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JAPAN
Aug 29, 2001

Fukuda pays up over staff fraud scandal

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Tuesday he has returned wages he received from October to June in response to the public outcry over a Foreign Ministry fraud scandal involving the Cabinet Secretariat's secret funds.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 26, 2001

Sips of high-grade tranquillity

In parts of Asia, tea is more than a mere beverage: It is a social lubricant, a sacrament of complex rituals and a vital part of national identity. Throughout history, farmers and philosophers alike have treasured a steaming cup of cha. While there is some evidence of tea's health benefits, there is...
BUSINESS
Aug 14, 2001

Firms seek protection from fickle weather that swings sales

The current spell of sweltering weather has constituted a breath of fresh air for a wide range of businesses, boosting sales of items such as air conditioners, summer clothes, ice cream, beer and soft drinks.
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Aug 5, 2001

Passion burning on the dance floor

Lamont Raymond is better known simply as Monty to thousands of Japanese clubbers. After arriving in Tokyo on an English-teaching gig more than a decade ago, he ended up working as the sales manager for Tokyo Classified (the free paper now known as Metropolis). For many years, if you had picked up a copy,...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 1, 2001

. . . And then there's angst

Ghost World Rating: * * * * 1/4 Director: Terry Zwigoff Running time: 111 minutes Language: EnglishNow showing If you're lucky, you made it all the way through high school as one of the in-group, one of the "normal" kids. The next least-bad fate was to not fit in, but remain convinced that somehow...
COMMUNITY
Jul 29, 2001

Every breath you take

The children were considered lucky when they were admitted a place at the popular Sashigaya public nursery in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward. Little did their parents know what a high price their young ones might have to pay for the privilege.
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2001

Chongryon head wants to reach youth, offers olive branch to Mindan

The new head of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), a pro-Pyongyang group, says the association sees the need to adapt to the demands of the younger generation and is ready to promote exchanges with the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan).
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2001

Matsuo fraud trial scheduled to kick off July 31

Katsutoshi Matsuo, the fired Foreign Ministry logistics chief charged with swindling discretionary funds from the government, will have his first Tokyo District Court hearing on July 31, court officials said.
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2001

Tanaka reportedly hinted Japan should reconsider U.S. alliance

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, already under fire for making controversial remarks about the U.S. missile defense plan, has insinuated that Japan needs to depart from its decades-old security alliance with the United States, government sources said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jun 1, 2001

Major banks' dud loans soar 1.7 trillion yen

The combined balance of the 16 major banks' bad loans, classified as requiring "special attention" for recovery, soared by 1.73 trillion yen in fiscal 2000 to 6.3 trillion yen, according to a Financial Services Agency report released Thursday.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Child abuse found rising as 16 die in three months

Abuse claimed the lives of 16 children from January through March, up by six from the same period last year, with the total number of reported victims rising by 14 to 53, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 13, 2001

Sit back, relax and let life pass you by

Summer's on its way, and none of us need any encouraging to make the most of it. There's no better way to celebrate the onset of the hot weather than with a leisurely lunch in the open air. Nothing too heavy, nothing too complicated -- this is the season to start lightening up the diet, anyway. Here...
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2001

Racism loses its grip in Britain

LONDON -- "Britain risks becoming a mongrel land"; "Britain will become a foreign land to most of the British": two thoughts from the Tory Party uttered in the past few weeks, one from a back-bench MP of little repute (John Townend), the other from the Tory Party leader, William Hague, whose reputation,...
JAPAN
May 5, 2001

Aging U.S. POWs still await slave labor redress

OSAKA -- For 56 years, Ben Comstock, 82, an American captured by Japanese forces on Wake Island in December 1941, has been waiting.
JAPAN
May 4, 2001

Island Japan's pleasure boaters few but winds of change are a-blowin'

Despite its long maritime tradition, Japan lags far behind Scandinavia and the United States in terms of recreational yachting.
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2001

New rules to trim public organizations

The Cabinet on Friday approved a set of guidelines to reform public organizations financially aided by the government or conducting charity, academic or other work on behalf of the state.
EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2001

The great Tiger Woods debate

Semantics and politics make a familiar pair. Every other day, it seems, something crops up in the mine-strewn worlds of domestic or international politics that makes us stop and think about the meaning of words. One day it's a foreign president's legalistic musings about the meaning of "is," the next,...
BUSINESS
Mar 31, 2001

FSA nearing completion of writeoff plan for banks' bad loans

Financial Services Agency chief Hakuo Yanagisawa said Friday that the FSA has virtually completed drawing up measures to help Japanese banks accelerate their direct writeoffs of bad loans.
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2001

State funds lavished on Diet members

Japanese diplomatic establishments in foreign countries used discretionary government funds to wine and dine visiting Diet members, a Foreign Ministry internal document revealed.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 11, 2001

Japanese neighbors join in incinerator struggle

Two previous columns have focused on a United States government lawsuit seeking a provisional injunction against a private incinerator in Ayase City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The Americans, however, are not the only ones eager to shut down the facility. Other neighbors, too, are fired up about Envirotech...
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2001

GEOS affiliates fined for hiding 280 million yen

Around 20 companies affiliated with English-language school operator GEOS Corp. failed to declare some 280 million yen in income in the five years to March 2000, industry sources said Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2001

External panel meets to review workings of Foreign Ministry

A panel of outside experts advising the Foreign Ministry held its first meeting Wednesday morning to review ministerial operations and discuss ways of preventing further misuses of public funds.
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2001

External panel meets to review workings of Foreign Ministry

A panel of outside experts advising the Foreign Ministry held its first meeting Wednesday morning to review ministerial operations and discuss ways of preventing further misuses of public funds.
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Defense Agency staff, SDF to face stiffer penalties for spying

The Defense Agency plans to make penalties for personnel and Self-Defense Forces members who leak secret information harsher by raising the maximum prison term from one year to five years, agency sources said Saturday.

Longform

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