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COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2010

It's a Global Century, not an Asian Century

PARIS — It is almost taken for granted nowadays that this is to be the "Asian Century," marking an irreversible political/economic shift in global power from West to East. China has replaced Germany as the world's leading exporter, while South Korea's Korean Electric recently outbid Electricite de...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2010

Japan's eco-credentials assailed

OSAKA — Six months before Japan hosts a major U.N. conference on biodiversity, the government and major corporations involved in the issue are conducting a series of events to raise public awareness about threats to the world's ecosystems and what can be done to save natural habitats.
COMMENTARY
Apr 8, 2010

Reverse Japan's insularity

Nine of the top 10 countries sending students to study at Harvard University, where I attended graduate school, have more students studying at the university now than 10 years ago. The only exception is Japan, where the number of students has declined. A decline in Japanese presence was also pointed...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Apr 8, 2010

Return of Yohji, AMBUSH bling, LIMI feu bargains and Tokyo Girls

Coming back in style
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 8, 2010

Taxi driver Shahidul Islam Khan

Shahidul Islam Khan, 40, is a cab driver at Royal Limousine in Tokyo. Born in Bangladesh, Khan moved to Japan in 1994 and ran a successful import business until 2008 when the economic downturn forced him to close shop and start driving instead. In the notoriously difficult Japanese cab system, Khan is...
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Apr 6, 2010

Japan, U.N. share blind spot on 'migrants'

On March 23, I gave a speech to Jorge Bustamante, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, for NGO FRANCA regarding racial discrimination in Japan. Text follows:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 6, 2010

'Non-Japanese only' Okinawa eatery turns tables

Okinawa Prefecture is home to three-quarters of America's military bases in Japan. The vast majority of these, including Kadena Air Base, Torii Station and the contentious Marine Corps installation at Futenma, are located in the central part of the main island.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 5, 2010

The unknown promise of Internet freedom

MELBOURNE, Australia — Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm....
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Apr 4, 2010

Knight's life enriched by playing abroad

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. The league's fifth season began in October. William "Billy" Knight of the Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 4, 2010

Warming to Ryukyu culture

The air is stifling in the cement interior of the Ishikawa Dome, despite the sides being open to the weather. I shift my limbs, in danger of losing circulation on the unforgiving benches, while my right arm furiously works my paper program as a fan in a desperate effort to gain respite from the Okinawan...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 3, 2010

Patience a virtue in miso making

If miso is part of your daily routine, "you're having a decent life," says Tony Flenley, Japan's only British miso maker. Flenley, who runs a 105-year-old miso company in Osaka, believes the time taken to prepare and eat the soup shows the right priorities have triumphed over a fast food lifestyle.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 2, 2010

Lights, camera, Sakanaction!

"I hope foreign listeners can persevere with Japanese music," laughs bespectacled musician Ichiro Yamaguchi. "Sure, there's a lot of crap music here, but there's a lot of good stuff, too. Intelligent music is in the minority now, but I believe it will become mainstream in the future."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 2, 2010

Old meets new at Art Fair Tokyo

So you like art? That's great — but I'm afraid you're going to have to be a little more specific. That's because — in Japan — you can't just like art. You have to like a certain type of art: old art, for instance, or contemporary art, yoga (Western-style) or nihonga (Japanese-style) painting. There...
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2010

A 'great leap forward' for Chinese 'anime'

Yoko Komazawa had been at the Tokyo International Anime Fair for nearly six hours when she fell in love with a brown-and-white stuffed panda — a character in one of the fair's featured cartoons.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Mar 30, 2010

A fresh approach to Japanese food

Nicolas Soergel graciously brings two tiny plates to the table. They each contain three pinkish "umeboshi" (salted, dry plums), but those on one of the plates have been preserved for just one year; the ones on the other plate — whose skins are a little more wrinkled — are three years old. "Please...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 30, 2010

A foreigner-friendly field of dreams?

In the 1989 Oscar-nominated fantasy-drama film "Field of Dreams," the main character, a farmer played by Kevin Costner, heard a voice that kept whispering the phrase "If you build it, he will come." The Voice urged Costner's character to take a leap of faith and build a baseball diamond in the middle...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2010

The Swiss model for helping foreigners fit in

BRUSSELS — As policymakers scratch their heads and wonder how best to absorb different cultures and religions into Europe's very distinct national societies, they could do worse than consider some new ideas being developed in Switzerland.
Reader Mail
Mar 28, 2010

The limits of artistic expression

As a 28-year-old Indian, I take strong exception to the publication of Gautaman Bhaskaran's March 9 article, "Intolerance in India putting artists to flight."
BASKETBALL
Mar 26, 2010

89ers outlast Apache to win thrilling game

March Madness is a staple of American popular culture, one of sports' true treasures.
BUSINESS / U.K. JOURNALIST SYMPOSIUM
Mar 26, 2010

Voter behavior holds key to political system change

Six months have passed since the Democratic Party of Japan ousted the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party from power. But whether there will be a fundamental change to the nation's political system will depend not just on the lawmakers but on the behavior of voters.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 26, 2010

Art lovers to take Roppongi

Round two of what might be called the "Battle for Roppongi" takes place Saturday night.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2010

Don't just wait for disaster

NEW YORK — No country can afford to ignore the lessons of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. We cannot stop such disasters from happening. But we can dramatically reduce their impact, if the right disaster risk reduction measures are taken in advance.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 21, 2010

Distilled drama from a society in ferment

Think of gin and one thinks of England. Think of tequila and Mexico, vodka and Russia, brandy and France. Think of sake and one thinks only of Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 21, 2010

Moves afoot to make Japanese holidays a pleasure not a pain

It's a seasonal phenomenon in Japan: lines of cars 40-km long and more clogging expressways; super- jammed shinkansen terminals and airports; and hot-spring resorts besieged by visitors crammed cheek to cheek in the steaming baths, imo-arai-style (literally, "washing potatoes in a bucket").
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 20, 2010

Fire in the belly, passion in the eyes

Tania Luiz is a rare woman able to provoke hoots and screeches in a room packed with girls — and she does it all with her torso. The Osaka-based Portuguese belly dancing teacher and performer is profiting from a recent surge of interest in her art among Japanese females.

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