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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012

Director Nobuhiro Yamashita's commercial film departure

Starting with his first film "Donten Seikatsu (Hazy Life)" from 1999, director Nobuhiro Yamashita explored slackerdom, Japan-style, with a laconically knowing eye and a laidback sense of humor. Rejecting the broad approach of so much local comedy, he developed gags from off-beat, spot-on observations...
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2012

Leveling the field for women

When I first read the July 1 article "Disabled women speak out on discrimination," I was so angry that I read it again — just to be sure about what I'd read. The first question that came to me: What would it be like if there were no women in the world?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2012

Use JGBs, not tax hike, to spur growth: 'Mr. Yen'

Far from tightening its fiscal belt, Japan should expand the world's largest debt pile to rekindle economic growth, said former Finance Ministry official Eisuke Sakakibara.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2012

Japan to become No. 2 solar market

Japan is poised to overtake Germany and Italy to become the world's second-biggest market for solar power as incentives that started Sunday drive sales for equipment makers from Kyocera Corp. to China's Yingli Green Energy Holdings Co.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 3, 2012

The curious case of the eroding eikaiwa salary

Now fraught with job insecurity and low pay, there was a time when the work was steady and salaries were high for those who taught English in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 2, 2012

The ironic potential of Putin

Vladimir Putin's recapture of the Russian presidency has been met with widespread derision, both at home and abroad. But the autocrat's return to the Kremlin could be Russia's best hope to escape stagnation.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2012

Innovation, marketing by the book doesn't hold in globalized world

Creativity and innovation hold the key to being competitive in a global environment, but what does it really take for a company to recruit or build innovative talent?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 1, 2012

Author Lesley Downer's romance with Japan is no fleeting affair

British writer, historian and journalist Lesley Downer has been visiting Japan and writing about it for nearly 35 years — beginning in 1978, when she was part of the first-ever intake of the English Teaching Recruitment Program, which evolved into the famous JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program)...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 30, 2012

The toad tax and other ways to raise money

Read my lips: no new taxes! Just old ones raised.
EDITORIALS
Jun 30, 2012

A child organ donor

The Toyama University Hospital on June 14 declared a boy under age 6 brain dead. Later his heart was transplanted into a girl under age 10, his liver into another girl younger than 10, and his kidneys into a woman in her 60s.
BUSINESS
Jun 30, 2012

Spending on drinking hits 14-year low

Japanese men cut spending on drinking to the lowest level in at least 14 years as household allowances remained at about half of what they were during the heyday of the bubble economy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2012

'The Amazing Spider-Man'

One telling scene in "The Amazing Spider-Man" is also the movie's defining moment. A high school English lit teacher explains to her class the premise of fiction and she gives it in three short words: "Who am I?" That's the question Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, struggles with in this reboot to the famed...
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Jun 27, 2012

More hurdles in store for Noda

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda managed to get the Lower House to pass the contentious tax hike bill, but his troubles are far from over, as demonstrated by the no votes cast by the Democratic Party of Japan's kingpin, Ichiro Ozawa, and more than 50 of his followers.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 26, 2012

Social-media manager Lin Qing Xiang

Lin Qing Xiang, 33, is the social-media manager of the "The Ruby Alan Show" (also known as "The RA Show"), a video blog that explores both Singaporean and Japanese culture. Lin creates travelogues of his journeys around Japan and also films Japanese-culture events in Singapore. A die-hard fan, he loves...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 25, 2012

Deeper political, financial unity seen as solution to eurozone crisis

Even after fears of a Greek exit from the euro were eased by the outcome of the country's June 17 elections, Europe remains in crisis as concern lingers that Spain's banks are a potentially bigger risk. Ending the crisis will require European leaders to come up with a longer-term vision for deeper economic...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 25, 2012

Ii ne! Facebook is a perfect place for Japanese immersion

Facebook has grown at a tremendous rate in Japan over the past four years, jumping from just over 200,000 users in 2008 to more than 6 million by the end of 2011. In the process, Japan has generated one of the social network's highest annual growth rates of 254 percent, second only to Brazil.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 24, 2012

Escaped-animal antics are good for ratings

One of the interesting factoids accompanying the escaped-penguin story that delighted the media for the last three months is that Japan has more penguins in captivity than any other country. Tokyo Sea Life Park, the facility from which the male Humboldt penguin in question made his break, has 135. The...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 24, 2012

Fumiko Hayashi: Haunted to the grave by her wartime 'flute and drums'

If you compare the treatment dealt out in the immediate postwar period to Japanese writers who supported their nation's military aggression in World War II with that meted out to such writers in Europe, the Japanese literary collaborators seem to have got off lightly.
BASKETBALL
Jun 24, 2012

Chiba to quit bj-league

The Chiba Jets, coming off a mediocre 18-34 inaugural season, are jumping ship to the JBL's re-branded top league for the 2013-14 campaign.
Jun 23, 2012

U.S. middle-class fortunes fade as unions decline

Are American unions history?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012

'Attack the Block' / 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'

When unarmed teen Trayvon Martin was fatally shot in Florida by paranoid neighborhood-watch vigilante George Zimmerman in February, the usual flurry of American media debate ensued. One of the more heated tangents came when celebrity newscaster Geraldo Rivera stated — on Fox News, naturally — that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 22, 2012

Politics is inescapable at 'Arab Express' exhibition

The Arab Spring may not be all it's cracked up to be. There are clearly problems with a large swath of nations, formerly under various forms of authoritarian regimes, switching relatively quickly to "democracy," at least as it is understood in the West.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 22, 2012

Film tackles identity issues

Where is home — Brazil or Japan? This question apparently puzzles the children of Japanese-Brazilians, who were brought here when their parents immigrated for work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012

'Seesaw'

Many Japanese indie films never achieve the grail of a theatrical release, and some arrive on theater screens here only after a long journey on the festival circuit. Seeing the latter on a distributor's lineup years after shooting wrapped, I feel like saying otsukare-sama ("job well done") to the filmmaker...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 21, 2012

Discerning purpose beyond power

The rerun of the Greek parliamentary election on June 17 was only the latest symptom of the most serious crisis to plague Western democracies and open societies since the 1960s. Liberal democracies in the West today are struggling to avoid — and in doing so are exacerbating — a crisis of identity,...
JAPAN
Jun 20, 2012

Okinawa governor opposes Osprey deployment

Kyodo Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima is urging the central to stop the planned deployment of U.S. MV-22 Osprey aircraft at the Futenma air station following recent crashes abroad.
Jun 20, 2012

Japan's tale of two stockpiles

Mount Fuji stands as a powerful eco-symbol in Japan, invoked frequently to describe elements of Japanese nature and culture. According to Japanese writers and others, Mount Fuji's towering summit-cone and elegantly balanced slopes convey the remote majesty of nature, the essence of purity, a trove of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 19, 2012

Mishmash jumble of systems is recipe for a do-little Diet

Given the momentous fiscal and social problems Japan was facing even before Fukushima, even foreign residents — who can't vote — may be wondering what on Earth Japan's elected officials are doing to solve the nation's many ills.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 19, 2012

Seaweed salt

Dear Alice,

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