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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 5, 2014

Entertaining guests with a little horseplay

I had returned from a three-month trip to the Canadian Arctic and was in Vancouver, meeting up with family and friends before returning to Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 5, 2014

A firsthand account of vice and profit in Edo

Riding the circular Yamanote Line on a Sunday in Tokyo, it is easy to daydream. Those who have found themselves at times wondering what the city might have been like in the past are likely to enjoy the aptly named "Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 5, 2014

From the Japanese

This fourth volume of poetry from Tokyo resident Paul Rossiter conveys his 40-year relationship with Japan in collected poems both thoughtful and thought-provoking. These range from the impressions of a startled first-time tourist in 1969 through to Rossiter's visits to Ishinomaki in Tohoku in December...
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jul 3, 2014

Happy birthday, Sailor Moon!

In 1992, a 14-year-old Japanese girl set out to save our universe from total annihilation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

Babylon still trembles at Jamaica's cult classic

Flashback: It's midnight at the Orson Welles Cinema, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980. Perry Henzell's breakthrough Jamaican film "The Harder They Come" has been playing here every weekend for nearly a decade now, but tonight it's still a full house. As the lights go down, the audience sparks up, and within...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 1, 2014

Toronto Mayor Ford exits rehab, says was in 'complete denial'

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said Monday that he had been in "complete denial" about his drinking and drug use before entering a rehabilitation clinic two months ago, and admitted that his struggle against substance abuse will never end.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2014

'Black money' fairy tale drives Indian adults

Millions of adult Indians enthusiastically propagate a fairy tale that says once a strong government brings billions of dollars of 'black money' home, India will cease being poor and take its rightful place among the superpowers of the world.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jun 29, 2014

Comic books champion debate on Fukushima disaster

Farmers in Fukushima try to convince skeptical visitors that their crops are safe from radiation. Blood trickles from the nose of a reporter who visits the area.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 28, 2014

Mori classic was the epitome of Meiji style

There has been no period in the history of modern Japanese society so dramatic and so remarkably tumultuous and fluid as the Meiji Era (1868-1912), and no single work of fiction more revelatory in its depiction of that period than Ogai Mori's "The Wild Goose." Now we have, in Meredith McKinney's just...
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 28, 2014

When a physical wasteland bred a moral wasteland

He lived by fire and he died by fire. He was vile — coldblooded, amoral, ruthless. He was the man his time called for, and the man his time called forth — a vile time, by most standards. Its name is Sengoku Jidai, a period of prolonged civil war. Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) is its most representative...
EDITORIALS
Jun 27, 2014

Legal tussle over parental ties

Japan's Supreme Court next month is scheduled to hear two cases that challenge the traditional legal presumption of a father-child relationship when DNA test results deny the existence of blood ties.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 26, 2014

UFC returning to Saitama on Sept. 20

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is bringing its brand of mixed-martial arts back to Japan with not only one of the most highly anticipated heavyweight bouts in recent memory, but also what may be among the most important UFC debuts by a Japanese fighter in some time.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 26, 2014

U.S. Supreme Court ruling protects cellphone privacy

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that police officers usually need a warrant before they can search the cellphone of an arrested suspect, a major decision in favor of privacy rights at a time of increasing concern over government encroachment in digital communications.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 25, 2014

Kids' stuff that adults need to see

Perhaps in the wake of this attack on seriousness, many artists have since taken refuge in childishness, whimsy or playfulness, though these values have been carefully rationed in 'Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children,' with the emphasis being more on showing childhood as a state of vulnerability and transformation.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2014

China can learn from U.S. how to cut smog

Smog in China's cities is often presented as if it were the same problem as greenhouse emissions and climate change. In fact, China could significantly reduce its air pollution by enforcing the same emission control techniques that have been used in the U.S. and Europe for the last 30 years.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 23, 2014

Tea party hangs on to its seat at the kids' table

Despite its recent big win, the tea party wing in the U.S. Congress has no more than the ability to say no, to wreak havoc and to generally make House Speaker John Boehner's life miserable. Insiders still set the agenda.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 23, 2014

Can Japan show the West how to live peacefully with Islam?

Uniting a colorful mix of expats, removed from the context of sectarian strife and the historical Western interference still haunting many Muslim countries, could the Japanese brand of Islam be a showcase for its peaceful essence?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 22, 2014

Until some bright spark works it out, we’re just bathing in the dark

We bathed in strobe light for six months until the fateful day arrived: Our bathroom light had entered that great junk pile in the sky.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 21, 2014

Advances in robotics present singular worry

'Singularity' is an odd word. Originally it meant peculiarity. Then 20th-century physicists got hold of it and situated it at the very boundary of space-time, to the eternal bafflement of the lay mind.
COMMUNITY / Voices / Fiction
Jun 21, 2014

Rice: Connecting two nations that are natural friends

Haruko Harrison tells her story
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 20, 2014

Volcanic beast begins to stir anew in Hawaii

Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, has rumbled back to life in Hawaii over the past 13 months with more seismic activity than at any time since its last eruption, scientists say, while calling it too soon to predict another blast.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jun 19, 2014

Your ad in this space: Private companies fund cleanup of orbiting junk

Nobu Okada wants to save the planet from orbiting junk, which he says threatens to cut us off from the satellites we depend on and prevent us from traveling into space. But to help fund that, he needs to land a can of powdered sports drink on the moon.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Jun 18, 2014

Still dreaming of a Japan with juries — and without U.S. bases

At 84, Chihiro Isa hopes to see two things in his lifetime: the jury system reinstated in Japan and U.S. forces gone from Okinawa.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 18, 2014

Female dramatists dispel gender concern

Last month in Berlin, in a conversation with Annemie Vanackere, artistic director at the city's cutting-edge Hebbel am Ufer company, she was saying how she loved contemporary Japanese theater, and how HAU had worked with several Japanese dramatists. Then she suddenly asked me: "Why were they all men?...
Japan Times
JAPAN / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Jun 15, 2014

'Womenomics' push raises suspicions for lack of reality

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be a political hawk who believes Japan can once again become a macho state that can hold its own against regional threats, but as he looks for money and muscle he is turning to an unlikely source: women.
Japan Times
JAPAN / FUKUSHIMA FILE
Jun 15, 2014

Fukushima hotline gets record calls

A suicide-prevention hotline in Fukushima Prefecture received a record 18,194 calls in 2013, signaling that scars from the events of March 2011 still weigh heavily on residents' minds.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language
Jun 15, 2014

True confessions of a bijogā (beautiful jogger)

This is the story of a 39-year-old female runner who works in advertising and runs six times a week.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 14, 2014

Happy endings: foreigners working in Japan's film industry

Film is supposed to be a universal language, but the film business in any given country is usually run by the locals for the locals. The one great exception is Hollywood, which has been making films for the world since the silent days and is open to talent, preferably English speaking, from around 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