets. And that indeed is what has occurred.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 23, 2008

Tuffy Rhodes likely to play 13th season in Japan

Will Tuffy Rhodes play another season for the Orix Buffaloes in 2009?
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2008

Paroled death-row inmate dies after decades-long fight for retrial

Kenjiro Ishii spent most of his life seeking a retrial. Still hoping for another court appearance, the paroled death-row inmate died on the morning of Nov. 7 at a hospital in Kumamoto Prefecture at age 91.
BUSINESS
Nov 22, 2008

Workers urged to knock off early, make babies

The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) is worried the nation's workers aren't having enough sex.

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