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COMMENTARY
Apr 9, 2007

Redundant higher education

In the 1990s, the education ministry announced a policy of making graduate schools the center of education and research at what had traditionally been undergraduate universities. At about the same time, restrictions on a liberal arts education for undergraduates were relaxed, allowing even freshmen students...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 25, 2007

There's a world of languages Japanese too can learn

It seems to be conventional wisdom -- if "wisdom" is the word -- that Japanese people do not excel at mastering foreign languages. Some surveys of the results of international English-proficiency tests have them occupying the murky depths, below even the likes of North Koreans. Does the "Dear Leader,"...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2006

Expected behavior in a school jungle

That large clucking sound you are hearing is the sound of breakdowns in Japan's over-regulated education system forcing some very large chickens to come home and roost in the Kasumigaseki premises of Japan's conservative education ministry, MEXT.
EDITORIALS
Oct 27, 2006

The uncertain toll in Iraq

A new study has concluded that there have been hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The governments of Iraq, the United States and Great Britain have challenged the results.
EDITORIALS
Jun 18, 2006

Magic bean talk

Well, here's news worth celebrating with a big glass of Irish coffee. The more coffee you drink, U.S. researchers announced last week, the less likely you are to suffer alcohol-related liver damage. In a world sloshing in bad news, the assertion had the effect of a morning-after double espresso on anxious...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 13, 2006

Suzue Akashi

Suzue Akashi, 74, is a folk musician who plays traditional Japanese songs on shamisen with taiko drum accompaniment. Her insatiable desire to learn took her from a Tokyo dairy to the education center at Haneda Air Force Base, to university in Tennessee and work in Texas during the 1950s. Back in Japan,...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 14, 2005

No need to blush if you become red-faced after a few

Whatever your job and background, drunken conversations between work colleagues have much in common. However, a phrase that I often heard in Japan but have heard nowhere else is, "I have an inactive form of aldehyde dehydrogenase."
EDITORIALS
Jun 22, 2005

Agreement at a 'minuscule level'

It was extraordinary to see two national leaders having a hard time putting a face on a two-hour-long summit meeting that apparently did not produce any substantive agreement. At an internationally televised press conference following the summit in Seoul on Monday, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun...
JAPAN
Jun 22, 2005

10% of bureaucrats quit after subsidized sabbaticals

Out of 576 young career-track bureaucrats who studied abroad at government expense from fiscal 1997 through 2002, 56 quit within five years after returning home, according to a study by the National Personnel Authority.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 12, 2005

International symposium to focus on kids' health

As director of the Department of Interdisciplinary Medicine at the National Center for Child Health and Development in Setagaya,Tokyo, Dr. John Ichiro Takayama is right now an especially busy man.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Feb 20, 2005

Sit down and be counted!

One chilly Friday morning last month, high-school teacher Noriyuki Ishida had probably the most stressful experience of his 35-year career.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 19, 2005

Cosmopolitan stands for cultural understanding

A gaggle of students leaving Cosmopolitan Consultancy in Kawasaki's Shin-Yurigaoka point the way to the front door. "Up, up," they urge, to the third floor, where Suzan Matkin awaits with slippers and English tea.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2005

Home schooling finds foothold but not official favor

Mariko Komuro was of the firm belief that children should go to school even if they experienced problems -- at least until her 8-year-old son, Kazutoshi, began to feel sick and throw up in the morning on school days.
EDITORIALS
Dec 19, 2004

Happiness is a warm TV set

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
EDITORIALS
Apr 30, 2004

The return of SARS

China has reported several cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, one year after declaring victory over the disease. The news comes on the heels of a new study that suggests that SARS might spread through the air. Troubling though these developments are, in some ways they are encouraging....
COMMENTARY
Mar 9, 2004

Perilous drop in readership

One long-standing trend in Japan has been the "shift away from print" -- an aversion to serious reading. For example, in the past four years, book sales have continued to decline. Compared with other countries, the books being read woefully lags in quality and quantity.
JAPAN
Jan 21, 2004

Typical wife beater: 40-year-old boozer

The typical perpetrator of domestic violence in Japan is a 40-year-old male who drinks regularly and has a six-year history of assaulting family members, according to a recent Justice Ministry study.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

'Daiken' a discrimination snafu

The recent uproar over whether students at schools for Asian ethnic minorities should be granted equal access to national universities has highlighted the extent to which such institutions have been set apart within the nation's education system.
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2003

Miyagi Prefecture is No. 1 in disclosing information

Miyagi Prefecture is the most open and willing prefecture to disclose information to the public, a position it has held for five consecutive years, according to a recent study by a citizens' ombudsman association.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2002

An alphabet soup of FTAs in East Asia

CAMBRIDGE, England -- There are so many summit meetings nowadays that it is difficult to keep up. Only a week after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit finished in Mexico, East Asian governments met at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus 3 summit in Phnom Penh. ASEAN plus 3...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 10, 2002

Giving you something to stretch your head round

Modern American anthropology owes a lot to one man: Franz Boas, widely regarded as the father of the discipline.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2002

IT-related sectors' CO 2 output may soar by 2010, report says

Carbon dioxide emitted by industries involved in information technology in Japan could log a three-fold increase in the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, according to a recent study.
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 25, 2002

The decline and fall of biodiversity

In Johannesburg over the next few weeks, the biggest talk fest there's ever been will ensure that few people on the planet remain unaware of environmental issues such as global warming, sustainability and rapidly decreasing biodiversity.
BUSINESS
Jul 12, 2002

FTA with Chile just isn't in the cards

Widely known as a feverish operagoer, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi may politely but disappointingly tell an exasperated Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, "Please wait patiently until the fat lady sings."
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2001

Jiang unleashes revolutionary change

CAMBRIDGE, England -- There is a long tradition in China of requiring the people to study the words of their political leaders. In the late 17th century, the whole population of China was required to come together in small groups twice a month to study and recite the "16 moral maxims" published by the...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 25, 2001

Income disparity vs. growth

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan reminded the world recently that the battle against terrorism might have displaced front-page news, but it has not solved pressing problems such as poverty and HIV/AIDS. The international community remains formally committed to the goal of reducing the level of poverty...
COMMUNITY
Sep 30, 2001

We are here to help you

The British archaeologist Howard Carter was excavating in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 when he found a wall bearing the seal of Tutankhamen from the 14th century B.C. He made a small hole and peered through. From his journal:
JAPAN
Jun 10, 2001

Waseda Egyptologist says key to future is learning from past

A free ride to the Middle East on an oil tanker may not be the flashiest start to a career. But for Waseda University professor Sakuji Yoshimura, the voyage he organized to Egypt in 1966 was the first step in what has become 35 years of archaeological exploration born from a childhood fascination with...
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2001

Sick building chemical haunts recently built homes

About 37 percent of homes built four to five years ago have a higher concentration of a chemical that apparently causes the so-called sick building syndrome, according to the results of a study conducted by the Infrastructure Ministry.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?