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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 12, 2008

She, herself and AI

With her sights set on achieving her long-held ambition of winning a Grammy award, Los Angeles-born and Tokyo-based vocalist AI is adamant that dreams only come true with hard graft.
EDITORIALS
Sep 10, 2008

Put sumo back on course

Japan Sumo Association Chairman Kitanoumi has resigned following tests showing that wrestlers Roho and Hakurozan, siblings from Russia, had smoked marijuana. The former yokozuna, one of the sport's all-time greats, should realize that it was his inappropriate behavior in the case that made his resignation...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 9, 2008

Guide maker blazes trail to success

When Yasuyo Fukui decided to start her own company 11 years ago, she was an inventor, not an entrepreneur.
COMMENTARY
Sep 8, 2008

Why Japan's leaders matter to Americans

CALIF. — These days, when a Japanese prime minister resigns, the temptation is to say just two things. One is "ho," and the other is "hum."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 7, 2008

Jurgen Lehl: A rebel with style

First-time visitors to Japanese department stores are likely to be surprised by the brand Jurgen Lehl. Chances are they haven't heard of it although it sounds international and its quiet chic suggests they should have. As well, Jurgen Lehl outlets generally occupy large chunks of prime in-store real...
Japan Times
JAPAN / LETTERS FROM KOBE
Sep 6, 2008

Occupiers favored with postwar plenty

Ask any Japanese who experienced the war and the Allied Occupation about their recollections of those years and their first memory will probably concern hunger.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2008

One-night stand set for hot '90s go-go club

Kumiko Araki has been waiting 14 years for Juliana Tokyo, a dance club that was a sensation in the capital in the early 1990s, to stage a comeback.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 31, 2008

Why is Japan lagging in solar-energy field?

In the renewable energy industry, how does Japan compare with the rest of the world?
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 30, 2008

Getting back on the horse

This year's sublime fiasco with the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States had made me wince at the plight of U.S. mortgage holders, even though I am not one of them and I have but a buck ninety-eight invested in American banks.
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2008

Seiko Noda: The time is ripe for consumer agency

Establishment of a consumer protection agency couldn't come at a better time, what with the current deterioration of the consumer environment, consumer affairs minister Seiko Noda said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY
Aug 26, 2008

Appropriate that 'G-word'

Following is another reader's response to Debito Arudou's last "Just Be Cause" column ( www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080805ad.html ) on the use of the word "gaijin."
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Aug 22, 2008

Abe edging back into fight

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to be trying to move back into the political limelight, even though his close associates think it's too early.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2008

Free trade system is in danger of extinction

In July, the Doha negotiations, promising freer trade, broke down, ostensibly over a small technicality in safeguard rules. In reality, the talks collapsed because nobody was willing to take the political short-term hit by offending inefficient farmers and coddled domestic industries in order to create...
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 18, 2008

Rivals heap praise on fastest man Bolt

BEIJING — The Los Angeles Times billed it as the "clash of the dash."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WEEK 3
Aug 17, 2008

Akihito Ito: Keeper of the tales of a nuclear hell

Has George W. Bush ever heard of Akihito Ito? Dismayed at Pentagon plans to develop a new generation of "tactical" nuclear weapons — so-called mini-nukes — Ito sent Bush a gift: a box of CDs carrying the recorded voices of 284 atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 16, 2008

Get back to where you once belonged

The countryside in Japan has a reputation for being backwards. This is partly true. In the countryside where I live we walk backwards, we drive backwards and sometimes we even do our laundry backwards — by drying it out first, then washing it.
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 14, 2008

Staffing decisions at the NNTT cause a stir in theater world

The Japanese theater world is currently in crisis over the question of to whom public theaters belong, since the decision by the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT) to appoint new artistic directors for each of its three divisions. The disquiet has been caused by revelations following a June 30 announcement...
SPORTS / ODDS AND EVENS
Aug 13, 2008

Kitajima's swimming feats inspire a nation

BEIJING — With his head tilted back and his mouth wide open in a victorious roar, Kosuke Kitajima's fist-pump celebration after winning the 100-meter breaststroke final on Monday morning produced Japan's iconic image of the 2008 Summer Games so far.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 12, 2008

Custody battles: an unfair fight

"Sport at its best obliterates divisions between peoples, such as ostentatious flag-waving and exaggerated national sentiment." New York Times senior writer Howard W. French — who has covered China for the past five years, was Tokyo bureau chief from 1999 to 2003, and has lived overseas for all but...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2008

Russia's convertible icon

MOSCOW — Prophets, it is said, are supposed to be without honor in their homeland. Yet Moscow has just witnessed the extraordinary sight of Alexander Solzhenitsyn — the dissident and once-exiled author of the "Gulag Archipelago" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" receiving what amounts...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2008

Nanjing now: philosophy, history and Jacuzzis

Nanjing is a bustling city of 7 million, about six times its population before the Japanese rampage of 1937, and looks like many of the other modern, gleaming urbanscapes that have mushroomed up across China.
OLYMPICS / 2008 BEIJING OLYMPICS
Aug 9, 2008

Beijing joyfully steps forward

BEIJING — There are numerous slogans plastered on walls and Web sites with equal frequency in Beijing. The "One World, One Dream" Olympic motto and "Light the passion, share the dream" theme for the torch relay are prominently featured.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2008

'It's a Free World'

In the world of U.K. filmmaker Ken Loach ("Raining Stones," "Sweet Sixteen," "The Wind That Shakes the Barley") the working class have dignity; they speak and act with principle, even when these happen to be misguided. They may be bogged down by poverty, lack of schooling, recessions and unemployment,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2008

Horror of Hiroshima inspires Frenchman's haunting love story

Ever since he was little, Christophe Boubal, a French novelist, has been interested in writing and Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 31, 2008

Who are you calling 'Mummy's boy'?

'This is some screwy way for an adult to be spending his career, right?" laughs Brendan Fraser.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Jul 31, 2008

You can always buy your way in

Art changes with the times, so why shouldn't art galleries? Some say that Japan's unique "rental gallery" system, where young artists pay hundreds of thousands of yen per week to show their work, is on its last legs. If so, is it a case of good riddance? Or does this represent the retreat of a perfectly...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 30, 2008

Waribashi: Waste on a gluttonous scale

I f I were writing about one of my favorite Tokyo eateries for the JT's Food Page, this story would mostly focus on its delicious fare. However, as this is the Nature Page, my verbal meanderings here are not about the nosh at cheap and cheerful Shokudo Shogetsu in Tamachi, but about the tools used to...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Scorched-manager policy

MONTREAL — Signs of the American economy's perilous condition are everywhere — from yawning fiscal and current-account deficits to plummeting home prices and a feeble dollar.

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