Search - 2012

 
 
BASKETBALL
Jun 9, 2012

Ryukyu confirms Oketani's departure

The Ryukyu Golden Kings on Friday officially announced head coach Dai Oketani will not receive a new contract for the 2012-13 season, and his tenure with the club has ended.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Jun 9, 2012

Matsuda eyes rematch against Olympic legend Phelps

An athlete can tell you a tale with words that are as relevant as live action. Use your imagination to fill in the details.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012

'My House' takes Tsutsumi home

"Auteur" is not the first word that leaps to mind to describe Yukihiko Tsutsumi. In a directing career that began with a segment of the 1988 comedy anthology "Bakayaro! I'm Plenty Mad," the prolific Tsutsumi has made films in a variety of genres — mystery/thriller ("Spec: The Movie"), dystopian fantasy...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Jun 8, 2012

Hyatt Regency Tokyo summer plan

The Hyatt Regency Tokyo in Shinjuku is offering a special Summer Stay accommodation plan, through Sept. 30.
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2012

Building a nation of green growth

The Noda Cabinet on May 29 endorsed the 2012 white book on the environment. It calls for promotion of electricity power generation through renewable energy sources in the Tohoku region. Given the effects of the March 11 disasters and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear crisis, this is a reasonable approach....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Jun 8, 2012

Wine Challenge brings sake contest to Japan

At 9 a.m. on the morning of May 28, the 40 judges who had been invited to arbitrate in the 2012 International Wine Challenge sake competition convened in the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association building in Tokyo's Shinbashi district. Conversations in English and Japanese floated around the room...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 7, 2012

The real deal on austerity and debt

Many, if not all, of the world's most pressing macroeconomic problems relate to the massive overhang of all forms of debt. In Europe, a toxic combination of public, bank and external debt in the periphery threatens to unhinge the eurozone.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Jun 5, 2012

NPB may not have seen last no-no

Japanese baseball went five full seasons without a no-hitter until the Hiroshima Carp's Kenta Maeda threw one against the Yokohama BayStars April 6.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2012

'Nixon option' for Iran could break stalemate, allow U.S. to strengthen security without war

Rearranging the deck chairs would not have saved the Titanic. Nor did the endless debates on the shape of the table in the Vietnam negotiations advance the effort to end that maligned conflict. Still, many U.S. presidents have successfully redesigned talks with adversaries in bold new ways to strengthen...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 5, 2012

Medical tourism — a boat to be on

So-called medical tourism is a growing market worldwide and high-tech Japan hopes to get a piece of the action.
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2012

Fighting peace for Taiwan

Four months after the presidential elections in Taiwan, there is a big difference when comparing the aftereffects of the elections in 2008 to those in 2012.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 5, 2012

Blackston taught kids days before murder, may have toured with AI

Although no official statement has been made by the artist or her representatives, evidence points to links between high-profile Japanese pop star AI (Ai Carina Uemura) and at least one, if not both, of the suspects being questioned over the rape and murder of Nicola Furlong.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2012

Final ride for the Putin showboat?

Vladimir Putin's new presidential term is just beginning, but it increasingly looks like the beginning of the end.
EDITORIALS
Jun 4, 2012

Married women want to work

Married women want to work, according to a government survey that will form the basis for a 2012 white paper on children, child rearing and mothers. The survey results, released early, show an astounding 86 percent of women want to continue working after having children, though most find it almost impossible...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 3, 2012

Portrait of a pickpocket

THE THIEF, by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates. Soho Crime, 2012, 304 pp., $23.00 (hardcover) In simpler times, in simpler tales, authors pitted heroes against villains, and there was no confusion about who wore the black hat and who the white. We no longer live in those...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jun 3, 2012

Wood you believe how good school could be . . .

Since 1980, I have made my home in Shinano, a town in northern Nagano Prefecture. However, in articles, letters and speeches, I refer to this area as Kurohime, the name of our local train station and of the great, dormant, densely forested volcano that looks down on us. I prefer to say my home is in...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 2, 2012

A 100-mile race — it keeps you runnin'

Paul Walsh has just finished running 156 km. For fun. Around the bottom of Mount Fuji.
EDITORIALS
Jun 2, 2012

Naval exercise tweaks Constitution

It was reported Monday that Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and naval ships of the United States and a few other countries fired at and sank a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship during an exercise off Hawaii in July 2010.
COMMENTARY
Jun 1, 2012

Russia needs true family policy

The unprecedented upswing of public interest in Russia's presidential elections opened a window of opportunities — quite unexpected but welcome — to see and discuss many socioeconomic problems in a more realistic manner.
COMMENTARY
Jun 1, 2012

It's not healthy to make a chief justice 'worry'

In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism's first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that." TR was as mistaken about Holmes' spine as are various progressives...
CULTURE / Music
May 31, 2012

AKB48 'election' shows marketing brilliance

The biggest event of the year for AKB48, the 48-member pop group that's the most popular music act in Japan today, arrives next Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
May 31, 2012

AEC's dubious behavior

It has surfaced that the Cabinet Offices's Atomic Energy Commission, in the course of its review of Japan's nuclear fuel cycle policy, has held a series of closed-door study meetings attended by insiders in the nation's nuclear power establishment. These meetings were separate from the official meetings...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 31, 2012

Japanese art history, through the eye of the collector

"Japanese Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" is not a survey of Japanese art, nor is it representative of the vast holdings of the institution. Rather, it is an exhibition that tells of an understanding of Japanese art formulated in the late 19th century by the collectors and scholars...
BASKETBALL
May 31, 2012

Blackwell returns to U.S. as Evessa tenure ends

For Ryan Blackwell, nothing's changed. His status — as the former Osaka Evessa head coach — is the same as it was last Friday, when it was first reported in this newspaper that his tenure had ended.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 31, 2012

Nissan poised to sell green-vehicle credits

A new front is opening in the emerging market for electric vehicles — not for selling cars, but for credits required to meet clean-air rules.
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2012

It's time U.S. dropped the college-for-all crusade

The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education's expansion also ranks as one of America's...

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A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake