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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Sep 30, 2013

The build-up to get that housing loan

Several years ago, we went to a bank in Tokyo that was advertising housing loans with easy terms. Though we weren't shopping for a loan at the time we wanted to see what was needed in order to apply for one. The bank's approval criteria seemed simple enough: If you made at least ¥3 million a year, you...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / OUR MAN IN TOKYO
Sep 30, 2013

Beninese ambassador brings TV star power to diplomacy

Beninese Ambassador Zomahoun Rufin says — half-jokingly — his dream is “to become the next Japanese prime minister.”
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 30, 2013

Slow start expected for system

The White House is downplaying expectations for the first day of the Affordable Care Act's insurance marketplaces.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Sep 30, 2013

Russia anti-gay law casts shadow over Sochi Olympics

Let other mayors fret about potholes, taxes and sewers. This is an Olympic city, and here is the jeans-clad mayor striding into his office on a recent afternoon, fresh from a landslide, and not the electoral kind. When Sochi won the 2014 Games, life went epic.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 29, 2013

Bringing farmers markets to the urban poor

he Crossroads Farmers Market in Maryland is not your typical farmers market. It was founded to offer a friendly environment for low-income people to buy fresh produce.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Sep 29, 2013

Nontraditional college students juggle work, kids, bills with coursework

When President Barack Obama talks about the cost of higher education, his mentions of "college students" might often evoke images of teenagers who spent their senior years of high school searching for the four-year institution that best matched their personalities, then enrolled and moved into the dorms...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 29, 2013

Politics and pride drive Putin's anti-U.S. shift

First, Vladimir Putin accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of inciting protests against him at the end of 2011. The next fall, the Russian president threw the U.S. Agency for International Development out of his country. Then he decided civic groups that get U.S. financing must be foreign agents.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 28, 2013

Two studies explore the Tudors, Scotland's crown and a nonchalant union

The unhurried fashion in which James VI of Scotland ambled south toward London to claim his crown in 1603, stopping off to hunt along the way and arriving six weeks after Elizabeth I died, suggests there was nothing terribly dramatic about the event. The man who would be James I of England, the first...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 27, 2013

Nippon Ishin's future seen riding on Sakai mayor race

Sunday's mayoral contest in Sakai, one of Japan's most independent-minded cities, is expected to decide not only the fate of a plan to merge Osaka prefectural cities into a single administrative entity, but also the fate of national-level efforts to create a new opposition party.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Sep 25, 2013

Harvard grad Gordon hoping to make impact for Frontiers

Fujitsu Frontiers running back Gino Gordon earned a chance to play in Japan and really cherishes the opportunity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 25, 2013

Dommune takes a new direction with My Bloody Valentine gig

Noise — vast, enveloping noise — is at the core of My Bloody Valentine's music. Halfway through "You Made Me Realise," the quartet lands on a single chord that proceeds to suck the entire song into a gawping, sense-scrambling maw of distortion. On the 1988 recorded version of the track, this "holocaust...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 25, 2013

West gets a second chance for peace in Syria

he last-minute deal to put Syria's chemical weapons under international control gives the West, which had run out of good options, a second chance to reach peace in Syria.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / TRAVEL INSIDER
Sep 25, 2013

Finnair's CEO on Japan

Finnair held a press conference at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo on Sept. 24 to introduce Pekka Vauramo, who became the company's new president and CEO in June.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 24, 2013

Brazilians demand long-term change in slums

Brazilian demonstraters want the government to invest in public transportation, better schools and hospitals instead of hosting mega-events such as the 2014 World Cup.
LIFE / Digital
Sep 24, 2013

Is China after our inventions?

Some things never change. For as long as I can remember, people in the west have been paranoid about the Orient — and about China in particular. I grew up in an ultra-devout Catholic household in rural Ireland and I remember my mother being terrified by what people then called "the yellow peril," by...
Japan Times
JAPAN / LIGHTING THE OLYMPIC FLAME
Sep 24, 2013

Tokyo puts Tohoku on games map, but will it be enough?

As Tokyo wrapped up its winning bid to host the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, one speech during the final presentation resonated with members of the International Olympic Committee.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 23, 2013

Smells can help dispel fear factor

It can take only an instant for fear to take hold in the brain — a fear of snakes after being bitten, or of water after witnessing a drowning — and overcoming that fear can take a long time. But now researchers are saying it can be done in your sleep.

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