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Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2005

Airports packed as Golden Week starts in earnest

The departure rush for travelers looking to exploit this year's unusually convenient Golden Week holiday period peaked Friday at Narita and Kansai airports, Japan's two major international gateways.
EDITORIALS
Apr 29, 2005

Learn from the train tragedy

Monday's railway accident in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, was the worst since Japanese National Railways was privatized in 1987. A packed seven-car commuter train jumped the tracks at a sharp curve and the front car slammed into the parking floor of a nearby apartment building, killing more than 100...
JAPAN
Apr 29, 2005

Cooked books seen at 29 police forces

The National Police Agency has discovered accounting irregularities tied to investigative expenses at 29 prefectural police forces, agency officials said Thursday.
JAPAN
Apr 28, 2005

Aichi, Tokyo top list of worst prefectures for car pollution

Aichi Prefecture tops the list of prefectures in total carbon dioxide emissions from cars, but Tokyo is even worse when it comes to the amount released from a car per kilometer, the Land, Infrastructure and Transportation Ministry said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 26, 2005

The show's over

Marietta was with some Filipino friends in their local station when they were approached by a group of men they didn't know. One took her arm, and asked to see her alien registration card and passport. His badge showed he was from the Immigration Office. "Now they are checking everybody," she says. ...
BUSINESS
Apr 26, 2005

Credit card fraud -- how they do it and how to protect yourself

People walking around with their wallets sticking up out of their back pockets is a sight pickpockets in Japan are only too used to being grateful for.
Japan Times
Features
Apr 24, 2005

Menswear to the rescue

The Fall 2005 season saw the Tokyo Collections in a sorry state.
JAPAN
Apr 24, 2005

Bug in antivirus software hits LANs at JR East, some media

Computer local area networks at East Japan Railway Co. and some media organizations were inaccessible Saturday morning, apparently due to a bug in antivirus software made by Trend Micro Inc.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Apr 22, 2005

Trilogy in a triangle

In general, pre-bubble nightlife in Tokyo was rather dull. In the early 1980s, a Saturday night out in Shinjuku or Roppongi meant jockeying for space in a crowded disco with packs of Japanese intent on line dancing in front of mirrors. There were a few alternative bars scattered in and around Aoyama,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 21, 2005

Matters of survival in a 'shattered world'

One of the best things about writing a newspaper column is that I get a chance to meet people whose paths I might otherwise never cross. Last weekend, at the Odaiba waterfront launch of Earth Day Tokyo 2005, I had the rare pleasure of meeting and interviewing two environmentalists I have long admired,...
BUSINESS
Apr 19, 2005

Chiba store to get first IY Bank branch

IY Bank Co., a subsidiary of major retailer Ito-Yokado Co., will open its first branch offering a full range of financial services inside an Ito-Yokado outlet in the city of Chiba on April 27, bank officials said Monday.
JAPAN
Apr 17, 2005

White powder sent to Chinese Embassy

An envelope containing a harmless white powder was sent to the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo on Friday, police said Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 15, 2005

We are the robots

EXPO 2005 Aichi, now entering the fourth week of its 180-day run, is providing visitors with thousands of thrilling glimpses of the future. With all manner of advanced technology on show -- from humanoid robots to next-generation transportation systems -- the world of tomorrow has never felt so close....
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 12, 2005

English schools face huge insurance probe

The Social Insurance Agency is to investigate Japan's largest English-language teaching companies over a suspected failure to enroll their full-time foreign employees in the employees' pension and health insurance schemes.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2005

Hostile rallies put companies on edge

Japanese firms doing business with China are taking precautionary measures following a raft of violent anti-Japanese rallies there over the weekend.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Apr 12, 2005

Do you think national health insurance is worthwhile for foreigners in Japan?

Elly Perkins ALT, 24 It has been for me. It's saved me a lot of hassle because I live in a small town up north where no one speaks English. I just have to give them my name and my card.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Apr 12, 2005

Credit card fraud, bike attacks and clothes swap

More on accidents Last month, two people in different parts of Tokyo -- teacher Kristin Newton (who had to use a cane for three weeks) and natural healer/nutritionist Daniel Babu (still suffering headaches) -- were hit by bikes ridden by Japanese teenagers who then fled.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 11, 2005

Invest to bolster peace in southern Sudan

KHARTOUM -- Cereal trader Said Abubaker has a simple explanation for the fast-rising price of the local staple sorghum in the town market at Warawar in southern Sudan: "Peace has been a stranger in our land for so long that now that it has come, nature does not know how to welcome it."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 9, 2005

Dalai Lama arrives, urges followers to fulfill late pope's wishes for peace

Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, arrived Friday in Japan, urging people to carry on Pope John Paul II's legacy of peace as the world prepares for the pontiff's funeral.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2005

U.S., Vietnam draw closer

HONOLULU -- An American warship steamed slowly up the Saigon River last week to mark the gradual forging of normal political, economic and even military relations between the United States and Vietnam 30 years after the end of their long and bloody war.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Apr 5, 2005

Burned out, wills and tax advice

Fire! Last week our house had a fire We had just moved into a rental house and paid all the key money, real estate fees etc. and nine days later our neighbor's house had a major fire, which spread to ours. The neighbor's house is completely burned, and one person died. My family all escaped unhurt,...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Apr 4, 2005

Expo no ordinary economy booster

Aichi Expo 2005 -- the first world exposition of the 21st century -- has attracted tens of thousands of visitors since it opened March 25. Under the theme of "Nature's wisdom," the expo is providing the governments, companies and people of the 120 participating countries a place to exchange ideas and...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 3, 2005

So much food that we don't know what to do with it

The media didn't quite know what to make of that bizarre story last month about the elderly Sapporo man who allegedly killed his wife following a dinnertime spat. One might expect a husband to become angry over not getting enough food, TV commentators implied, but in this case the situation was the opposite....
Rugby
Apr 1, 2005

Rugby fans tell IRB: Give the 2011 World Cup to Japan

If the Japan Rugby Football Union is on the lookout for a theme song for its bid to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup, it could do a lot worse than the Ray Davies penned, "Give the People What They Want."
JAPAN
Apr 1, 2005

Tokyo wants safety assurances for soccer team

Japan said Thursday it wants Japanese soccer players and fans to have their safety guaranteed when the national team plays a World Cup qualifier against North Korea in Pyongyang on June 8.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 29, 2005

Exhausted Kurds desperate to leave

Two large portraits adorn the walls of the otherwise colorless apartment in a Tokyo charity home that Meryem Dogan shares with her two young children.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 27, 2005

Ten years of tero in Japan: Notes on usage

Japanese language purists carp about the surfeit of katakana, but as with all cultural manifestations, from bossa nova to breakfast cereals, the Japanese manage to make these linguistic borrowings their own in an unmistakable way, the most obvious being abbreviation.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

First, stop, look and listen

THE SINGLE TONE: A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music, by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Tokyo: Printed Matter Press, 2005, 168 pp., with photographs and glossary, 1,500 yen (paper). In the summer of 1972 Christopher Blasdel first came to Japan. He was from West Texas, "a landscape dominated by strip...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 26, 2005

Dr. Tutu & Tame Iti project paints cultural theft

When Lisa Salmon was introduced to Jeff Root by an old high school friend in California, they found they had Japan in common. Jeff taught here in the early 1990s, and was then head-hunted out of Chicago in 2001; Lisa came initially on the JET program in 1996.

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly