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JAPAN
May 30, 2010

Sony-Google Internet-based TV faces tough road, analysts say

While the partnership between Sony Corp. and Google Inc. announced last week appears a good match, some industry observers say it remains unclear what kind of business model they are aiming for with the Internet-based televisions they plan to produce.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Apr 25, 2010

Horsing around in Shinjuku

At the tail end of this year's cherry-blossom season I set off for one of Tokyo's prime viewing spots, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. My idea is to walk the quiet backstreets circling the garden, then canter through the park itself, which features several late-blooming varieties of sakura cherry trees....
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Apr 20, 2010

Sumo association between a rock and a place

Sumo has been around in organized form for over 250 years. As a sport in which the rankings and most of the promotion/demotion rules and regulations have remained unchanged, sumo has just turned 100.
LIFE / Digital
Apr 14, 2010

Tech pushes Japan's music scene; industry won't budge

The music business reinvents itself every 20 years or so — basically every time a new format comes down the pike. But the industry has never faced the kind of fundamental challenge presented by the digital file-sharing revolution.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Apr 2, 2010

Crowd-sourcing sakura viewers

For decades it was the Japan Meteorological Agency's duty to keep on eye on the nation's pink sakura front. Now it's up to everyone.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2010

Catalyzing consumption and balancing growth

WASHINGTON — China has weathered the great recession well. The world now waits to see if last year's impressive domestic demand growth can be sustained, and if China can, in the words of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, "give full play to the leading role of consumer demand in driving economic growth."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 16, 2010

Guerrilla comics wage war on the humdrum

If you'd gone down to Shimokitazawa that day — the Saturday before Christmas, around 3 p.m. — you'd have been sure of a big surprise. No, not a teddy bears' picnic, though in Shimokita you never know; instead, among the usual bustling crowds of hipsters, a load of people just stopped moving. For...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 6, 2010

The art of peripheral heating

In my Japanese house in the countryside, I don't have central heating. Just peripheral heating. In an era where just a simple word like "change" can get a president elected, I suggest that the next person running for prime minister in Japan use the slogan "central heat!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 26, 2010

This acting lark is elementary for Downey Jr.

HOLLYWOOD — When one beholds the billboards touting the first movie in the new "Sherlock Holmes" franchise, one sees the slim, natty, Anglo-looking Jude Law and imagines he is Holmes and that the less buff, older and somewhat rumpled Robert Downey Jr. is his Dr. Watson. Wrong, of course, and despite...
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2010

Politically connect: Twitter use is up

Presumably exhausted from all the heat over his political money scandals, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama recently limited the number of questions he takes from reporters every morning as he leaves his official residence.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Feb 16, 2010

Instinct key for singer-entrepreneur

For a musician and entrepreneur with many professional faces, Australian Donna Burke is surprisingly wary of constantly taking work-related calls.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Feb 1, 2010

Okada's 4-point intervention sparks West to bj-league All-Star victory

RIFU, Miyagi Pref. — All-Star games are a collection of highlight-reel plays and fan-friendly events — lots of autographs, fans and players posing for pictures, light-hearted competition — and everyone's agenda is required to include one item: plenty of smiles.
LIFE / Digital
Jan 27, 2010

Japan's techies strive to bridge culture gap

In November, more than 100 people met in Yokohama for a daylong "unconference" on technology and the Internet. Attendees addressed each other on topics of their choosing — the roster of speakers determined solely by whoever signed up fastest for time slots on a whiteboard.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jan 22, 2010

Takamatsu's Okada a real sharpshooter

Eventually, a Japanese player will lead the bj-league in scoring for an entire season. And it will be a terrific achievement, an inspiration to this nation's youngsters who possess a jump shot and a dream.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 21, 2010

Paying CEOs too much is bad for business

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — There is now intense debate about how the pay levels of top executives compare with the compensation given to rank-and-file employees. But, while such comparisons are important, the distribution of pay among top executives also deserves close attention.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2010

Poverty remains endemic

NEW YORK — Last year the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization announced that the number of hungry people in the world increased over the last decade. In 2008, the World Bank announced a significant decline in the number of poor people up to 2005.
EDITORIALS
Jan 10, 2010

Squeezing the merchants

On Nov. 30, North Korea redenominated its currency, the won, without prior announcements, and reportedly banned the use and circulation of foreign currencies after Jan. 1.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 10, 2009

Photographer/filmmaker Kiyotaka Tsurisaki

Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, 42, is a photographer and mondo filmmaker who specializes in shots of corpses. Since 1994, he has taken photos of over 1,000 dead bodies, often chasing police cars to scenes of crimes, accidents and suicides in such countries as Thailand, Russia and Colombia, as well as parts of Palestine....
BUSINESS
Nov 21, 2009

Sony head sees big things for 3-D

Sony Corp. Chairman Howard Stringer forecast 3-D movies, pictures and games will be the electronics maker's next $10 billion business, challenging investors and analysts who say the technology isn't ready to become mainstream.
COMMENTARY
Nov 19, 2009

Wrong way to halt warming

Here's a surprise. The countries with the best stories to tell at the forthcoming U.N. Copenhagen conference on climate change will probably be the ones that have not signed up to carbon-reducing targets at all, or have only signed up very recently. It could be China, the United States, India and Japan...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 11, 2009

Life in Japan can be a long and fraught train ride

Here's an illuminating little tale: In the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), a Japanese official was sent to France to study the police system (which, incidentally, was replicated here). Traveling across the Paris suburbs in a crowded train one summer afternoon, the official was assailed by acute...
EDITORIALS
Oct 11, 2009

Campaign against groping

Every year in Japan, some 1,800 men are arrested for groping women on trains. In a 2004 NHK survey of Tokyo women in their 20s and 30s, 64 percent said they had been groped on a train. Only 2 percent reported it to police. In 2008, the police in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama recognized 2,416 cases...
JAPAN
Oct 7, 2009

Press club faithful fight change

Since its landmark victory in the Aug. 30 general election, the Democratic Party of Japan has continued efforts to shake up the power structure to make good on its promise to create an accountable administration.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 6, 2009

Kawasaki's Nihon Minkaen: Traditional folklore in a natural setting

In an article last May 10 introducing the many attractions of Tokyo's neighbor Kawasaki, this writer made a brief reference to the Nihon Minkaen (The Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum) in Tama Ward.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 6, 2009

Kawasaki's Nihon Minkaen: Traditional folklore in a natural setting

In an article last May 10 introducing the many attractions of Tokyo's neighbor Kawasaki, this writer made a brief reference to the Nihon Minkaen (The Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum) in Tama Ward.

Longform

It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.
Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?