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Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Nov 7, 2011

The more, the thriftier: guests indispensable for expensive weddings

There's an economic rationale for big weddings in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2011

The population disaster looms mostly for Africa

According to the United Nations, the world's population passed the 7 billion mark at the end of October. We can expect much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be 10 billion by the end of the century, but almost nobody will have the temerity to point out that this is almost...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Nov 6, 2011

Witnessing ways to make Japan's wasted woodlands pay

Ialways found it hard to think of single-species conifer plantations as real forests, but over the 32 years I have lived in the Shinshu area of northern Nagano Prefecture, that feeling has become even stronger.
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2011

Seven billion and counting

The United Nations has identified Danica May Camacho, born just before midnight Oct. 30 in a Philippine hospital, as the 7 billionth inhabitant of our planet. According to the United Nations Population Division, the Earth was to welcome its 7 billionth person on Oct. 31.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 6, 2011

Penny-pinching on pensions threatens to raid retirees' nest eggs

Much of the global media's attention this week was turned toward the possibility of Greece's default. Its direct effect on Japan is difficult to foresee. On the one hand, the approximately ¥1 trillion in national bonds Japan holds from the fiscally ailing countries that are referred to collectively...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 6, 2011

Kiyoshi Nakabayashi: Ex-Tokyo cop speaks out on a life fighting gangs — and what you can do

Kiyoshi Nakabayashi well remembers how, when he was a high school student in the late 1950s and early '60s, newspapers were full of stories of violent gang wars being fought out openly on the streets of Tokyo.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 5, 2011

Refusal, disposal, separation . . . exasperation

Japan is fond of buzzwords and perhaps one of the buzziest of the last two years has been the term "danshari."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 4, 2011

Les Chanterelles: Mushrooms and much more in Moto-Yoyogi

Poets may talk all they like about mist and mellow fruitfulness, but for us, autumn is above all mushroom season. And this year we have a new favorite place in which to indulge our fondness for fungi: Les Chanterelles.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Nov 1, 2011

More ways to try before you buy

Not sure if you're ready to Roomba? Trial offers let you take just about anything for a spin.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 1, 2011

Schizophrenic Constitution leaves foreigners' rights mired in confusion

Pop quiz: Who live in palatial homes in fashionable Tokyo neighborhoods but are subject to various forms of discrimination, have no family registry, can't vote and have limited constitutional rights?
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 31, 2011

Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older

The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to very different outcomes: liberation for the Libyans and stagnation...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 30, 2011

Cheap laughs from bumbling comedians and the YouTube zoo; CM of the week: Toto

The simple premise of the sports variety show "Hono no Taikukai" ("Blazing Athletics Club"; TBS, Mon., 7 p.m.) is to have groups of male comedians compete against solo female athletes in the latter's sport of expertise. The idea is that it takes several bumbling comedians to defeat one trained woman,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 30, 2011

Sheer delight of graceful Kurahara

There is a persistent hum of activity among small-press publications in Japan, much of it concerned with poetry and a good deal of it translation.
COMMENTARY
Oct 29, 2011

No escaping the noise at Nanny State Airlines

You step onto an airport's moving walkway, a flat metal conveyor belt that conveys travelers down an airport concourse, sparing them the indignity of burning a few calories by walking a bit. And soon a recorded voice says: "The moving sidewalk is coming to an end. Please look down."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 29, 2011

Longtime Kyoto resident relishes Irish music scene

Jay Gregg, a resident of Kyoto since 1980, starts each day with a "bowl of matcha and a few tunes." The music drifts through his living space, across his Kano School art collection, and brings back memories of his banjo-strumming university days at Colorado State.
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
Oct 29, 2011

Yamada hoping Nabisco final can spark Reds' survival

Urawa Reds head into Saturday's Nabisco Cup final against Kashima Antlers looking for a rare moment of joy in an otherwise troubled season, but midfielder Naoki Yamada admits the specter of relegation is casting a large shadow over the occasion.
Reader Mail
Oct 27, 2011

Detritus horribilis

In regard to the Oct. 22 article, "Briton aims to restore poets' peak to former glory", Stephen Gills, along with all the NGO volunteers, is to be commended for his efforts to clean-up Mount Ogura. The Kyoto-based environmentalist Okiharu Maeda deserves national recognition for his efforts as well. ...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Oct 27, 2011

Cruel to be kind: Does noruma work in bands' favor?

One of the first stumbling blocks you'll probably come across starting up a band in Japan is trying to book gigs. You'll explain to the booking manager about your music, give them a demo CD or a link to a place they can hear you online, they'll say, "Sure, I love your sound" — and then they'll tell...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Oct 25, 2011

The ridiculously frightening world of Japanese spooks

Halloween is that time of the year when the occult, macabre and humorous come together to create a festival of fear and fun for all the family. A celebration of death and demons with its roots in pre-Christian Europe, the summer's-end spook-fest has morphed over the centuries into a highly commercialized...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Oct 25, 2011

Chono was most valuable player for Giants this season

There were all sorts of strings attached to Hisayoshi Chono's last at-bat of the regular season.
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 25, 2011

Death, mystery and well-endowed tanuki: a tour of terrifying Tokyo

If supernatural beings are a form of energy strongly connected to violent death and tragic events of the past, then Japan is the perfect breeding place for such phenomena, says Lilly Fields, a "certified paranormal investigator" who has lived in Japan for more than 25 years.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 23, 2011

Only the Japanese public's will can raze that lethal 'village'

"Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list," wrote Leuren Moret in a "Power and the people" Timeout special in The Japan Times on May 23, 2004.
EDITORIALS
Oct 23, 2011

Toward a barrier-free Japan

Japan's move to make urban environments and transportation systems barrier-free came much later than other developed countries. However, in the decade since Japan's barrier-free transport law was enacted in 2001, the number of barrier-free stations has more than tripled. The transport ministry reported...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 23, 2011

Hachinohe's markets serve up feasts in the streets

Two hundred and sixty-two years ago, the feudal domain of Hachinohe was besieged by wild boars. The Wild Boar Famine that resulted, writes environmental historian Brett Walker in his recent book "Toxic Archipelago," was the result of "the perfect ecological storm."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Oct 23, 2011

Pele's message of solidarity in Tohoku

In world sports, there are few names more iconic than that of Brazilian soccer legend Pele.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 22, 2011

Briton aims to restore poets' peak to former glory

Nineteen university students and civic-minded Kyoto residents squat on a mountain pass on a cloudless afternoon in early October as a tall British poet, Stephen Gill, 58, reads from a collection of haiku.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 21, 2011

Suzunari: Who says kaiseki ryōri has to be stuffy?

Kaiseki ryōri, Japan's traditional multicourse "haute cuisine," is known for its rarefied elegance, its depth and subtlety of flavor, an exquisite focus on the seasons and, too often, for being as much fun as a funeral. But there is also another kind of kaiseki, one that's simpler, less formalized and...
COMMENTARY
Oct 20, 2011

Chinese law reform may be a double-edged sword

Reform of the Chinese legal system is desperately needed but the draft of large-scale amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law shows that the current exercise in law reform is potentially a double-edged sword.

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