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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Apr 21, 2002

Let us go fiddlehead foragin', but carefully

A fiddlehead, that small plant that grows in the Saint John River Valley in the spring, and which is said to be symbolic of the sun. — Alfred Bailey
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 21, 2002

Tireless fighters and flightless invaders

Truth may not be stranger than fiction, but it's usually more dramatic, as proven in a series of best-selling memoirs by Mayumi Takeda. The 32-year-old writer has lived what some people have described as a "roller-coaster life," and Monday night on Nippon TV's "Super TV" documentary program, this life...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 21, 2002

A superstar rises to the advertising occasion

I guess it's supposed to set up a connection between athleticism and potency, but I was still slightly taken aback last week while watching a broadcast on NHK of a major league baseball game. Behind home plate there was an advertisement for Viagra.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 21, 2002

And don't come back another day

ARTHRITIC JAPAN: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform, by Edward J. Lincoln. Washington, D.C.:Brookings Institution Press, 2001, 247 pp., $18.95 (paper) Japan's agonizingly slow attempts to resuscitate its ailing economy have left many observers bewildered. The policy failure is plain: the lowest growth...
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Apr 20, 2002

Museum in Ikebukuro holds Mideast treasures

Rather like a Pharaoh's tomb inside one of the Great Pyramids, one dark corner of Sunshine City -- a large commercial complex near JR Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo -- is filled with ancient treasures.
BUSINESS
Apr 19, 2002

Mazda to release 36 new models as it accelerates out of the red

Mazda Motor Corp. President Mark Fields said Thursday that the company plans to launch 36 new models over the next couple of years, following expectations that it has returned to profitability in the just-ended fiscal year.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CLOSE NEIGHBORS
Apr 19, 2002

Language, music point way to stronger relations

When Akiko Konishi felt life had become routine after five years in the same company, she decided to spice things up a little by studying a foreign language.
EDITORIALS
Apr 19, 2002

Tyrants: be afraid

The complaint against international law has been that it lacks teeth. Absent enforcement authority, the norms and principles that govern international behavior are merely exhortations -- even though they can have sufficient precedence to be considered binding. That changed April 11 when 10 countries...
EDITORIALS
Apr 18, 2002

Emergency bills need consensus

After a quarter century of government discussion of security policy, the Diet is set to debate legislation designed to deal with emergencies directly affecting the security of Japan -- namely, military attacks from abroad. At stake is a set of three bills, adopted by the Cabinet on Tuesday and submitted...
JAPAN
Apr 18, 2002

Kono family liver transplant a success

Former Foreign Minister Yohei Kono received part of his son's liver in a successful transplant operation that was completed early Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Apr 18, 2002

Turkey's Mideast peace role

LONDON/ISTANBUL -- The only possible way of exerting outside influence on the ever-worsening conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is through a visibly balanced approach.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Apr 18, 2002

From hotels to self-pumping soccer balls

www.jtbusa.com/enhome/ If you're looking for hotel deals in Japan, it seems you're better off getting out of the country first. A weekend of frantically trying to locate Tokyo hotels with vacancies turned up a lot of discount sites, few of which were really cheap and most of which were difficult to traverse....
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Apr 18, 2002

Konami brings back the classics

Konami, one of the longtime superpowers of the video game world, has just released "Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced," a collection of six classic Konami arcade games from the 1980s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 17, 2002

Czukay ages well, but who's counting?

The first time Can bassist Holger Czukay came to Japan in 1982, his passport received extra scrutiny. This wasn't so unusual for slightly shaggy looking, middle-aged hippies. Czukay, however, wasn't an undesirable element.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 17, 2002

Choreographer dances to a different tune

Choreographer Matthew Bourne, leader of his London-based Adventures in Motion Pictures company, shot to fame when his gay version of "Swan Lake" took the West End and Broadway by storm after being premiered at London's Sadler's Wells theater in 1995.
SOCCER / THE BALD TRUTH
Apr 16, 2002

Careful with that tree, Eugene!

After months of teetering on the brink of full-blown silliness, World Cup organizers finally appear to have plunged into a vortex occupied by Teletubbies, giant talking tadpoles and Benny Hill lookalikes.
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Apr 16, 2002

Economic panel wants to go its own way on FTAs, farm trade

In a rather belated move aimed at giving the languishing Japanese economy a badly needed shot in the arm, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's key economic panel has put yet another sacred cow on its reform agenda: agriculture.
JAPAN
Apr 16, 2002

Anonymous postings on Net entitled to royalties: court

The Tokyo District Court on Monday ruled that writings posted on the Internet under fictitious names are literary property, and ordered a Tokyo publisher and a Web site operator to suspend publication of a paperback that reprinted comments posted by 11 people on the site without their consent.
EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2002

Beyond Oprah's book club

Last week, U.S. fiction publishers heard to their dismay that they are about to lose the single biggest booster their industry has known in the past six years: television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey's astonishingly influential monthly book club. True, the same period also saw the advent of "Harry Potter"...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2002

Population-fund cuts come at deadly price

NEW YORK -- The Bush administration's recent decision to cut back funds appropriated by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, will have serious repercussions in that agency's support for reproductive health in developing countries. The U.S. decision is aggravated by reduced contributions...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 14, 2002

It's not what you're thinking . . .

The way the rock business works is, you buy the record and if you like what you hear, you go to see the band in concert, which more likely than not, will be scheduled within two months of the record's release. Or, you see a band (by accident?) at a concert and then you rush out to your nearest record...
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2002

Japan considering creation of East Asia free-trade area before 2010

Japan is considering establishing an East Asia free-trade zone well ahead of 2010, Japanese trade ministry officials said Saturday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 14, 2002

Desperate times call for innovative measures

No quick recovery is on the horizon for the slumping Japanese book business. That is the consensus of commentator Kazuhiro Kobayashi, writing in Shuppan News (January), and of three experts discussing the matter in Tsukuru (March) -- Yasuo Ueda, Yoshiaki Kiyota and Hiroyuki Shinoda. Unit sales, revenues...

Longform

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.
Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go