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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Aug 30, 2013

Organizer of annual writers' workshop helps others find artistic way

John Gribble gives a part of every day to creating. Whether it's pinpointing the perfect word for a poem or plucking out a ditty on a guitar, his life and livelihood in some way proves creative. As a poet and teacher, Gribble has spent the last 20 years in Japan organizing others to find their artistic...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Aug 30, 2013

Aichi city gambles on female cyclists

The Toyohashi Velodrome in Aichi Prefecture has started a program to train professional female cyclists to drum up interest in the dying sport.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Aug 30, 2013

High hopes for victims of female genital mutilation

A nondescript suburb on the outskirts of San Francisco. A plain brick building. Seven nervous women wait in the sunlight. They are here for surgery, which perhaps has as much claim as any other to describe itself as "miraculous."
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 30, 2013

Cory Booker: hope, hype — and heir to Barack Obama?

If Cory Booker were a television character you might think the writers were over-egging things a bit. Tall, athletic, handsome, he is an ambitious politician with a flair for drama. He rescues a woman from a burning building, saves a freezing dog, chases a scissor-wielding mugger, invites hurricane victims...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2013

Once again, U.S. rushing to attack without facts

Assertions that Syrian President Bashar Assad is guilty of chemical weapons use without hard evidence presented to the international community will not do, not after the dodgy dossiers fiasco on Iraq in 2003.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / FOOD MATTERS
Aug 29, 2013

Indie food mags develop a taste for Japan

First sushi, then noodles; next sake and wagyū beef: The world's fascination with Japanese cuisine shows no sign of abating. More and more people are writing about it, too, from travel buffs and visiting cooking experts to untold legions of foodie bloggers.
Reader Mail
Aug 28, 2013

Something valuable to take away

I appreciate Chavez's article very much, as my hardships of being a foreigner in Japan were hardships I had never experienced in my home country, which then allowed me to put myself in the shoes of minorities elsewhere.
Reader Mail
Aug 28, 2013

Encounters of the foreign kind

Chavez's article left me with mixed feelings. Living in foreign countries, everybody will have certainly felt that he or she is supposed to be discriminated against to some extent, but according to Chavez and the opinions of my foreign friends, they tend to feel this way more often in Japan than in other...
Reader Mail
Aug 28, 2013

Minority experience understood

Regarding Amy Chavez's Aug. 16 column titled "What being a minority allows us to see": Actually the fear and hurt I felt while dealing with certain bureaucratic nonsense in Japan allowed me to understand a small piece of the American minority experience.
LIFE / Digital
Aug 27, 2013

Banish trolls but the Net needs anonymity

So the proprietor of the Huffington Post has decided to ban anonymous commenting from the site, starting in mid-September. Speaking to reporters after a conference in Boston, Massachusetts, Arianna Huffington said: "Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier and I just came from London...
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Aug 26, 2013

Plugging Tepco's brain drain

One reason Tepco paid a uniform ¥100,000 special summer bonus to each of some 5,000 managerial employees is to plug a brain drain. Core workers are quitting.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Aug 26, 2013

Kaizen and the art of human wa maintenance

Kaizen here is organic, ubiquitous and attuned to the physical and psychological needs of human beings. At its best, this 'human-scale kaizen' eliminates or eases many of the mundane uncertainties, annoyances and embarrassments of daily life.
COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 25, 2013

Still dreaming of a level field after all these years

Wednesday will mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that soon came to be equated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, "I Have a Dream."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2013

Emerging nations brace for economic ice age

After several years of riding high on foreign investment cash and commodity revenue, emerging markets are in for a shock amid creeping recession in much of th eurozone.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2013

Cancer metaphor unmasks Egypt's liberalism

A Lebanese scholar admits being taken by surprise at the tide of Egyptian 'liberalism' now calling for the excision of the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were a cancer.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 24, 2013

Chilling tales are tops when trying to beat the heat

Perhaps stemming from the belief that hearing a scary story will send a chill down the spine and provide welcome relief from the summer heat, August is Japan's favorite season for traditional tales of horror. At local festivals and in theme parks, the obake yashiki (haunted house) is a standby for dating...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 24, 2013

Gay marriage in Japan? Only over the reactionary LDP's cadaver

Tokyo Disneyland is an odd place to make a political statement, but the theme park now hosts same-sex wedding ceremonies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 24, 2013

Shocking exposé of Britain's police spies

Overexcitable publishers like to bandy around words such as "explosive" and "shocking" when trying to flog their books, even though generally you could substitute them for ones such as "mildly interesting."
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Aug 24, 2013

A look back at when Tokyo was awarded 1964 Olympics

It's been more than 50 years since Tokyo was awarded the 1964 Summer Olympics, and it was done before several landmark events that shaped the second half of the 20th century.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / CHUBU CONNECTION
Aug 23, 2013

Was Fellers friend of Japan or master manipulator?

A Nagoya University professor is working on a book about the life of the late U.S. Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, who played a major role in absolving Emperor Hirohito (known posthumously as Emperor Showa) of responsibility for Japan’s wartime aggression across Asia.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 23, 2013

As promoters follow users, not sites, ads can pop up in distressing ways

Ads for knockoff Louis Vuitton bags pop up on the luxury retailer's official Facebook page. A Toyota advertisement shows up on a news article about a car crash. Or an ad for Dove promoting women's "real beauty" shows up on a Facebook page glorifying domestic violence.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 23, 2013

The sky becomes less of a limit for cabin attendants (unless you're a man)

All Nippon Airways just announced a new hiring policy for cabin attendants (CA). Starting next year, new CAs will be full-time regular employees of the company. Since 1995, CAs at the company were hired as contract workers who could opt to become regular employees after three years. The reason for the...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2013

Multilateral accord presents pitfall if alliances are missing

South Korean President Park Geun-hye's call for multilateral dialogue in Northeast Asia is premature without a framework for military cooperation with Japan, South Korea and the U.S.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2013

What's important to the elite?

As William Pesek makes very clear in his Aug. 14/15 article "Fukushima replaces economy as Abe's legacy issue," it is truly mind-boggling that Japan's most senior leaders don't seem to be able to acknowledge the worst crisis in their nation's history since the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Aug 19, 2013

Abe and his ministers give anti-foreigner rallies tacit green light

To the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe:
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Aug 19, 2013

‘Halfies’ and hapa the norm elsewhere

Hapa haole celebrated in Hawaii

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