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BUSINESS
Feb 17, 2006

Corporate character goods harness power of 'cute'

A traditional seasoning flies off store shelves after the bottles begin sporting a cartoon panda. A droplet-shaped character turns a little-known manufacturer into a household name.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2006

Girls make their mark

Should women directors make films that are identifiably, even explicitly, female -- or should they invade traditional male preserves in gender neutral ways? Make action, horror and gross-out comedies for teenage boys? My own feeling is they should make whatever they want to make. My own observation,...
OLYMPICS
Feb 16, 2006

Okazaki misses out on medal in 500

Veteran speed skater Tomomi Okazaki was overtaken in the second run of the women's 500-meter event Tuesday, narrowly missing out on a podium finish at the Turin Olympics.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2006

"ART/ROOM -- Bedroom"

Art Front Gallery Closes in 13 days
SOCCER
Feb 15, 2006

FIFA to allow Japanese team to play in Club World Cup

Soccer's world governing body FIFA will allow a host team to play at this year's Club World Cup in Japan, Japan Football Association chief Saburo Kawabuchi said on Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Feb 11, 2006

Wholesale prices up 23rd straight month

Wholesale prices in Japan grew 2.7 percent in January from a year earlier, marking the fastest growth in nearly 16 years, the Bank of Japan said Friday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2006

Schieffer asks Iwakuni voters to consider the big picture

OSAKA — The U.S. ambassador to Japan on Wednesday urged voters in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, opposed to the realignment of the U.S. forces to put national and regional needs ahead of local concerns.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2006

Rise in elderly offenders graying prisons

There are still plenty of metal bars and handcuffs. But prisons these days have some new features -- like wheelchair-friendly stair ramps, handrails in the bathrooms and nurses trained to spoon-feed inmates.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 7, 2006

How Japan became No. 1

Who has the global bragging rights to slimness? First there was Mireille Guiliano's book, "French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure," published in 2004. Hot on the heels of this best-seller, Naomi Moriyama threw down the gauntlet less than a year later with "Japanese Women Don't...
JAPAN
Feb 6, 2006

Health ministry to set specific nonsmoking goal

The health ministry has decided to set a numerical target to lower the ratio of smokers as part of a national health campaign, officials said Sunday.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 6, 2006

Dementieva batters Hingis at Pan Pacific

Russia's Elena Dementieva ended Martina Hingis' bid for a first singles title in her comeback with a crushing 6-2, 6-0 win in the Pan Pacific Open on Sunday.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 5, 2006

Hingis surprises Sharapova in semis

Wild card Martina Hingis crushed top seed Maria Sharapova 6-3, 6-1 Saturday to advance to the final of the Pan Pacific Open, where she will face Russia's Elena Dementieva.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 5, 2006

How will Valentine, Hillman and Brown fare in 2006?

One-fourth of the 12 Japanese pro baseball teams in 2006 will be led by American managers. Their performances this season may dictate whether the recent trend for the Central and Pacific Leagues to hire foreign kantoku will continue or if the clubs will return to putting native Japanese in charge.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 4, 2006

Hingis, Sharapova roll into semifinals

Maria Sharapova and Martina Hingis showered reporters with roasted beans to ward off evil spirits after their wins at the Pan Pacific Open on Friday, but both showed they still have a little bit of the devil in them prior to their semifinal showdown.
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2006

Wiretaps led to 18 arrests in 2005

Police conducted authorized wiretaps in one murder case and four drug cases leading to 18 arrests in 2005, Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura told a Cabinet meeting Friday.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 3, 2006

Sharapova on track

Top seed Maria Sharapova began her defense of the Pan Pacific Open title in Tokyo on Thursday with a comfortable 6-4, 6-4 win over American qualifier Lisa Raymond.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2006

Police conduct wiretapping in murder case for first time

Police said Wednesday they used wiretapping in a murder case for the first time last year and arrested a suspect in the gangland slaying.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2006

Miyake evacuees mark first year back

Residents of Miyake Island pledged Wednesday to rebuild their lives in a ceremony marking the first anniversary since they returned home after volcanic eruptions in September 2000 forced their evacuation.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 2, 2006

Bana steps up to the plate

Director Steven Spielberg has avoided the usual press tour for his new film, "Munich," and who can blame him? The film speaks for itself, and anything he said could have pinned him down fatally when this film requires a certain ambiguity to work. And you can imagine the questions he would have gotten:...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2006

'Gender-free' hard to define, harder to sell

Last year's cancellation of lectures on human rights in Kokubunji, Tokyo, has pitted key feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno and free-speech advocates against conservatives in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government opposed to the use of "gender-free" -- a term whose definition varies but somehow conjures up negative...
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2006

Court shortens prison term on Heo fraud case

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday trimmed a year off the seven-year prison sentence handed to former real estate management boss Heo Young Joong for bilking an oil wholesaler out of nearly 18 billion yen in 2000.
OLYMPICS
Jan 31, 2006

Blogs by Olympics participants to be banned

The Japanese Olympic Committee is telling athletes competing at the Turin Winter Olympic Games not to open web logs because the Olympic Charter bans athletes' journalist activities when the games are on, and violators will be disqualified.
JAPAN
Jan 29, 2006

Whale meat inventory up amid sluggish consumption

Japan's inventory of whale meat, a byproduct of research whaling, has doubled in the past decade, it was learned Saturday.
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2006

Core CPI rises 0.1% for second straight month

In yet another sign that deflation may be dead, the nationwide core consumer price index, excluding volatile perishables, grew 0.1 percent in December for the second straight month, the government said in a preliminary report Friday.
EDITORIALS
Jan 28, 2006

No place for pension evasion

At a time when people's trust in the nation's pension systems is declining, some enterprises, especially small ones, are behaving in a manner that will weaken the reliability of social security. They deliberately choose not to join the corporate employees' pension system (kosei nenkin) while the number...

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