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COMMENTARY
Oct 27, 2009

India has enough food for those who can pay

CHENNAI, India — India is still hungry 62 years after it was freed from the British colonial yoke. The Global Hunger Index for 2009 places India at a low 65th, with the far more populous China doing much better. While China has reduced the number of "hungry" people by 58 million during the past decade,...
Reader Mail
Oct 25, 2009

Biggest threat in East Asia

Regarding the Oct. 16 article "Clarifying the idea of community": Allow me to disabuse The Japan Times of its illusions and misconceptions. The East Asia community is to be located in East Asia; the European Union is located in Europe. If the East Asia community must have the United States as a member,...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 23, 2009

A day to act in the name of planetary justice

PRINCETON, N.J. — What we are doing to our planet, to our children and grandchildren, and to the poor, by our heedless production of greenhouse gases, is one of the great moral wrongs of our age. This Saturday is a day to stand up against this injustice.
EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2009

Tenth place and falling

Japan ranks 10th in the world on the Human Development Index (HDI), an annual report from the U.N. Development Program that uses three main factors, health, knowledge and standard of living. Tenth would be a laudable position except that Japan's ranking is buoyed by one single factor, the longevity of...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2009

Brouhaha stirs over Belgian brew

Belgian beer, rich in fragrance, flavor and potency, is not like other brews in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Oct 15, 2009

The fruits of sharing a love of art

Tokyo Art Beat set their data free and something wonderful returned, in the form of an iPhone-app guide to the city's museums and galleries.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Oct 15, 2009

Underground rice paddies in Otemachi

Dear Alice,Please settle a bet. I met this guy in a bar who swore up and down that there are secret subterranean rice paddies all over Tokyo, part of a hush-hush government program to feed the national body in the event of nuclear war. In fact, he insisted a paddy was planted deep underground wherever...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 15, 2009

Japan can learn from Silicon Valley

With unemployment figures reaching their highest level in the post-World War II era, the Japanese economy shows no sign of a Silicon Valley-like resurgence that could give hope to the unemployed or to "zombie" corporations that have no customers for their products and no growth.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 14, 2009

Electric vehicles, touted as next big thing, still in their infancy

Competition has been heating up in the domestic market for electric vehicles and many automakers have been prioritizing the technology since Mitsubishi Motors Corp. launched an egg-shaped electric minivehicle in July.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 14, 2009

Plant-eating guys just waiting to get chomped on

It has finally happened: the inevitable relationship phenomenon. I was at a party the other day where every one of the couples present were paired off in the kokusan onna (国産オンナ, domestic woman)-gaikokujin otoko (外国人オトコ, foreign man) combination, a sight that would have caused my...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Oct 14, 2009

Nothing holding Japan back against Togo

Two wins and eight goals might not sound like a false start to Japan's October three-match series, but Wednesday's friendly against Togo will be the first and last chance manager Takeshi Okada has to really let go of the hand brake.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Oct 14, 2009

Sekai Camera's new reality

Speaking on the sidelines at the CEATEC technology conference in Chiba on Friday, Takahito Iguchi made a bold statement: "We will make a new environment."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 9, 2009

All aboard for Drive to 2010

It's Aug. 28, 1979, and the audience dutifully files into the old Shinjuku Loft livehouse to take their places, seated on the floor in preparation for another night of quiet musical appreciation. This time, however, something strange starts to happen. People keep coming in, the audience have to shuffle...
BUSINESS
Oct 7, 2009

FTA good for Swiss tourism: official

Juerg Schmid, head of Switzerland's tourism body, said Tuesday the free-trade accord between Japan and his country that took effect last month will hopefully fuel a surge in business travelers.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Oct 7, 2009

Sometimes everything just seems to go wrong

"Well, uncle, what did you think of him?(Ano hito no koto dō omotta? あの人のことどう思った?)"
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Oct 6, 2009

'Outsider' shares unique take on life, prejudices in the 'real' Japan

As a "blonde-haired, blue-eyed" American woman living in the rural farmlands of Tokushima Prefecture with a Japanese husband and their twin children, one with hearing disabilities, author and novelist Suzanne Kamata has gained a unique perspective on life in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Oct 5, 2009

Drowning recession sorrows in cheap booze

It's a good time to drink, not only to drown those recession-era sorrows, but also since cheap-booze bars are springing up everywhere.
COMMENTARY
Oct 5, 2009

Losing control of the heat

LONDON — My youngest daughter is 17, so she will have lived most of her life before the worst of the warming hits. But her later years will not be easy, and her kids will have it very hard from the start. As for their kids, I just don't know.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 4, 2009

Mamoru Mohri: A spaceman speaks

When future historians document the story of Japanese space exploration, 2009 will likely figure as the year when the nation put two high-profile rocket launch failures, in 1999 and 2003, firmly behind it and, quite literally, took off.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 4, 2009

Diving with dolphins in the Izu Islands

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting on the beach, struggling to strap on a pair of oversize flippers. When they are securely in place, I waddle down to the water's edge and gingerly step into the sparkling, crystal ocean lapping Miyake Island.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Oct 3, 2009

Welcome to autumn, and the insect world

Welcome to autumn, the spider season. Spiders are everywhere on our island. Should you dare to go hiking or walk the pilgrimage there will be elaborate spider webs, constructed by the best Japanese spider engineers, hanging taut across your every path.

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