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Reader Mail
Sep 23, 2010

Let Okinawa become independent

In her Sept. 15 letter, "An absurd moral comparison," Jennifer Kim is right to say it's a false comparison between the U.S. bases in Okinawa and Japan's occupation of Korea. In fact, there is more mileage to be had by comparing Japan's treatment of Korea and Okinawa.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 22, 2010

Malaysia budget carrier unveils Tokyo route

Malaysia-based AirAsia Bhd., Asia's biggest budget airline, announced Tuesday in Tokyo that its long-haul affiliate, AirAsia X, will launch a route between Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo's Haneda airport in December.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 22, 2010

A call to end confusion over foreign names

A problem newspaper readers in Japan confront on a daily basis is that no definitive rule exists for writing foreigners' names.
EDITORIALS
Sep 20, 2010

Basel tries to close the cracks

Forget the gnomes of Zurich or the wizards of Wall Street. The real rulers of the banking world are in Basel, and their empire is the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision. From that perch, these individuals develop the regulatory framework that all national bank regulations must work within.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 19, 2010

No sex please, we are otaku!

Shock, gasp, horror. Aya Hirano is not a virgin.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2010

CEOs learning 'globish' to expand overseas

Oki Matsumoto, chief executive officer of online trader Monex Group Inc. and a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner, has a solution to the stagnant economy: Learn "globish."
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Sep 15, 2010

Seoul blundering on North

South Korea has committed a number of blunders in its efforts to gather intelligence on North Korea since President Lee Myun Bak took office in February 2008 with a tougher stand against Pyongyang than his predecessors.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 15, 2010

196 more reasons to explore Heisig's imagination

Last spring, the bar was raised for kanji learners aiming to attain literacy in Japanese through mastery of the general-use (jōyō) kanji, when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced the addition of 196 characters to the original list of 1,945 official jōyō kanji...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Sep 14, 2010

Hiroshima: What's one thing you shouldn't miss if you visit Hiroshima?

Megu HiranoStylist26Momiji manju is not as famous as some Hiroshima dishes but I'd recommend trying it. It's really good.
OLYMPICS
Sep 12, 2010

English, Japanese and translation

The recent decision by two Japanese companies to make English their language of business has unleashed a complicated mix of emotions. It is undeniable, though, that English has become the world language and that being able to communicate through English is increasingly important in an age of globalization....
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 12, 2010

Japan's mighty whale mountain

It's enough to make members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society choke on their tofu burgers. Stocks of frozen whale meat in Japan have reached 4,000 tons — that's 4 million kg.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 12, 2010

Hiroshi Tachi in Monday night mystery; the birth of Ultraman; CM of the week: Suntory's Boss

Veteran actor Hiroshi Tachi, who often plays police detectives, makes his first ever appearance on TBS's Monday night mystery drama. In "Keibu Tsuge Kyosuke — Chokoso Hoteru no Chikaku" ("Inspector Kyosuke Tsuge: High-rise Hotel's Dead Angle"; 9 p.m.), Tachi plays the title character, an unconventional...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2010

Nara legends, myths and other weird tales

From May 1974 until March 1985, Kenji Inui wrote the column "Hometown Legends" for the prefectural news magazine Kensei Nara.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2010

Japan's future: prolonged malaise or muddling through?

"Japan's best days are behind it," or so the common wisdom goes, and by reading Tokyo-based academic Jeff Kingston's latest work, it is easy to see why.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 10, 2010

From scorn to love: Mishima and bunraku

Yukio Mishima (born in 1925 as Kimitake Hiraoka) is best- known internationally for his novel "Kinkaku-ji" ("The Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), a fictionalized account of the burning down of the famous golden temple of Kyoto. He may also be remembered for his contemporary plays, many of which were...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 10, 2010

Terry Francis

Budding DJs always harbor dreams of performing to packed stadiums or at major venues on the Spanish island of Ibiza, but maintaining a residency for 11 years and playing in front of up to 1,800 people each week is not too shabby either.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2010

The 'perfect storm' brewing in Central Asia

FLORENCE, Italy — Dean Acheson, U.S. President Harry Truman's secretary of state, liked to quote a friend who said that being in government made him scared, but that being out of it made him worried. To those of us not privy to the hidden complexities of NATO's military intervention in Afghanistan,...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 8, 2010

Despite the big spender image, Japanese actually love to save

There's this image that the Japanese are drop-dead, go-all-out kaimono-chūdokusho (買い物中毒症, shopaholics), despite whatever the latest dreary news bulletin on the global recession says. While that may be true, it's also a fact of our collective lives that the Japanese hate spending, with every...
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2010

O'Barry urges foreign dolphin activists to back off

The star of the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" about the town of Taiji's dolphin hunt said Monday in Tokyo that activists trying to stop the killing might need to back off and allow the Japanese people to tackle the issue themselves.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 6, 2010

Battle for Turkey's constitution

ISTANBUL — On Sept. 12, Turks will vote on a set of constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for eight years. Since the vote falls on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 military coup, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is portraying...
COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2010

The Australian 'distance'

"Beauty of Distance" is the title of this year's Sydney Biennale of modern arts. The title is obviously an echo and ironic association with the famous book written about Australia titled "Tyranny of Distance," which depicted the dilemma of Australia associating mentally with Europe (England) yet being...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 5, 2010

Take it slow — but only if it suits you

Slow Life Japan is a sort of movement, or rather an antimovement, that sprouted here and there in the 1990s, little islands of quietude amid the ultra-fast life that had come to seem as unquestionable as modernity itself. Production, consumption, growth, activity, exhaustion — all very well, but what...
Japan Times
JAPAN / THE TROUBLE AT TOYOTA
Sep 3, 2010

Reportage seems source-biased

U.S. and Japanese media gave widespread but contrasting coverage of the sudden-acceleration accidents involving Toyota Motor Co. vehicles, mainly in North America, with accounts by victims and allegations of safety flaws getting greater play on the other side of the Pacific compared with a muted approach...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2010

Failings of Indian infrastructure

NEW DELHI — New Delhi at last has its proud defining modern monument at the very point of entry to India — a massive, sparkling new Terminal 3, which alone is the sixth-largest airport in the world. Remarkably, too, it was built on time, in three years by a public-private partnership, and on a $3...

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