Search - u_times

 
 
MORE SPORTS / MAN ABOUT SPORTS
Dec 5, 2012

Irish bring fresh air to BCS title game

Notre Dame's "luck of the Irish" this football season has in turn brought good fortune to all non-partisan college grid fans.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Dec 3, 2012

Golden Kings hand HeatDevils a 73-point beating

Sunday's Oita HeatDevils-Ryukyu Golden Kings game was a farce from the get-go. And the 1,286 spectators in attendance weren't treated to anything resembling a professional basketball contest.
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2012

Gaining respect, not losing face

The Japan Times is to be commended for the courage to publish the Nov. 27 article from former South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung Soo, titled "Heed history in East Asian territorial disputes."
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2012

Beetle population out of balance

I have traveled through western Canada several times by car and by train, and I have seen firsthand the devastating effects on forests there wrought by the beetles reported in the Nov. 27 AFP-JIJI article "Pine beetles swarm to west Canada."
Dec 1, 2012

Hamas out to undermine Israel with media blitz

What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Dec 1, 2012

Shame game in Oita: Players rip team, allege fraud

The on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy Oita HeatDevils will field an undermanned team this weekend at home, a squad that's a cheap imitation of the 12-man unit that had the potential to reach the Final Four this season.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ELECTION 2012
Nov 30, 2012

New Komeito not necessarily on same policy page as old, hawkish ally LDP

Revising the war-renouncing Constitution is not an urgent matter and neither the majority of the public nor the international community is supporting Japan's recent rightward tilt led by the Liberal Democratic Party, said Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of LDP ally New Komeito.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2012

China's military crossroads

At a time when China's economy and society are under considerable strain and the country is embroiled in increasingly tense border disputes with its neighbors, the relatively peaceful once-in-a-decade political transition in Beijing has helped deflect attention from the underlying turbulence in the Chinese...
Reader Mail
Nov 29, 2012

Great story deserves translation

Michael Hoffman's short story, "The Fish Tree" — which ran Nov. 25 in the Timeout section of The Japan Times — is a wonderful piece. It's so exquisitely crafted and believable! His years in Japan show a formidable grasp of the culture and its intricacies. Bravo!
BUSINESS
Nov 29, 2012

Teen drivers text far more than parents believe, study finds

Teenagers are 26 times more likely to send text messages while driving than their parents expect, based on preliminary results of a safety study by Toyota Motor Corp. and the University of Michigan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 26, 2012

Notable negatives, funny titles and other linguistic oddities

When I was a wee lad of 4 or 5, I would sneak up on a chair and explore my grandfather's desk, atop of which was situated a curious object: a paperweight featuring the famous three wise monkeys of Nikko. At its base was inscribed the warning: Don't monkey with anything on this desk.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2012

You may need less sleep than you think, or not

If holiday shopping leaves you exhausted, a long weekend should offer an opportunity for some serious shut-eye. We spend between a quarter and a third of our lives asleep, but that doesn't make us experts on how much is too much, how little is too little, or how many hours of rest the kids need to be...
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2012

Have we had enough war yet?

Regarding The Washington Post article by Condoleezza Rice that ran in The Japan Times on Nov. 21 ("America must act as conflict builds in Mideast"): It has been said that the political choice in the United States is between the "Evil Party" and the "Stupid Party."
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2012

Secrecy feeds nuclear skepticism

E. Watters' Nov. 11 letter, "Scientific fact vs. unfounded fear," downplays the dangers of the Fukushima nuclear accident. While I agree that inaccurate reporting should not be the basis of decision making, interpretation of data is crucial for understanding truth.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Nov 25, 2012

Canadian scientist uses math to green Japanese baseball

Richard Hoshino is a tall, slim mathematician, as tightly wound as a precision timepiece, and irrepressibly polite and cheerful. He also has a hard time taking "no" for an answer.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Nov 24, 2012

Netanyahu refocuses on Iran

The domestic criticism started pouring in almost as soon as Israel's ceasefire with Hamas was inked Wednesday night. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had waved a white flag and left the job unfinished, the opposition howled. A snap poll on TV found a large majority of the public did not support the...
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2012

Government's strange refusal

The Nov. 16 Kyodo article "Yokota visit to Pyongyang in works?" blandly states that DNA tests on the allegedly cremated remains of Megumi Yokota that were supplied by North Korea in 2004 showed that they were not hers.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Nov 18, 2012

Story behind drug scandal that rocked bj-league to core

Nearly six months after being released from Osaka Prefectural Police custody, Dana Washington, wife of bj-league legend and former Osaka Evessa star Lynn Washington, decided it was time to tell her side of the story.
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2012

Ridiculous detour from the issue

I appreciate the The Japan Times' publishing letters to the editor that tell the other side of the story, like Xiao Jin Yuan's Nov. 11 letter, "Safeguarding Territorial Integrity." It's good to get a variety of views on an issue as complex and important as this.
EDITORIALS
Nov 18, 2012

Students staying in Japan

Japanese college students are studying abroad in fewer numbers than ever before. A new report from the nonprofit Institute of International Education in New York announced that a mere 19,900 Japanese students were enrolled in American colleges and universities in 2011-12. That is down 60 percent from...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 17, 2012

Miyakojima — dolphins to the port side!

After four days of sightseeing on Okinawa Island, we set sail for Miyakojima, the next major island to the south in the Okinawan chain. Having just visited Okinawa's Churaumi Aquarium, I was more aware of the beautiful sea life underneath our sailboat such as manta rays, sea turtles and maybe even dugong....
EDITORIALS
Nov 17, 2012

Meeting Chinese aspirations

The Chinese Communist Party on Thursday selected China's new leadership headed by Mr. Xi Jinping. He will lead not only the party as general secretary of the party's Central Committee but also the military as chairman of the party's Central Military Commission. He is expected to be elected China's president,...
Reader Mail
Nov 15, 2012

Amusing radiation comparison

Regarding the Nov. 9 front-page Kyodo article "Exposure to low-level radiation can cause leukemia, U.S.-Ukraine study of Chernobyl cleanup workers finds": I was amused when I read this article, especially this statement: "Of those surveyed, 87 percent had been exposed to cumulative radiation doses of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 15, 2012

A fine line separates calligraphy and what's called 'art'

The late 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a series of flip-flops among scholars as to whether calligraphy could be considered a fine art. Compared to painting and sculpture, wrote painter Koyama Shotaro in 1882, calligraphy did not attain the level of an art based on the Western models that were taking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 15, 2012

Yume-Goto shows how Kagawa rocks (literally) on stage

Growing up in a village in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Masashi Tomikawa never thought twice about the geology of his surroundings. The volcanic rocks that surrounded him, however, are now part of the drummer's arsenal of sound.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Nov 13, 2012

Print engineer slows down international nomad

Nara native Atsushi Takagi and Mihaela Serbulea from Bucharest met in 2003 when Mihaela gave a lecture on SARS for an international exchange organization in which Atsushi is a member.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 11, 2012

Local media are too vague on Fukushima radiation risk

Earlier this year, NHK rebroadcast a documentary it made in the late 1980s about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. It showed how the Soviet Union and European countries tested people for effects of radiation throughout the region. Appended to the doc was a discussion with experts who compared...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 11, 2012

The war legacy that binds Okinawa and Vietnam

As the motorbike taxi I'm aboard zigzags through the traffic in Da Nang, Vietnam's fourth-largest city, a bus pulls out of nowhere, causing my driver to brake, swerve and slam us into a sidewalk stack of bamboo cages packed with soft plump ducklings.

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