search

 
 
COMMENTARY
Nov 20, 2006

Time for U.S. to change course on Cuba

NEW YORK -- The changed political landscape in Washington offers a unique opportunity to right a wrong foreign policy decision that has been maintained for almost half a century, the embargo against Cuba.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 20, 2006

How Japan can avoid hostage situations in a globalized economy

When international tensions mount, foreign currency-denominated external credit and debt can become tools of diplomacy. If a country is a huge net creditor, its overseas assets can be taken hostage.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2006

Thaksin poses dilemma for Thai leaders

Thaksin Shinawatra, in exile in London, has given notice that he is still alive and very much kicking. Indeed, the deposed leader is playing a devilishly devious and clever, but potentially deadly, game for himself and for Thailand.
COMMENTARY
Nov 20, 2006

Know the goals of military intervention

In a Washington Post article reprinted in these pages on Oct. 10, "The humanitarian war myth," Eric Posner writes: "If the United Nations were to have its way, the Iraqi debacle would be just the first in a series of such wars -- the effect of a well-meaning but ill-considered effort to make humanitarian...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 19, 2006

Matsuzaka posting, 'gyroball' big topics of discussion

What an international baseball news week we had with the Daisuke Matsuzaka posting won by the Boston Red Sox and the rather surprising news the highest bid for Akinori Iwamura was submitted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
BASKETBALL
Nov 19, 2006

'Helicopter' lifts Tokyo past Oita

In Saturday's bj-league action, the visiting Tokyo Apache defeated the Oita HeatDevils 75-68.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 19, 2006

When in Rome, do hug granny as the Romans do

Last night, at Theater X (Cai) in Ryogoku, Tokyo, we finished a short season of plays I'd written, and eight of us -- Japanese cast and staff, with myself as director -- leave tonight on an adventure to present stagings in Sydney and Adelaide. I call this tour an adventure because doing the two plays,...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006

Intrigues and conflicts, a millennium apart

BLACK ARROW by I.J. Parker. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, 354 pp., $13 (paper). A WOMAN IN JERUSALEM by A.B. Yehoshua, translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2006, 237 pp., $25 (cloth).
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 19, 2006

Scourge of skinnies stands firm on fleshiness

A third of the models who appeared in Madrid's civic-sponsored Cibeles collections last year were banned from the same fashion event this September. The move -- which triggered debate in and beyond fashion circles around the world -- came after city officials declared that the women's extremely underweight...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 19, 2006

Decorum drives 'disingenuous' bid to free streets of discarded butts

Tokyo is home to some of the world's more bizarre museums, including ones devoted to such odd subjects as washing machines, curry, kites and parasites. The latest addition to this outre melange is the Mobile Ashtray Museum.
EDITORIALS
Nov 19, 2006

Law students who can think

The annual national bar exam was once reputed to be Japan's most difficult examination. Virtually anybody could take the exam, but only about 3 percent of the applicants passed it. Some hapless applicants spent many years preparing for it, riveted to the text of a compendium of laws that became their...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 19, 2006

Russian dolls warble in concert

On a recent Saturday evening in Tokyo's Shibuya district, I had the privilege of being the audience at a concert by 12 students from Tokyu Seminar BE school of continuing education.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006

Akebono: Yokozuna to K-1

GAIJIN YOKOZUNA: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 301 pp., $24.95 (paper). Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks --...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes