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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Oct 24, 2006

Kumiko Taguchi

Kumiko Taguchi, 59, is deputy manager of Junkudo book shop in Ikebukuro in Tokyo, which boasts the largest floor space (nine-stories) of any bookstore in Japan. Before moving to Junkudo in 1997, she worked at another bookselling giant, Libro, located opposite Junkudo. After a long career in the industry...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Oct 23, 2006

Room for microcredit in the notorious 'gray zone'?

For sci-fi lovers, the twilight zone is a scary place, the stuff of bad dreams. But for borrowers of consumer loans in Japan, it is the "gray zone" that constitutes the nightmare.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 23, 2006

The global plight of the girl combat soldier

NEW YORK -- Legal proceedings against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo now taking place before the new International Criminal Court offer some hope that a serious kind of crime will be effectively punished and deterred.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 22, 2006

Exploring the cobwebs and exposing some dirt

ISTANBUL: Memories of a City, by Orhan Pamuk. Faber & Faber, 2006, 348 pp., £8 (paper). Turkey it seems has always inspired fear. The memory of advancing Turkish units camped outside the gates of Vienna haunted the European mind for centuries. "Where the Turk treads, no grass grows," ran one saying...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 22, 2006

Macha's return for MLB-NPB series off after firing by A's

Apparently it is a jinx to be the manager of the Oakland Athletics and be named to head a Major League All-Star tour of Japan. For the second time in four years, an A's skipper has been changed after getting the assignment to lead a visiting team in the nichibei yakyu.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Oct 21, 2006

Oh deer, what can the matter be?

Ah, Miyajima! One of the most photographed spots in Japan. That fantastic torii gate in the sea, the vermilion Utsukushima Shrine, magnificent Mount Misen, those damn deer!
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 20, 2006

IC you're old enough to buy cigarettes: new vending machines

Driven by growing concerns over potential health problems of underage smoking, the tobacco industry will introduce vending machines featuring an age-verification system in 2008 to prevent minors from buying cigarettes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 20, 2006

Annie Sellick and Grant Stewart Quartet

Saxophonist Grant Stewart and vocalist Annie Sellick bring their contemporary jazz to Japan for a tour that starts tonight (Oct. 20) -- and their straight-up, no-frills sounds dig into tradition with fresh feeling. Last year's "Grant Stewart +4" was a sparkling piece of contemporary jazz, but Stewart's...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 19, 2006

Is Labour's Gordon Brown electable?

LONDON -- British Finance Minister Gordon Brown obviously wants to succeed Tony Blair as British prime minister. But it is less obvious that he is willing to do what is necessary to lead the Labour Party to victory in the next general election. In some critical sense, he must repudiate Blair's legacy,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 19, 2006

Cornelius pops back with touching sounds

Keigo Oyamada, better known as Cornelius, is one of Japan's most recognized musical exports. His innovative approach to electronic music on his 1997 breakthrough album "Fantasma," which has sold more than 300,000 copies worldwide, and then on 2001's "Point" have won him fans in Europe, America, Australia...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 19, 2006

"Takanobu Kobayashi Exhibition"

Nishimura Gallery Closes in 10 days
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 18, 2006

Slow down to savor the turning seasons

The autumnal season of change is upon us once more, with delights for eye, ear and nose. As the thermometer dips, rises and falls erratically, some days seem almost balmy as if it is late spring or early summer; others carry a stronger hint of the chill to come as winter approaches.
SPORTS / E-LIST
Oct 17, 2006

Dragons win CL with 'Girl Power' formula

YOKOHAMA -- When no challenge exists, for some, the answer is to manufacture one. Call it the Teenage Girl Syndrome -- when there isn't enough drama in a given situation, never underestimate a moody 16-year-old girl's ability to create some, and fast.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 17, 2006

Visiting a theme park sure beats working, unless . . .

Japan has lots of young people who are out of work or not even in the hunt for a job. The government estimates that 850,000 people, from teens through to their 30s, fall into the category of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Then there are the "freeters," youths who only work odd jobs...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2006

The false hopes of tax cuts

NEW YORK -- There is a movement in medicine to require that applications for licenses to sell a new drug be "evidence-based." By contrast, trained economists view their discipline as having already achieved this scientific standard. After all, they express their ideas with mathematics and arrive at quantitative...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Oct 17, 2006

What d'you think about the no. of corporate scandals in Japan?

COMMENTARY
Oct 16, 2006

Abe off to impressive start

In his summits with Presidents Hu Jintao of China and Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea last week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took the first step toward improving relations that had soured between Japan and the two countries under the rule of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. His initiative also opened a...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2006

More deadly than Saddam

LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 15, 2006

Abe might not have Koizumi's hair and flair, but he's got a girl

During the recently closed Koizumi Era, the media was mostly silent about the former prime minister's marital status and lack of female companionship.
EDITORIALS
Oct 15, 2006

Backing off the merge lane

Talks between General Motors Corp., on one hand, and Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA, on the other, concerning a three-way alliance have collapsed, as the U.S. automaker couldn't find a good enough reason to form such an alliance. The unanimous decision by GM's board to reject the alliance appears to...

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly