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Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2012

Refugee pines to go back to, help Myanmar

When Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced her trust in President Thein Sein last August, Tin Win Akbar decided it was time to return home after spending almost 16 years as an exile in Japan.
Reader Mail
Jun 7, 2012

Don't let nativism trump health

In the April 24 Kyodo article, "Some municipalities set to deny services to illegal foreign residents: poll," I was appalled to read that "33 [municipalities] said they will not vaccinate illegal foreigners against tuberculosis and other diseases" (when the revised basic resident registration law takes...
EDITORIALS
Jun 6, 2012

Cabinet reshuffle for convenience

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda reshuffled his Cabinet Monday — the second in nine months. His aim is clear: removing obstacles — Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka and infrastructure and transport minister Takeshi Maeda — to facilitate negotiations with the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 5, 2012

Much ado, but micro-important

A few weeks ago, as a panelist at a symposium on Japan's accession to the Hague Convention on international child abduction, I found it hard to disguise my ire. One of the speakers was a lawyer opposed to Japan joining the convention, and who refused to even use "abduction" to discuss what she called...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 5, 2012

Rumors, lies fill void left by police in Furlong case

It is one of the more ugly tasks in journalism: trying to extract a quote from a bereaved family after a violent death. By the time I called Nicola Furlong's mother on May 25, she had learned that her 21-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted and probably throttled by a stranger in a city 10,000...
Reader Mail
Jun 3, 2012

Value the people who can build

Regarding Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson's May 30 article, "It's time U.S. dropped the college-for-all crusade": It is indeed interesting to read that there are those in America now questioning the wisdom of "college for everyone."
Reader Mail
Jun 3, 2012

Kan's response understandable

Regarding the May 29 front-page article "Kan tells nuke probe: 3/11 overwhelmed us": However former Prime Minister Naoto Kan is judged, to me his actions in the wake of the 3/11 Fukushima nuclear plant accidents were like those of a father desperate to protect his family facing an unimaginably enormous...
Reader Mail
Jun 3, 2012

Talk about a drag on the economy

Regarding the May 31 Kyodo article "Aging population a drag on economy: Shirakawa": Isn't Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa forgetting something? The very same aging demographic whom he bemoans for being a "drag" on the economy built a world-class economy during the 1960s and 1970s!
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 2, 2012

Japan's great outdoors becomes Oregonian's office-cum-playground

Gliding through powder across Mount Hakkoda in Aomori Prefecture or scanning the surfers at Shonan Beach in Kanagawa Prefecture, Gardner Robinson's life and work merge so completely that on the clock and on the slopes are one and the same.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jun 1, 2012

Coaching carousel back in full swing for summer

With Ryan Blackwell out of the picture, will the Osaka Evessa hire an experienced, big name coach or hand the reins to another rookie bench boss? Or will the team simply hire from within and promote Blackwell's assistant, 33-year-old Keisuke Hirose, to the top spot?
Reader Mail
May 31, 2012

Feeling for bankers is gone

Kevin Rafferty's May 29 article, "Frustrated financial dreams," is excellent. I am an ex-banker and feel the same! It's a shame that the trust in banks has gone. That's why worldwide protest movements like "Occupy" have reasons to exist. Politicians behave like they were endorsing greedy bankers returning...
Reader Mail
May 31, 2012

Logical deterrence for Pyongyang

Regarding Ralph Cossa's and Brad Glosserman's May 24 article, "Beijing's North Korea policy only emboldens Pyongyang": In presuming to tell China how to deal with North Korea "in its own interests," the authors display astounding arrogance and bellicose bias. It is quite logical for North Korea to strive...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 31, 2012

AKB48 'election' shows marketing brilliance

The biggest event of the year for AKB48, the 48-member pop group that's the most popular music act in Japan today, arrives next Wednesday.
BASKETBALL
May 31, 2012

Blackwell returns to U.S. as Evessa tenure ends

For Ryan Blackwell, nothing's changed. His status — as the former Osaka Evessa head coach — is the same as it was last Friday, when it was first reported in this newspaper that his tenure had ended.
SUMO
May 29, 2012

Kyokutenho: the first Japanese yusho in six-plus years . . . sort of

In recent years it has been possible to start the regular post-basho article several days before a tournament wraps up.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 28, 2012

Overruling doubt to indict: underbelly of Japan's reform

The April 26 acquittal in Tokyo District Court of former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa signified total "defeat" for public prosecutors in view of the strong possibility, as a journalist on judicial matters said, that the prosecutors had maneuvered a "prosecution inquest committee," an...
Reader Mail
May 27, 2012

A roughshod run over contracts

Regarding the May 23 Kyodo article "Hashimoto: Answer tattoo survey or else": The debate surrounding tattoos on public employees in Osaka can evoke a lot of emotion, so it is helpful to approach it from clearly defined principles.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
May 27, 2012

Nuke documentary experiments with online fundraising

At one point or another, every filmmaker, producer or journalist has dreamed about freeing themselves from the financial restraints of media production. The team behind "We Are All Radioactive" — a documentary about a community of surfers and fishermen in the small tsunami-stricken town of Motoyoshi...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 27, 2012

For some, jail is the best place for aged care

So it's come to this: "Prison is heaven, freedom is hell." A country of which this can reasonably be said is in sad straits. Can it be reasonably said of Japan? It's the subhead of a recent article in Shukan Shincho magazine whose main title is "Happy prison life." Prison life is not happy, unless in...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
May 26, 2012

Young goldfish breeders rise to challenge in Aichi

Breeding goldfish has been a dying industry in and around the city of Yatomi, Aichi Prefecture, but a glimmer of hope remains as a younger generation of breeders are taking over their family businesses.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 26, 2012

Successful comedian apologizes for leaving his mom on welfare

Junichi Komoto, a member of the popular comedian duo Jicho Kacho, apologized Friday for letting his mother continue to receive welfare benefits after his career took off.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 26, 2012

Head monk of Kyoto temple takes Buddhism into the community

Climb the stone walkway, stippled with fallen red camellia blossoms, that leads to Kyoto's Honen-in Temple, past a mossy thatched gate and raised platforms of sand combed in tight patterns of waves and chrysanthemums, and you enter a hushed and otherworldly space at the foot of Mount Daimonji.
Reader Mail
May 24, 2012

Tattoo bias shows Japan's colors

Regarding the May 18 article "Osaka's Hashimoto puts municipal workers' tattoos into the limelight": I am quite disappointed in Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's decision to "out" municipal workers who have tattoos and to suggest that they should find employment in other fields.
Reader Mail
May 24, 2012

Monuments don't change history

Regarding the May 20 AP article "Sex slave plaque in New Jersey riles Japanese officials": As an American citizen, I find it inappropriate for such a monument to be built in the state of New Jersey. If Koreans, on their own soil on the Korean Peninsula, feel the need to build such monuments, I can't...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012

Beijing's North Korea policy only emboldens Pyongyang

Discussions in Beijing about North Korea are always frustrating. It's not so much due to the sharp divergence in U.S. and Chinese thinking about how to deal with Pyongyang; the two sides differ on many issues. No, the real problem, from our perspective, is the illogic of the Chinese position. Indeed,...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Promote respect, not sympathy

Regarding the May 16 Kyodo article "Ministry to urge employers to hire more women": I feel the motive here is incorrect. Instead of taking up this initiative to "improve [women's] employment conditions", the labor ministry should make efforts to acknowledge the value that women can add to the nation's...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Stupidity of planners and builders

I was distressed, but not shocked, to read in the May 14 Jiji article "Extra work jacking up disaster housing costs" that homes for tsunami victims were not being built with the cold in mind.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 20, 2012

Japan faces a long, hot, nuclear-free summer

Is Japan — and particularly the Kansai region — going to have enough electric power to get it through peak summer demand? The Meteorological Agency's three-month projection for May through July, posted on its website (www.jma.go.jp/jp/longfcst/000_1_10.html) hedges its bets. For the four main islands,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 20, 2012

Economic woes, political volatility may creep into U.S. foreign affairs

No matter who wins the presidential election in November, the United States appears headed for a prolonged period of political volatility as leaders do not seem to have good answers to voters' anxieties about their economic future. This threatens to spill over into U.S. relations with the rest of the...

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