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CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jul 18, 2000

Feed your head

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2000

Sales agents for Snow Brand go bankrupt

Approximately 30 of the 500 sales agents for Snow Brand Milk Products Co. in six prefectures in western Japan have effectively been put out of business by the June 29 outbreak of food poisoning linked to milk made at the company's Osaka plant, government officials said Monday.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2000

Personal relationships are everything

STAKEHOLDING: The Japanese Bottom Line, by Robert J. Ballon and Keikichi Honda. Tokyo: The Japan Times, 2000, 240 pp., 38 tables, 6 figures. 3,000 yen (cloth). One year, an acquaintance recalls, her family started getting an unusually large number of "oseibo" (yearend presents) and "ochuugen" (midyear...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 2000

Raising taxes invites economic catastrophe

Newspaper reports indicate that Japan's Tax Commission has used its role as an advisory panel to the prime minister to propose lowering the minimum taxable individual-income level. Raising taxes on the poor is justified by attempting to share the income-tax burden more widely. A wide range of allowable...
EDITORIALS
Jul 17, 2000

Mindanao's nightmare continues

It is easy to be disheartened about the violence that is sweeping across the Philippine province of Mindanao. It was thought to have been settled four years ago, but it has erupted once again. The government has had recent successes on the battlefield, but the rebels are not likely to be subdued.
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2000

Fiscal 2001 budget to focus on recovery, Nakagawa says

The size of the fiscal 2001 budget will exceed that for the current fiscal year and focus on bringing about a full-scale economic recovery, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa said Sunday.
COMMUNITY
Jul 17, 2000

No breakfast needed, say health heretics

Many people worship breakfast. They believe it is the most important meal of the day, and that skipping it causes various problems, such as fatigue, inefficiency at work and poor academic achievement in children.
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2000

Niijima begins work to repair quake damage

Restoration work on Niijima Island began Sunday, a day after a powerful earthquake rocked the Izu Island chain and injured 10 people.
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 17, 2000

Scope for universal understanding

It seems that Silicon Valley in California, that hotbed of blazing computer development, is now giving birth to technology for the search for origin of biological life in the stars.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 17, 2000

Dioxin found deadly for sure -- and they're pumping it out

First, the good news.
EDITORIALS
Jul 16, 2000

The reliable magic of Harry Potter

It's been a bit of a Quidditch match this week in bookstores across the English-speaking world as children from 8 to 80 scrambled for their copies of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the latest book in the series that has become the biggest publishing phenomenon of the decade.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Romance is in the air: tour the city by helicopter

Tomoko Suzuki's boyfriend gave her a special birthday present this year -- a night view of the Tokyo metropolis from an altitude of 600 meters and at speeds up to 200 kph.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 16, 2000

Carp's Lopez back where he belongs

One of the happiest foreign players in Japan pro baseball these days is Hiroshima Carp first baseman Luis Lopez. The 1996 and 1997 Central League RBI leader is obviously back where he belongs; hitting .300 and driving in those runs like he did three-four years ago for the Red Helmets.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Okinawans must look beyond crossroad for future success

Staff writer CHATAN, Okinawa Pref. -- The music meandering from Rinken Teruya's sea-front live house is a catchy, vibrant blend of sing-along pop and Okinawan folk song.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Kobe welcomes giant panda pair

Staff writer
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Lower 6-level temblor shakes Izu Island chain

A strong earthquake jolted the Izu Island chain south of Tokyo Saturday morning, measuring a lower 6 on the Japanese intensity scale of 7, as recorded on Niijima Island, the Meteorological Agency said.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Swing vote confounded polls

The June 25 Lower House election saw a rise in the number of voters who made up their mind about which candidate and party to back just before the day of the vote, according to surveys conducted by Kyodo News before and after the poll.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2000

Yamazaki starts recall of moldy curry buns

OSAKA -- Yamazaki Baking Co. has retrieved more than 4,100 curry-flavored buns it recalled after convenience stores in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures reported that some of the products appeared to contain mold, officials of the company's factory in Osaka said Saturday.
CULTURE / Music
Jul 16, 2000

A guide to the music festivals of summer

The recession has reportedly made concert promoters' lives miserable, and yet it doesn't seem to have affected the flood of foreign acts rushing to these shores.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 16, 2000

Over the rainbow beckons home sweet home

If a foreigner stays in Japan more than five years, Japanese people start asking, "When are you going home?" This is because Japanese people can't imagine being away from their home country for so long. Sometimes Japanese people ask me, "Don't your parents miss you?" There is a feeling too that by staying...
COMMUNITY
Jul 16, 2000

Book on classic parenting hits half-million nerves

As the Japanese birthrate falls to a new record low, and the media focus on disruptive youngsters and classroom chaos (with 17-year-olds coming in for especially harsh criticism), it comes as no surprise that so many young adults are rejecting marriage and fearful of parenthood. How will they manage,...
CULTURE / Music
Jul 16, 2000

Berlin Phil brings greetings: from one capital to another

Political and economic capital of Germany and home of the famed Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin is high on the list of cities Tokyoites most wish to visit and explore, as I did recently. Berlin and Tokyo have much in common, certainly including the quantity and quality of the musical scene.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2000

Will G8 swelter in sartorial splendor?

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley was the first to predict that the forthcoming G8 summit on Okinawa might have to be held with the participants wearing sport or aloha shirts instead of formal or business attire.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 16, 2000

Setsuko Arima

For the greater part of her life, Setsuko Arima has lived in the same district of Kanazawa-ku in Yokohama. She is devoted to the neighborhood, which is highlighted by the 13th century Shomyoji Temple, its garden with red bridges over a wide pond, and its background of an open field and wooded hills....
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Jul 16, 2000

When dream makers walk among us

Socrates' bestial laugh washes into the cosmic map where Blake digs with his spade and Sam stands bathed in the sparks of his youth Among colored shapes, Sam embraces the warmest softest things a woman's spirit in the shape of clouds in the shape of foam in the shape of a womb The white space of the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2000

Whalers come out on top in IWC meeting

SYDNEY -- Once again Japanese whale-meat eaters have outwitted the world's whale lovers. Though those diners need not raise too many self-congratulatory cups of sake. Within a year or two the Tokyo whale restaurant tables could be overturned.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 16, 2000

Ode to a gentleman and a scholar

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that when a death occurs "there is sore havoc made in other people's lives, a pin [is] knocked out by which many subsidiary friendships hung together," perhaps he was describing a particularly Western tragedy. In Buddhism, death is viewed differently. The relationship...
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2000

Hail a cab in Naha now and they'll all come quick

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. -- It is said there is a reliable litmus test to gauge the state of Okinawa's economy: Stick out your hand and see how long it takes to hail a taxi.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2000

Bailout decisions case by case, says Mori's 'younger brother'

Although the controversial bailout plan for the Sogo Co. department store chain and its group firms was eventually scrapped when the group filed for court-mandated rehabilitation this week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa is not sure how the government will handle similar cases in the future....

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.