Search - about-us

 
 
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Dec 9, 1999

Could you be drinking a glass of freaky Frankenstein wine?

How about a glass or two of Frankenstein wine?
LIFE / Travel
Dec 9, 1999

Rise and fall of a Japanese matador

SEVILLE, Spain -- Atsuhiro Shimoyama never planned on becoming a bullfighter. Growing up in the greater Tokyo region in the late 1980s, he opted out of going to college, and instead bummed around searching for something meaningful to do during Japan's wildly inflating bubble years.
JAPAN
Dec 9, 1999

Former POW demands compensation from Mitsui

Lester Tenney, a former U.S. soldier who was held as a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II, on Thursday demanded that Mitsui & Co. and its affiliates issue an apology and compensation for forcing him to work like a "slave." "Me and my colleagues went through hell," Tenney, 79, a retired professor...
JAPAN
Dec 9, 1999

Mazda Motor to raise output, sales

Mazda Motor Corp. plans a slight increase in production and sales of its vehicles next year, President and CEO James Miller told a press conference Thursday. According to the plan, the automaker, based in Hiroshima Prefecture, will manufacture 825,000 units in Japan, up 6.2 percent from this year's...
COMMUNITY
Dec 9, 1999

Social power, social pressure in the playground community

On sunny afternoons, I strap my baby Rio in a carrier and we go to swing on the swings at the local park. He giggles as the wind blows through his hair.
JAPAN
Dec 9, 1999

U.K. envoy upbeat on ties

Staff writer What a difference a decade makes. In 1990, BBC television aired a documentary series that chronicled Japan's economic miracle. In January, it will air a followup series examining the nation's economic demise, titled "Bubble Trouble." A contrasting, yet perhaps an even more insightful British...
EDITORIALS
Dec 8, 1999

Seattle's silver lining

Size matters. That is the lesson to be drawn from last week's failed attempt to launch a new world trade round. Finger pointing has intensified in the wake of the breakdown in negotiations, with the United States proving the scapegoat of choice for most non-Americans (and even some Americans). That may...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 8, 1999

May we help you?

They say this might be the year that online Christmas sales in the U.S. actually live up to past promises of e-commerce's ascendancy. Hurrahs could be heard when it was reported that online transactions over Thanksgiving were up 10-fold (and groans could be heard as servers started overloading with the...
JAPAN
Dec 8, 1999

Pop singer Makihara given suspended sentence

Popular singer-songwriter Noriyuki Makihara was sentenced Wednesday to a suspended 18-month prison term for possessing amphetamines at his Tokyo home. The Tokyo District Court found Makihara, 30, guilty for violating the Stimulant Drugs Control Law, but suspended his sentence for three years. He was...
JAPAN
Dec 8, 1999

Intimidation charge spurs more Nichiei raids

OSAKA -- Osaka Prefectural Police raided the Kyoto head office and Osaka branch of moneylender Nichiei Co. as well as four other sites Wednesday in connection with the scandal-tainted firm's alleged involvement in heavy-handed loan-collection tactics by its employees. Investigators were acting on a...
JAPAN
Dec 8, 1999

Kanagawa cop admits hazing subordinates

YOKOHAMA -- A former patrol unit chief at Atsugi Police Station, Kanagawa Prefecture, admitted in his first trial hearing Wednesday to charges of hazing junior officers. Masaru Kawano, 26, is the first of six former Kanagawa Prefectural Police officers charged with various abuses of authority and coverups...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 8, 1999

Beyond coping

Certain products come in many shapes and sizes, and a reader must thank the Italian Trade Commission in Tokyo for the successful ending of her search. She was looking for a special kind of Italian support hose made by IBICI and she wondered where she could buy them in Japan. It could be an endless search,...
LIFE / Travel
Dec 8, 1999

American tycoons leave lush legacy

In Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine, the National Parks Service just completed flossing "Mr. Rockefeller's teeth," the nickname given to the large chunks of granite edging roads built by John D. Rockfeller Jr. The "teeth" were in desperate need of a cleaning to remove vegetation that had grown...
LIFE / Travel
Dec 8, 1999

A life less ordinary: Anne Frank's legacy

Amsterdam must be the only European city whose most popular tourist attractions occupy different ends of the sliding scale that begins with virtue and ends with vice. It is likely that many of those who wait patiently in the queues that snake daily around the canal-side block where the Anne Frank Huis...
JAPAN
Dec 8, 1999

Advocates hit courts' insensitivity to mentally disabled

Staff writer When the court officer announced "all rise" before the close of the trial, the 58-year-old mentally disability defendant remained seated. When the judge sentenced him in July to a 20-month prison term, he was the only one who apparently did not understand what had happened. The man was...
EDITORIALS
Dec 7, 1999

On track to normalization

Moves toward a thaw in relations between Japan and North Korea have been gaining momentum since a Japanese parliamentary group headed by former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama and the ruling Workers Party of Korea last week agreed on the need to resume the long-stalled normalization talks at an early...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Chinese family exposes Japanese detention treatment

Staff writer The Immigration Bureau's Tokyo facility for holding foreigners who have overstayed their visas violates basic human rights, especially those of children, claims a Chinese family released last week after 40 days of detention there. Ling Xi Rang, 43, her second daughter, Xu Xiou Ri, 17, and...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Net, video help preserve sailor's POW ordeal

Regional correspondent Stanley Willner's wartime odyssey began on Nov. 29, 1942, when the merchant vessel he was serving on was torpedoed by a German raider in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar. He was plucked from the water by the German crew and spent a few months on board his captors'...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

'Knock' to take suit ruling seriously

OSAKA -- Osaka Gov. "Knock" Yokoyama told a news conference Tuesday that he would "take seriously" Monday's anticipated ruling in the sexual harassment lawsuit against him, which he did not contest. He also told the day's regular news conference that he would pay compensation if the court orders him...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Education White Paper emphasizes individuality

Educational reforms should put priority on respecting a child's individuality and giving local authorities more autonomy to correct "excessive equalization," according to the 1999 White Paper on Education released Tuesday. In the report, submitted to the day's Cabinet meeting, the Education Ministry...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Prosecutors demand death for cultists in subway attack

Prosecutors demanded the death penalty for two former Aum Shinrikyo followers Tuesday for carrying out the March 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. The two are also charged with illegally manufacturing firearms. Kenichi Hirose, 35, and Toru Toyoda, 31, stand accused of releasing sarin...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Complaint targets Obuchi fundraising machine

An Osaka-based citizens' group filed a complaint with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, maintaining that Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's fund management body unlawfully received contributions ranging from 2 million yen to 5 million yen from seven individuals through three nearly dormant private...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Property appraisals to trigger drop in land taxes

Appraisal prices of commercial and residential land -- a basis for calculating the next fiscal year's property taxes -- are an average of 5.9 percent lower than those for this year, according to the Home Affairs Ministry. Based on the new evaluation, it is now expected that the nation's residential...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Isuzu nears agreement on China bus venture

Staff writer GUANGZHOU, China -- Isuzu Motor Co., a Japanese truck and bus maker, will reach a basic agreement with local authorities, possibly by the end of the month, over a joint venture to produce large buses here, a local government official said Tuesday. Zhang Guang-nin, deputy mayor of Guangzhou,...
JAPAN
Dec 7, 1999

Waterway quality still stagnant, EPA report shows

A survey of water quality in the nation's rivers, coastal areas and lakes showed little change in fiscal 1998 compared with the year before, according to a report released by the Environment Agency on Tuesday. In one portion of the annual study, 7,290 locations were checked to see whether water met...
JAPAN
Dec 6, 1999

Mori floats moratorium on banning corporate donations

Yoshiro Mori, the Liberal Democratic Party's No. 2 man, proposed on Monday a three-month moratorium on the planned ban on corporate donations to individual politicians, but denied speculation the move is designed to cause a rush to collect funds before a Lower House election. The revised Political Funds...
JAPAN
Dec 6, 1999

Shinagawa parents take chance on new schools

About 13 percent of parents in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward have decided to send their children to schools outside of their conventional districts next year under a unique system that starts in April, officials said Monday. Under the system, the first of its kind in the country, children scheduled to attend...
JAPAN
Dec 6, 1999

Pearl Harbor: Memo sheds light on Japan's failure to make a 'declaration' of war

It is popularly believed in Japan that the country would have been spared the disgrace of carrying out a "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor if Tokyo's final memorandum to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington had been delivered prior to its launch as planned. But a former diplomat says he has...
EDITORIALS
Dec 5, 1999

Aum's surprise expression of 'regret'

Never able to stay out of the news for long, the Aum Shinrikyo cult made headlines last week, but this time with deliberate intent. The unprecedented formal admission by its current acting leader, Ms. Tatsuko Muraoka, that some of the cult's members were indeed involved in the series of crimes of which...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 5, 1999

New entry

I have long relationships with some of my readers. One contacted me first with a challenging project -- teaching her cat to use a scratch post -- and moved on through a wedding at a shrine and later a divorce, and finally the establishment of her own business. We have never met but we are friends so...

Longform

An ongoing shortage of rice has resulted in rising prices for Japan's main food staple.
Why Japan is running out of rice — and farmers to grow it