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Japan Times
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Nov 3, 2005

Make English mandatory for elementary pupils, Kosaka says

The new education minister believes English education should be made mandatory for elementary school students.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 3, 2005

Pushkin delivers the goods

It's no secret what the mainstream art public really like -- soft, flowery Impressionism and cute, colorful Post-impressionism, with, possibly, a smattering of Picassos and Matisses thrown in to add grit. Hold a show with this kind of art, and you'll have to hang the paintings high so that people can...
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2005

English test to gauge education level

About 1,000 junior high school students will be tested in November on their ability to speak English as part of the government's efforts to ascertain the situation of English education in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2005

Gun control loses yet again

LONDON -- Last Sunday in Brazil, a country with the second-highest rate of gun deaths on the planet, almost two-thirds of Brazilians voted against a total ban on the sale of firearms. Explain that.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 30, 2005

Akiyuki Nosaka's "Hotaru no Haka" dramatized in Nihon TV's "Drama Complex" and more

This week, Nihon TV launches a new series called "Drama Complex" with a three-hour adaptation of Akiyuki Kosaka's best-selling novel "Hotaru no Haka (Grave of Fireflies)" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), which is set during World War II.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 30, 2005

What lies beneath the myth of middle-class consciousness

A friend sent me an email about some new people, all Japanese, she had met at a party. There was a young man who had worked in Africa for Medecins Sans Frontieres. One middle-age man had quit a stable job in broadcasting to study French in Paris. A female graduate student in marine biology was also there....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 29, 2005

New Asian Collection gallery is dream come true

Robert Tobin makes charismatic progress around the back side of Ebisu Station in central Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Oct 29, 2005

Yuki Akimoto

Yuko Akimoto and her brother began the right way by choosing their parents well. Their father, Minoru Akimoto, has an M.A. from Michigan State University. From a business career at the top, he retired as executive vice president of Itochu Corp. Their poetic, music-loving mother, Taeko, runs her own musical...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 27, 2005

The man in black

For a man whose entire cinematic career has been devoted to portraying maladjusted types who don't fit in, Tim Burton is certainly comfortable holding a microphone in front of a crowd. Then again, that is the deal with artists: turn your oddities and idiosyncrasies into art and watch your childhood rejection...
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2005

Koizumi breaks fast with Muslims

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi hosted a dinner at his office Monday to break the day's fast for diplomats from about 40 Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Oct 22, 2005

Margarita Carrillo de Salinas

"The most important room in our house in Mexico was the huge kitchen. We six children went in with our bicycles; our mother was cooking, we all helped. Our grandparents were there -- our father, a lawyer, was always encouraging family life around the table. That is the way I got my interest in food,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 20, 2005

The aesthetics of the Korean noblewoman

Korean aesthetics can be summed up in one word, mot. Used frequently in casual conversation, the term refers to stylishness, elegance and the state of being chic.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 20, 2005

PIFF: Asia's magnet for movies

The Pusan International Film Festival, which took place Oct. 6-14, marked its 10th year with its biggest program ever -- 307 films from 73 countries. These numbers alone make PIFF the largest annual film-related event in Asia, and with the Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) taking place in the Korean port city...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Oct 18, 2005

Funding, adoption and cigars

There was no column last week due to the monthly press holiday falling on a Monday.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Oct 16, 2005

UNEAR THING FACT IN CLASSIC FICTION

'Robinson Crusoe" has fascinated explorer Daisuke Takahashi ever since his elementary school days, when he first read the classic adventure tale about a British sailor who lived on a desert island for 28 years. Imagining that he, too, was marooned on an isolated island, the young Takahashi would roast...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2005

Learn to live and love consciously in workshop

Katie (Kathlyn) Hendricks sounds as clear as a bell on a three-way line between California, to which she has just returned from Colorado, and Japan. "I was in Boulder, Colo., facilitating a workshop not dissimilar to the three-day foundation training in conscious living and loving that is being arranged...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 14, 2005

Playing in the shadows

"Self-effacing" is not an adjective one normally uses to describe a rock band, but everything about the English quartet Electrelane seems designed to draw attention away from the individual players. In Electrelane's case this is particularly significant since all four members are young women, and there...
JAPAN
Oct 13, 2005

Aomori formally OKs ITER research center in Rokkasho

Aomori Gov. Shingo Mimura said Wednesday his prefecture will accept a request from the central government to host a research center related to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor to be built in France.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2005

Pop mystification

Sigmar Polke has a lot in common with the medieval alchemists with whom he identifies. Like them, he is interested in transmutation, sometimes employing pigments and techniques that make his paintings change over time. Like those pseudo-scientists of the past, he uses a combination of mystification and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 13, 2005

When revolution came to the big screen

1969 was a watershed year for American cinema, with two films in particular heralding significant changes to the movie-making industry. One was "Midnight Cowboy," the story of a hustler and a junkie on the streets of New York City, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman; this became the first X-rated...
COMMENTARY
Oct 12, 2005

New authoritarian ways cross the line

LONDON -- At the recent Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized the British criminal justice system. He said it needed toughening and called for "a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities" to deal with antisocial behavior and prevent terrorism.
JAPAN
Oct 12, 2005

Older folks getting fitter; kids flabbier: survey

Middle-aged and senior citizens have become more agile while the physical capabilities of younger people are deteriorating, according to results of an annual fitness test.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 9, 2005

Breaking the silence on sexuality in Japan

GENDERS, TRANSGENDERS AND SEXUALITIES IN JAPAN, edited by Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta. London: Routledge, 2005, 218 pp., £60 (cloth). Now that the conspiracies of silence have begun to evaporate, scholarly works on gender and transgender have begun to proliferate. This very interesting collection...
COMMENTARY
Oct 8, 2005

Stellar play fosters globalized mindset

LOS ANGELES -- Some things are just nice to see, and there's not much more to it than that. In America around this time every year, one of the nicest things to see -- especially for the inveterate sports fan -- is the invariably engrossing finale of the long Major League Baseball season.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 6, 2005

International airports debut local bus tours for transit passengers

William White did not expect to have a chance for sake tasting at Narita airport while in transit from Vietnam to the U.S.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2005

CDs with cardboard jackets find a groove

Jazz and rock compact disks that come in cardboard jackets mimicking those of the long-playing records of yore are creating a boom among nostalgic buyers in their 30s and 40s as record companies rush to revive great recordings of the past.
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2005

Researchers scam millions in subsidies

Four researchers, including a Keio University medical doctor, had fraudulently received a combined 85 million yen in government subsidies for scientific research as of the end of fiscal 2004, according to officials of the Board of Audit of Japan.
JAPAN
Oct 5, 2005

Soil contaminated with uranium shipped to U.S.

The nuclear research and development agency has shipped uranium-contaminated soil to an undisclosed location in the United States for disposal, officials said.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Oct 5, 2005

Sad drumbeats in the wilderness

I made several visits to the Aichi Expo this year and met a lot of interesting people. But one person above all left an indelible impression. Soft-spoken, modest, and wearing traditional northern buckskin, his name was Michael Cazon -- a Dene drummer, teacher and healer from Fort Simpson in the Northwest...

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?