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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jan 8, 2013

Tokyo: What will you remember most about 2012?

I attended my coming of age ceremony, which was a big event for me, even though I actually turned 20 the year before. I wore a kimono, and after the ceremony near where I live I went to Senso-ji in Asakusa, met up with all my classmates from school and did what everyone does — got drunk.
EDITORIALS
Jan 8, 2013

Mending ties with China

The dispute between Japan and China over the sovereignty issue involving the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea has caused bilateral ties to plummet. China is repeatedly violating Japanese territorial waters and airspace around the islands. Japan needs to enhance its ability to protect its territorial...
EDITORIALS
Jan 7, 2013

Komeito as countervailing power

Since the formation of a coalition government on Dec. 26, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have gotten into the full swing of governing. The parties jointly occupy more than two-thirds of the Lower House seats — enough to overturn Upper House decisions on legislative bills.
EDITORIALS
Jan 6, 2013

Happiest people in the world

Japan may have a relatively high standard of living and the longest life expectancy in the world, but it does not have the happiest people. According to a new Gallup poll of 148 countries, Japan ranks somewhere in the middle of world happiness levels. The recent poll showed just how little economic levels...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 5, 2013

Obama unilaterally reshapes immigration

The Obama administration's decision this week to ease visa requirements for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants represents its latest move to reshape immigration through executive action, even as the White House gears up for an uncertain political fight over a far more sweeping legislative package...
WORLD
Jan 5, 2013

Obama unilaterally reshapes immigration

The Obama administration's decision this week to ease visa requirements for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants represents its latest move to reshape immigration through executive action, even as the White House gears up for an uncertain political fight over a far more sweeping legislative package...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2013

Child custody injustices hard to fix

On May 6, 2010, Yasuyuki Watanabe, an internal affairs ministry bureaucrat, came home to find his wife and 2-year old daughter gone, along with their clothes.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2013

Wait out passions of the moment when touching up the Constitution

Now that the Liberal Democratic Party and their allies have won a large majority in Japan's House of Representatives, the issue of constitutional revision is on the table.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2013

Results for 2013 rely perilously on leadership

It's time once again to peer ahead at the global political and economic horizons this year. The political landscape offers both promise and peril, but much of the problem is that many of the outcomes will fall to the judgment of leadership.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 4, 2013

Eight seasons from Slovakia

Opening 2013 on a cultured note, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra (SCO) tours Japan from Jan. 5 through Jan. 18.
Reader Mail
Jan 3, 2013

Realizing the national condition

As a long-term resident, good friend and fair critic of Japan, I have to agree with the hard-hitting opinions expressed in Roger Pulvers' Dec. 30 Counterpoint article, "Is juggernaut Japan being driven to destruction (and no one's to blame)?," in Michael Hoffman's Dec. 30 article, "As the new year approaches,...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Jan 3, 2013

Drug epidemic grips India's impoverished Punjab state

An Indian boy just 12 years old was offering opium and hashish on a scrubby patch of land outside the village of Maqboolpura on a recent day. His cellphone rang incessantly as he proudly related that he earned hundreds of dollars a month dealing drugs and playing cards.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 3, 2013

Kitaro taps into Native American culture

"Kitaro and I were destined to meet each other," Dennis Banks tells The Japan Times. "Our beliefs are similar: Mother Earth, who we are ... we are all the children of this Earth."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jan 1, 2013

Osaka: What are your hopes for yourself, Japan and the world in 2013?

I argue with my husband a lot, so I hope that diminishes next year! And I hope everyone stays healthy, especially my four grandkids and new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, since he previously quit for health reasons. I worry about Japan's conflicts with our neighbors, and hope that the country can use its brainpower and high-tech knowhow to figure out ways to solve the various island disputes. Can't we all just get along nicely?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 1, 2013

Berlitz union wins raise, bonus in suit settlement

The four-year legal battle between management and teachers at Berlitz Japan was declared over Thursday as both sides signed an agreement to end the company's lawsuit against union officials.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2013

Japan's steely resolve suggests nationalism based on fear

More than half a century ago I had dinner in Paris with Arimasa Mori, the grandson of the Meiji Era education minister Arinori Mori, who had set the prewar pattern for a Westernized but intensely patriotic education. The Mori family hailed from Kagoshima, and the part that Arinori had played in the Meiji...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2012

The fight to limit agricultural use of antibiotics can be won with the right political alliances

Ask a dozen food activists what political change they want to see in 2013 and you'll get a dozen different answers, maybe two dozen: Restrict sodium in packaged foods. Label genetically modified ingredients. End subsidies to big farms.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / BEST OF 2012
Dec 28, 2012

In the name of sincerity and love, this list is for you

I've been thinking about you. About what you want from life, from relationships, from the movies. This list isn't about me, it's about you. Your needs, your dreams, all that jazz. This may seem like a hodgepodge selection of titles with no connecting thread, but believe me, these films reflect the way...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2012

Time for Japan to let go of the status quo, U.S. leadership expert counsels

Japan isn't going to end decades of economic malaise, nor will its corporations meet the challenge of overseas rivals, unless bold changes are made, warns an expert on leadership from Harvard University who was in Japan recently to give a series of lectures.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Dec 27, 2012

Polar bear hunting, trade sparks global controversy

The polar bear was more than 1 km away and began running toward the dog sled, quickly closing the distance on the frozen Arctic waters of Canada's Resolute Bay.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2012

Five myths about U.S. gun control

After the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, a nation long resistant to gun control seems ready to act — or at least talk about acting.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 24, 2012

Instagram row reveals strong but clueless Net community

The simple story line from the uprising against Instagram is this: Powerful tech company pushes the line on privacy and sparks such widespread user outrage that it has no choice but to retreat.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Dec 23, 2012

How to care for the children when we're at odds with the planet?

Perhaps this column should begin with a disclaimer like those found on CDs and DVDs that are intended to help protect kids from obscenity — Parental Advisory: Explicit Content.

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