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Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Mar 7, 2012

Money isn't everything for renters…or is it?

When you rent in Tokyo, it's best to start with lower expectations.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 6, 2012

Rebuilding lives in shattered Tohoku, one image at a time

As the minibus winds through the foothills of northern Fukushima, the Geiger counter flashes blue and buzzes loud alerts — but it doesn't distract Brian Peterson. The 35-year-old American holds up a boxy Konika Instant Press — what he calls his "magic camera" — then explains how to load it, set...
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Mar 6, 2012

Japan's revolving-door immigration policy hard-wired to fail

Last December, the Japanese government announced that a new visa regime with a "points system" would be introduced this spring.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 5, 2012

Hashimoto: a young politician to keep an eye on

He's young, photogenic, energetic, brash, bold, intelligent — and, almost oxymoronically, a politician, one of very few in Japan within living memory who come close to fitting such a description. He has many ideas, all of which boil down to this: "Nihon no kuni wo ichi kara risetto shite, mōichido...
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2012

Noda makes international pitch for tax hike plan

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Saturday that his government "cannot sidestep" a controversial tax hike that has turned into the leader's highest priority and largest potential stumbling block.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Mar 4, 2012

Mahara's injury leaves a big question mark for Hawks

A couple of teams expected to be pennant contenders in Japanese baseball this season will have to patch up some holes after the loss of a key player due to injury and another who may have to play out of position.
Reader Mail
Mar 1, 2012

No reason to deny marriage right

Regarding Thomas Clark's Feb. 26 letter, "Twisting the meaning of marriage": Since when has the ability to procreate been the criteria for marriage? I'm quite sure that the heterosexual couples who are childless by choice or who have problems with fertility would be surprised to find that their marriages...
JAPAN
Feb 29, 2012

Panel lays bare Fukushima recipe for disaster

The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis was caused by Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s lack of preparation for huge tsunami and exacerbated by conflicting levels of authority and downright "distrust and meddling" by high-ranking officials, an independent investigative panel reported Tuesday.
COMMENTARY
Feb 29, 2012

To save U.K., England must be more like Scotland

The battle over Scotland's future as part of the United Kingdom has begun. Last week, politicians on both sides of the border set out passionate arguments for and against Scottish independence. All three of Britain's main political parties are committed to preserving the union. In a speech in Edinburgh...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 29, 2012

Noda tax quest one dimensional?

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has cleared numerous political hurdles since taking office in September, but his goal of raising the consumption tax and reforming the social security system may prove insurmountable as he wages a two-front battle.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 29, 2012

In Iraq, done in by the Clinton-Lewinsky affair

The recent public-television documentary on the Clinton presidency has focused attention anew on the scandal involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Overlooked is the important role this affair played in the confrontation with Iraq in 1998.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2012

Could EU use a global growth plan?

Talleyrand said of the Bourbon dynasty that ruled France both before and after that country's revolution: "They have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing."
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2012

Pragmatic Islamists of the Maghreb countries

Just over a year ago, the Arab Spring sparked dramatic change throughout the Arab world. Popular movements have brought a range of avowedly Islamist political parties to power, replacing the largely secular former regimes. What that will mean for these countries, and for the region, is one of today's...
Japan Times
LIFE / Longform
Feb 26, 2012

Danger zones: What are Japan's coastal communities doing to avert a disaster like March 11?

Teruo Saito has lived most of his 79 years within a couple of hundred meters of the Pacific, in an area that has been overwhelmed by massive tsunamis twice in the last 600 years.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 26, 2012

Gloom, doom — and Lester Brown's 'Plan B'

Anyone who has read any of the 50-plus books that Lester Brown has authored or co-authored (in any of the 40-odd languages into which they've been translated) might easily imagine him to be another gloomy environmentalist.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Feb 25, 2012

Villas-Boas latest scapegoat for Chelsea

In 40 years of reporting I cannot remember a more hostile media campaign against a manager than the one we are seeing with Chelsea's Andre Villas-Boas.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 22, 2012

Smith's track record cause for concern

On a one-week assignment with the Nuggets last season in full anticipation of Carmelo Anthony exclusively spilling his guts to me about every aspect of his life and forthcoming destination, I accompanied the team on its charter to Phoenix.
BUSINESS
Feb 22, 2012

Panasonic to re-enter European mobile market with its first smartphone

Panasonic Corp. will re-enter the European mobile-device market in April with the company's first smartphone and expand the range of handsets to potentially include tablet computers.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Feb 21, 2012

Focus on 'exceptions' waters down abduction pact

For the attention of the Japanese government:
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Feb 19, 2012

Surfing the silent waves

As a young documentary filmmaker, Ayako Imamura had been wrestling with feelings of emptiness. Deaf since birth, the 32-year-old Nagoya native has shot about 30 short films documenting the lives of deaf people in Japan since 2000. But at one point in her career, she realized that her creative energy...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 19, 2012

Retooling Hawks need newcomers to contribute

You might think Fukuoka Softbank Hawks manager Koji Akiyama is worried about the coming season and successfully defending his 2011 Japan Series championship. After all, he's lost three of his best pitchers and his All-Star shortstop from 2011.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 19, 2012

Feeding tube politics an awkward subject

On Feb. 6, Nobuteru Ishihara, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, recounted on a BS Asahi talk show a visit he recently made to a medical facility where patients were hooked up to gastric feeding tubes, or irō. He said it reminded him of the 1979 science fiction-horror movie "Alien,"...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 19, 2012

Japan's indigenous Ainu, 'a different world'

AINU SPIRITS SINGING: The Living World of Chiri Yukie's Ainu Shinyoshu, By Sarah M. Strong. University Of Hawaii Press, 2011, 314 pp., $58.00 (hardcover) "In the past this spacious Hokkaido was our ancestors' world of freedom. Living with ease and pleasure in the manner of innocent babes in the embrace...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 17, 2012

'TeZukA' animates the stage

Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is nutty about anime and manga. Speaking to him at a cafe in his native Antwerp, Cherkaoui drops all the right names into his conversation and gets as giddy as an otaku (obsessive) discussing Japanese pop culture.
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2012

Net malls liable in trademark cases

Kyodo The Intellectual Property High Court has ruled that an Internet shopping mall operator could be required to pay damages if it neglects to delete items that violate trademark rights from its website within a reasonable amount of time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2012

The photographic cartographer

Tomoki Imai remembers well the turning point in his life when he decided to become a professional photographer. Already an aspiring film director at the Tokyo University of the Arts, the Hiroshima-native was turned onto the raw and trigger-happy cityscape and portrait snapshots of self-styled photo "genius"...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2012

The photographic cartographer

Tomoki Imai remembers well the turning point in his life when he decided to become a professional photographer. Already an aspiring film director at the Tokyo University of the Arts, the Hiroshima-native was turned onto the raw and trigger-happy cityscape and portrait snapshots of self-styled photo "genius"...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Feb 14, 2012

Put children before politics

Almost a year after the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, earthquake and tsunami, one serious question remains: to what extent have residents in the vicinity of the plant been exposed to radiation?

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