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BUSINESS
May 24, 2005

More foreign aid cuts urged

An advisory panel to Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki drafted a proposal Monday urging more cuts in foreign aid in fiscal 2006, citing the nation's troubled finances.
BUSINESS
May 24, 2005

Fuji TV, Livedoor finalize deals

Fuji Television Network Inc. and Livedoor Co. said Monday they had completed two financial deals to officially end their battle for control of Nippon Broadcasting System Inc.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
May 24, 2005

Vikings, traditional gear and theater

Viking Katya has what she calls a "random goofy question." She wants to know why it is that a buffet here is called "viking."
BUSINESS
May 24, 2005

Insurers pay the price for last year's typhoons

Due to record natural disaster-related claims caused by the unprecedented number of typhoons last year, Japan's three largest nonlife insurers on Monday reported sharp drops in fiscal 2004 profits.
MORE SPORTS
May 23, 2005

Race favorite Cesario rules Oaks

Okasho runnerup and race favorite Cesario ruled supreme in the Oaks at Tokyo on Sunday as she cruised to victory a neck ahead of second-pick Air Messiah.
SUMO
May 23, 2005

Asashoryu rolls over Tochiazuma to finish basho undefeated

Yokozuna Asashoryu dispatched ozeki Tochiazuma Sunday, one day after clinching his fourth consecutive title to win the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament with an undefeated record on Sunday.
EDITORIALS
May 23, 2005

A bill for integrated welfare

The Diet is debating a bill that would integrate welfare services for those who are physically, intellectually or mentally disabled. Currently, facilities and services for these people are regulated by different laws. The proposed legislation would provide better support for the disabled by creating...
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2005

Getting doctors off the habit

In February, the framework convention on tobacco control came into force, marking another milestone in the international antismoking movement. Japan has ratified the convention but is making only halfhearted efforts at tobacco control, frustrating antismoking activists ahead of No Tobacco Day on May...
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2005

Chinese protests stiffen Japanese resolve

The Law of Unintended Consequences has been at work again, this time in the intense Japanese reaction to the Chinese demonstrations last month against Japan, some of them violent. In a word, the eruption in China has backfired in Japan.
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2005

Don't rely solely on America

NAGOYA -- For more than 400 years, Great Britain played the role of global offshore balancer. Believing that it had neither permanent allies nor permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, Britain avoided entanglement on the Continent. Shifting its weight as required to prevent any potentially hostile...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
May 22, 2005

Cavaliers looking to hire Vandeweghe

NEW YORK -- Kiki Vandeweghe is emerging as the leading candidate to preside as president of the Cavaliers next season and beyond, numerous sources stipulate.
MORE SPORTS
May 22, 2005

Sawa leads Japan past Kiwis

Midfielder Homare Sawa struck the 50th and 51st goals of her international career as Japan's women demolished New Zealand 6-0 in a friendly in Tokyo on Saturday.
SUMO
May 22, 2005

Unstoppable Asa claims 12th Cup

Yokozuna Asashoryu overpowered Chiyotaikai on Saturday to win his 12th Emperor's Cup on the penultimate day of the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
May 22, 2005

Bryant back in key role with Buffaloes

Returning to Japanese baseball this season after a decade-long absence is Ralph Bryant, one of the most prolific sluggers ever to play the game here as a member of the Kintetsu Buffaloes from 1988 to 1995, and currently the first-base coach and a batting instructor with the Orix Buffaloes.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 22, 2005

Fuji TV dramatizes Naoki Prize winning novel "Kuchu Buranko" and more

This week's "Friday Entertainment" special (Fuji TV, 9 p.m.) is a dramatization of the 131st winner of the Naoki Prize for Literature, Hideo Okura's novel "Kuchu Buranko (Flying Trapeze)."
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 22, 2005

It's not all quiet on the (Middle-) Eastern front after the abduction

After it was learned that Akihiko Saito, a Japanese national working for a British security company in Iraq, was captured by a militant group during an ambush, the media seemed so stunned by the revelation that they couldn't get their bearings. So they seized on the only source of local information they...
EDITORIALS
May 22, 2005

Brave new words

Not so long ago -- six or eight months, perhaps -- we heard a young man describe something as "ginormous." We were impressed. Although we had never heard the word, its meaning was obvious: gigantic plus enormous. How clever of this person, we thought, to coin such a fun, economical new way of saying...
COMMENTARY / World
May 22, 2005

Betting on World War III

LONDON -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has a way with words. On a recent trip to Europe he tried to persuade European Union politicians not to lift the arms embargo that they had imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. If the EU lifted the ban, he said, the Europeans...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 22, 2005

Seeds of employment

There, in the heart of the concrete jungle that is Tokyo's Otemachi financial district, in the second-floor basement abyss of a 27-story building, is nothing less than . . . a farm.
Japan Times
Features
May 22, 2005

Retirees lead the way back to nature

Yoshishige Nagayama started farming when he retired nine years ago at age 60.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 22, 2005

Four Tet: "Everything Ecstatic"

As the title of his third album implies, Keiren Hebden's laptop jazz (my description, not his) has a definite reactive purpose, which is to make you happy by any means necessary, but mainly through his manipulation of what is certainly techno's biggest catalog of electronic percussion and drum samples....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 22, 2005

Rambo comes marching home

"I broke down on the flight back from Vietnam, went crazy, shouting, screaming. It took several men to restrain me. . . . For years it was all I could think about, going home. Then when it finally happened, I snapped."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 22, 2005

Clifton Karhu's years in print

KARHU @ 77: A Personal Tribute, by Mary and Norman Tolman, bilingual text: English & Japanese. Tokyo: Abe Publishing, Ltd., 2004, 124 pp., 77 full-page color prints, 6,500 yen (cloth). Last November Clifton Karhu, Japan's most famous foreign resident artist, turned 77 years of age, and his dealer, Norman...
Features
May 22, 2005

A growing trend

These are hard times for Japan's construction workers. The days when they were forever taking flak for digging up roads and causing traffic chaos, or teetering on the edge of scandals as they built yet more roads and bridges into the middle of nowhere are now long gone.

Longform

A store clerk tries to cool things down in front of their shop by spraying a hose.
Is extreme weather changing the way Japan shops?