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Reader Mail
Jul 17, 2008

Three days in the Hakodate jail

The unsuccessful Group of Eight summit is over and no definite agreements were announced, but at least the Hakodate police were successful -- in arresting me, a 32-year-old German tourist. A week before the G8 summit I traveled with my wife, a Japanese national, by motorbike from Kyushu to Hokkaido....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Jul 13, 2008

Honda makes more than a scooter, with not enough scoot

With gasoline prices skyrocketing, car drivers are increasingly turning to two wheels to lower their fuel bills. New riders often start out on scooters because, unlike motorcycles, they have automatic transmissions, making them a cinch to operate. The DN-01 is a bold attempt by Honda to bridge the gap...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Jul 12, 2008

Shy Belgian boy falls for worldly Japanese girl

Marc Van Cauteren and Reiko Shinozaki met in Tokyo in 1993 after mutual friends encouraged him to call her during a business trip to Japan.
EDITORIALS
Jul 11, 2008

Cross-strait relations take off

The Taiwan Strait shrank last week as China and Taiwan began the first regularly scheduled nonstop flights between them. The flights will boost the Taiwanese economy and facilitate ties between the island and the mainland. Most important, however, they will give ordinary citizens on both sides of the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 9, 2008

Toyako businesses seek long-term benefit

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — Takuji Okamoto, 69, has run a tiny noodle shop with his wife, Chieko, for 23 years at the Lake Toya hot springs resort area.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 6, 2008

Hillman aims for Sapporo-like success in K.C.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Last November at his sayonara party in Tokyo, I semi-promised outgoing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Trey Hillman I would travel to Kansas City in 2008 to see him in action as skipper of the American League Royals. Last month, I made good on that promise.
Reader Mail
Jul 6, 2008

Officials deserve to be charged

As if the international traveler doesn't have enough to worry about with a long flight, long lines, cramped seating and proper travel documents, now we have illegal drugs or contraband being planted in luggage. This violation of rules by enforcement officials could jeopardize a traveler's entry into...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 5, 2008

Deja vu . . . or biting the bullet train

They say deja vu occurs when your brain burps and somehow interprets what is happening now as a memory.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 4, 2008

Plunging into the abyss

I'm hanging from a rope, high above the churning froth of an ice-blue river. My friends are waving and shouting out to me, but the roar of the waterfall muffles their voices. I pull myself off a wooden seat and lower my legs. Now there's nothing between me and the water below but crisp mountain air....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 2, 2008

The right way to reconstruct rivers

It's the end of June and, after three weeks of travel, I'm back at my desk in Kurohime up here in the beautiful hills of Nagano Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2008

Best way to beat the oil barons

Over the past 18 months, oil prices have more than doubled, inflicting huge costs on the global economy. Strong global demand, owing to emerging economies like China, has undoubtedly fueled some of the price increase. But the scale of the price spike exceeds normal demand and supply factors, pointing...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2008

Pretoria's duty to Zimbabwe

Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the presidential runoff scheduled for Friday secured for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe a Pyrrhic victory.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 28, 2008

The rainy season, brought to you by snails

Aspersa: Nothing like a nice slither in the rain. That dry concrete is so hard on the foot.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 27, 2008

A very green afternoon cuppa

Whenever I travel to Tokyo I make it a point to spend at least a good part of one day on a visit to Shibamata in Katsushika Ward. This lovely neighborhood tucked away in the remote northeastern corner of the city on the banks of the Edogawa River still retains some of the flavor of the Edo Period (1603-1867)....
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

An impressionable connoisseur of cultures

TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world's greatest interpreters. Readers...
EDITORIALS
Jun 19, 2008

Big boost for cross-strait ties

The Taiwan Strait continues to shrink. Last week, China and Taiwan agreed on regular nonstop charter flights between the two sides of the strait, a move that would boost tourism, help the sputtering Taiwanese economy, and provide the impetus for even more ambitious links between them. This progress is...
Japan Times
JAPAN / RETRACING ROUTES
Jun 18, 2008

Returnee from Brazil offers blend of both worlds to Gunma settlers

Second in a series When Shoko Takano opened a Japanese-language school in Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture, in October 1991, Japanese-Brazilians working at local factories flocked in to seek her advice on living in Japan.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 17, 2008

Idling drivers

Dear Alice,
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2008

Japan brings North back to bargaining table

In-mid April, a senior Foreign Ministry official in charge of Asian affairs looked confident. Although bilateral talks with North Korea had been suspended for more than half a year, the official predicted Pyongyang would have no choice but to come back to the bargaining table to discuss the abduction...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 14, 2008

Pilgrimages done on the run

Welcome to the hood: the Buddhahood. Some sects of Buddhism believe you can attain Buddhahood by chanting certain purification chants over and over. Others, such as Shingon, use pilgrimage as a method of achieving divine enlightenment and understanding of the world.
BUSINESS
Jun 13, 2008

MHI has no plans to enter jumbo jet market

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which plans in 2013 to launch Japan's first domestically produced jetliner, is not looking to enter the jumbo jet fray, MHI President Hideaki Omiya said Thursday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 13, 2008

Koshu stands out as sip of summer

Last month, Tokyo's wine community was given a rare treat: Two of the most famous names in the wine world descended to hold forth on subjects including the bright future of Japan's Koshu grape and Bordeaux's stellar 2005 vintage.

Longform

Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo