Search - 2012

 
 
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jan 16, 2012

Aoki takes All-Star shooting crown from Okada

Sharpshooter Cohey Aoki, a long-distance and free-throw shooting maestro, thrilled the masses during Sunday's bj-league All-Star Game 3-Point Shooting Contest.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Jan 16, 2012

Western Conference wins bj-league All-Star matchup

As expected, the bj-league's sixth annual All-Star Game was a light-hearted affair. Sure, a few of the players broke a sweat, but the amount of defense played in the prime-time showcase was far from typical if the comparison involved a regular-season contest.
EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2012

Russia as a WTO member

A ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in mid-December unanimously approved Russia's request to join the world trade body. It also approved Samoa's and Montenegro's entry. It took 18 years for Russia to become a WTO member.
COMMENTARY
Jan 16, 2012

Government lags in redistributing happiness

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today's redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 15, 2012

A woman's investigative intuition; the family funeral business; CM of the week: Softbank

Last year, Nippon TV beat perennial winner Fuji TV in the drama ratings competition, and starts 2012 with a show that's already attracting attention. "Dirty Mama" (Wed., 10 p.m.) is a police drama whose principal cop combines the slovenliness of Colombo with the extra-legal tactics of Dirty Harry.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 15, 2012

Graffiti brightens Tohoku housing units

Almost all the temporary public housing units in the disaster-hit Tohoku region of northeast Japan look the same — like little, soulless boxes, in fact.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 15, 2012

Firms look to hire foreign students

Hundreds of foreign students from Japan's top universities turned up at a career forum Saturday in Tokyo, hoping to secure a job before their graduation in 2013.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 15, 2012

'Made in Japan' label under assault

Take a stroll through home sweet home. You'll almost certainly see an entertainment system, refrigerator, microwave oven, rice cooker, toaster, mixer/blender, vacuum cleaner, heater/air conditioner, hair dryer, electric blanket and so on. From personal hygiene to food preparation to recreation and entertainment,...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 15, 2012

Nakajima, Aoki reminders that posting system is an inexact science

There were some strange goings-on in the attempts by Japanese stars Hiroyuki Nakajima and Norichika Aoki to leave their clubs and carve out careers in the major leagues via the posting system.
COMMENTARY
Jan 14, 2012

Asia's new tripartite entente

The launch of trilateral strategic consultations among the United States, India and Japan, and their decision to hold joint naval exercises this year, signals efforts to form an entente among the Asia-Pacific region's three leading democracies. These efforts — in the world's most economically dynamic...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jan 13, 2012

Bulk of teams still have chance at landing spot in playoffs

Four teams have no realistic shot at finishing the season as winners. The bj-league's other 15 teams are in contention for a playoff spot and, possibly, a title.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2012

Bearing witness to brutality in 'Devil's Double'

"Should I ask him whether it's true or not?" That's the question I had for my editor regarding my interview with Latif Yahia, the Iraqi exile whose story about being the lookalike body-double for Saddam Hussein's psychotic son Uday has been parlayed into a best-selling book and a movie. "Probably," said...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2012

Turkey's balancing act between Mideast and West

Turkey has over the past few weeks become the spearhead of a joint Western-Arab-Turkish policy aimed at forcing President Bashar Assad to cede power in Syria. This is quite a turnaround in Turkish policy, because over the past two years the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had gone out...
BUSINESS
Jan 11, 2012

Intervention fails as yen is poised to strengthen

There was no better currency than the yen last year and strategists forecast more gains this year, even as Japan promises to intervene again in foreign exchange markets and expands the world's biggest debt burden.
EDITORIALS
Jan 10, 2012

Improving medical services

The government decided on Dec. 21 to raise fees for medical services by 0.004 percent and those for nursing care services for elderly people by 1.2 percent in fiscal 2012. Medical fees are revised every second year and nursing care fees every third year. The government hopes that the fee raises will...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2012

Adaptation to climate change will cost plenty

Rising, warming and increasingly acidic seas threaten the very survival of Pacific island countries.
COMMENTARY
Jan 9, 2012

Collision of political, economic logic condemns India to rudderless rule and chronic corruption

India's economy grows mainly in the night, some say, when the government is asleep. If every economic prospect pleases, India's politics can be vile.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jan 9, 2012

The Kanji of the Year for 2011: human ties that bind

Every November, in its Kanji of the Year poll, the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation invites the public to vote for the character that best symbolizes the year drawing to a close. It then announces the winner in mid December.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 8, 2012

Nine years later, A's and Mariners set for Japan openers

Happy New Year.

Longform

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