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EDITORIALS
May 31, 2010

Reining in personnel costs

A bill to revise the National Public Service Law, intended to strengthen Cabinet members' control over national public servants, is before the Diet. The Cabinet decided May 21 to cut by 39 percent the recruitment of national public servants in fiscal 2011, but there appears to be confusion in the Hatoyama...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
May 30, 2010

Summer gift season tests Miyazaki meat rep

Dept. stores worry that Miyasaki's foot and mouth disease outbreak could put a chill on chugen sales.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 30, 2010

Does democracy still count if it's conditional?

NEW YORK — With Barack Obama's military policy in the Middle East getting murkier by the day, his predecessor George W. Bush's stated goal of democratizing the region through violence has to be judged to have failed. The thought prompts the reflection that forced democratization could entail considerable...
Japan Times
LIFE
May 30, 2010

How can it get too late to learn?

Professor Ryusuke Yoneyama was in the middle of explaining to the members of his music-production class why Baroque-era violin bows, which resembled loosely strung archery bows, produced a weaker sound than their contemporary counterparts when he paused to ask a question.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
May 30, 2010

Veteran coach Pierce given a raw deal by Lakestars

The coaching business is predictable in only this way: expect the unexpected.
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
May 29, 2010

Futenma blame game in full swing

OSAKA — In the end, the only thing Friday's agreement between the United States and Japan on relocating the Futenma air base does is to yet again avoid fundamental questions and problems that both sides have long ignored in favor of a face-saving political agreement for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama....
JAPAN
May 28, 2010

UNICEF urges Tokyo to ban possession of child pornography

UNICEF on Thursday called on Tokyo to take steps to ban child pornography to prevent children from falling victim to sexual exploitation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 28, 2010

DJ Fumiya: "DJ Fumiya in the Mix"

Starting out as a hip-hop DJ at age 14, DJ Fumiya's career has got bigger and broader. He joined the eclectic Japanese hip-hop group Rip Slyme as the main producer at 18, and with Fumiya manning the gear the outfit won a slew of prestigious MTV awards over the last decade, including the first million-selling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 28, 2010

'Railways'

The Japanese have a love affair with trains, especially the ones that trundle through the more picturesque parts of the country. One sure way to draw tourists to your rural prefecture is an ancient steam locomotive that chugs through a pretty middle-of-nowhere. For many visitors, it's not the destination,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 28, 2010

The goddesses are protecting Araki

"Is my shirt OK?" asks Nobuyoshi Araki as he straightens it to give me a good view. "I looked through my things, but this was the most newspaper-appropriate one I could find."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 28, 2010

Contemporary works created in loving memory of the 'now'

"Memory does not belong to the past; it is the continuous present and future." Artist Kimio Tsuchiya's words speak volumes about "Plastic Memories — to illuminate 'now,' " currently showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Her work "Fragments of the Moon" (2004) features old bits of chipped...
COMMENTARY / World
May 27, 2010

'Self-reliance' no longer an option for China

GUIZHUO, China — The Huangguoshu waterfall in China's southwestern Guizhou Province is a magnificent sight, when there is water. The largest waterfall in Asia, it plunges over a sheer cliff more than 60 meters high in a thundering display of foam, mist and rainbows.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 27, 2010

Geisha Chikako Pari

Chikako Pari, whose stage name is Ichizuru, is the last geisha, also known as geiko, of a small town in Kyoto Prefecture. Her unusual last name, Pari — written in kanji — refers to the city of Paris and her French ancestry, although the details of her French great-grandfather's life were never revealed...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 27, 2010

The long-range vision of Monocle

For a jet-setting, award-winning media, design and branding entrepreneur, Tyler Brûlé is pretty accessible. When he called last week, a few days before the opening of his highly anticipated Monocle Shop Tokyo within the new Francfranc Village building in Aoyama, he was at the site making last-minute...
JAPAN
May 26, 2010

Scion a misfit at Toyota helm: expert

An influential writer with ties to Toyota's past presidents is calling for a change of leadership at the recall-battered automaker in a letter to editors of major U.S. newspapers.
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
May 26, 2010

Casio cell phones in the frame; Panasonic pushing Blu-ray angle for TVs

Mobile snaps: Casio's latest cell phone, the CA005, just released by KDD's mobile phone service "au by KDDI," offers two products in one. A typical glossy clamshell mobile phone, the CA005 also packs a 13-megapixel camera into its sharply rectangular form. The phone's camera features smile detection...
COMMENTARY
May 26, 2010

Science takes another step down a long road

"This is both a baby step and a giant step," said scientist and venture capitalist Craig Venter as he revealed that his team had created the first "synthetic cell." "It's a giant step because, until this was done, it was only hypothetical that it could work. It's a baby step in terms of all the distance...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 26, 2010

Dealing with sincere and sesame forms of flattery

It's been many years since I've heard anyone remark to me,「日本語がお上手ですね」("Nihongo ga ojōzu desu ne," "Your Japanese is good").

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building