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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 30, 2011

Getting Japan to think inside the juke box

It's juke night at Club Noon in Osaka on a Monday. The event, called Hobo, has drawn about 50 people — not many, but alright for a genre of dance music that is making its debut on the city's club scene. As with most debuts, the reaction is mixed. The men nod their heads and the women shift their weight...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 30, 2011

An artist caught in the moment

Why isn't Yukihiro Taguchi in jail?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2011

Shareholders hammer Tepco over nuclear fiasco

Tokyo Electric Power Co. faced a six-hour barrage of heavy flak from shareholders Tuesday at their annual meeting, with management blasted over how it has handled the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
BUSINESS
Jun 29, 2011

Shirakawa urges long-term position

Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said monetary policy conducted to address immediate inflation trends can cause bubbles and central banks need to make decisions bearing in mind their long-term effects.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 28, 2011

Kan revamps Cabinet posts

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Monday gave some of his Cabinet ministers new jobs and hired a member of the top opposition party to be his parliamentary secretary for internal affairs — moves that were viewed as an effort to extend his grip on power despite stated plans to step down.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 27, 2011

Futility and resignation make for poor drama in Japanese politics

"Sheer futility," Quoheleth says. "Sheer futility: Everything is futile!"
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 26, 2011

Irradiated food poses moral dilemmas

Mail-order food-delivery companies and cooperatives have long been among the leading campaigners for — and custodians of — food safety in Japan.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 26, 2011

Readers offer 3/11 insights, valuable resources

As Japan has struggled with the physical and emotional challenges of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, and the ongoing nuclear crisis that resulted, I have written three Our Planet Earth columns related to those events: one on Japan's response (March 27); one on alternative...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 26, 2011

Eastern Japan edgy as power demand soars

Back in the early 1970s, electronic signposts in Tokyo and other major cities used to display levels of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants along with the temperature.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 25, 2011

Shift to weekend work ups day care crunch

The nuclear crisis in Fukushima continues to extend its reach months after the March 11 disaster, with the latest repercussion hitting working parents across Japan who will be forced to work on weekends to save electricity but when day care centers are normally closed.
EDITORIALS
Jun 25, 2011

Greece at a crossroads — again

Greece teeters on the brink of a crisis as its government navigates between demands for austerity by European bankers and politicians and popular outrage prompted by the social costs of those same austerity measures. Although Prime Minister George Papandreou has survived in a vote of confidence, a difficult...
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2011

Election season comes early in the Kremlin

In the highly controlled environment of Russian domestic politics, there are few surprises. Russia is a managed democracy in which political changes and election outcomes are carefully orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 25, 2011

'Reluctant' musician blows success his way with horn

Over half his lifetime ago, reluctant horn player Jonathan Hammill, at 15, slumped in the back seat of the family car. Sweaty and bored on a family trip to his grandparents' house in Florida, Hammill watched as his mother impulsively popped in a tape his music teacher had given him as encouragement at...
EDITORIALS
Jun 24, 2011

Restart of reactors is premature

Trade and industry minister Banri Kaieda on June 18 declared that the nation's operators of commercial nuclear power facilities had taken adequate measures to handle severe accidents and called for restarting the power plants.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 24, 2011

'Biutiful'

Ninety percent of the time, it's too much to bear even for the audience, so imagine what those people up on the screen are going though. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu revels in shoveling out far more than a fair share of atrocious luck and tremendous suffering to his characters, and...
COMMENTARY
Jun 21, 2011

Angst-fueled energy policy

The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster has induced many people to question whether and how far the world should become dependent on atomic power.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 20, 2011

Disaster shines light on wisdom of renting in a debt-laden world

The destruction wrought by the Great East Japan Earthquake has started to appear in statistics in its full force.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 19, 2011

Strong workouts likely make Tyler a first-round pick

You already know that Japanese basketball's significance on a global scale is minor in comparison to most nations. And yes, most of this nation's residents can tell you that Yuta Tabuse was a trailblazer for Japanese basketball by becoming the first Japanese to play in the NBA.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2011

Time to reset ties between the EU and Turkey

Just five months ago, Osama bin Laden was alive, Hosni Mubarak was firmly in control in Egypt, and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia with an iron hand. Today, popular rebellion and political change have spread throughout the region.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 16, 2011

'Takashi Hinoda — Alternative Muscles'

imura art gallery, kyoto Closes July 23
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2011

The U.S. Federal Reserve is playing with fire

The dollar has had its ups and downs, but the downs have clearly dominated of late. The greenback has lost more than a quarter of its value against other currencies, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade. It is down by nearly 5 percent since the beginning of 2011, matching the lowest level plumbed...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 14, 2011

Fearing radiation, family quits Japan

The ripples from the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been felt across the globe, drawing offers of sympathy and support for Japan, provoking debates about nuclear power and its alternatives — even sparking complete rethinks of energy policy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2011

Great Game in the Indian Ocean

Revelations that Pakistan has invited China to build a naval base at the strategic port of Gwadar once again underlines widespread anxiety in India and beyond about Beijing's Indian Ocean objectives.

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