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BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 22, 2008

Countryside games offer charming change of pace

FUKUSHIMA — I am writing this column on June 17 at the Yomiuri Giants-Orix Buffaloes interleague game at Azuma Stadium in Fukushima Prefecture, north of Tokyo. It is one of seven regular-season games the Giants will have played this year at countryside ballparks, and have you ever wondered why they...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 21, 2008

Twitter launch in Japanese a boon for microblogging

Twitter is the Web site and service on a lot of lips in the technology world right now. It is a service that serves one very simple function by letting its users answer a simple question, "What are you doing now?" Users then subscribe to these answers by "following" the accounts of other users. The result...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Apr 30, 2008

Do bacteria make the man (or woman or child)?

What happens when Japanese people start eating a Western diet? Could it mean that their famed long life span starts to decline?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 27, 2008

Hail and farewell to the world's greatest 'Good Gringo' U.S. president

On April 1, the widely read History News Network (HNN) Web site announced the results of a survey it conducted among historians.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2008

'Michael Clayton'/'Lions for Lambs'

America's rightwing bloviators like to go on about "liberal Hollywood." They have half a point, but they neglect to notice that for every "Erin Brockovich" or "JFK," there's a "300" or "Top Gun." It's just that the rightwing viewpoint tends to be subsumed as flag-waving patriotism or military superiority...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2008

Racy approach to English picks up speed

"Your questions were hard," mails Darian Wilson, chief executive officer of FAQ, the day after we meet. "But I appreciate them as they caused me to rethink the meaning behind this project."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 11, 2007

Volunteering: How to start making a difference this fall

First in a two-part series
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2007

Somewhere between history and the imagination

David Mitchell is one of Britain's most influential novelists. "Ghostwritten" (1999), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction, his second novel, "number9dream" (2001),...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 29, 2007

Gorilla snot and Tokyo sauce

TABLOID TOKYO 2, by Geoff Botting, Ryann Connell, Michael Hoffman, Masuo Kamiyama, Mark Schreiber; Illustrations by Hirosuke Ueno; foreword by Mark Schreiber. Toyko: Kodansha International, 2007, 288 pp., profusely illustrated, 1,400 yen (paper) The success of the first volume of "Tabloid Tokyo" has...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 4, 2007

Nanae Aoyama: Office worker takes exalted literary status in her stride

Nanae Aoyama only turned 24 in January, but already she has won literary prizes for each of the two books she has published.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 14, 2007

From rackets to real estate, yakuza multifaceted

The yakuza have long played a powerful, if often unseen, role in society. Romanticized in literature and film as noble outcasts replete with punch-perms, extensive tattoos and severed pinkies, the underworld is one of archaic language and secretive rituals and customs as well as extreme violence and...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 12, 2006

Serious toys for serious fans

Ultraman is often cited as an example of just how different the Japanese outlook is from that of Westerners. While the bug-like eyes and clingy bodysuit of the hero himself may strike the uninitiated as ridiculous, it is the outlandish aspect of the monsters from whose wrath Ultraman is perpetually saving...
EDITORIALS
Oct 30, 2006

New flexibility of cell phones

The much-awaited portable-number service for cell phones has started in Japan, enabling users to change carriers without having to change phone numbers. This is a new convenience for customers, but for the cell-phone carriers -- NTT DoCoMo Inc., KDDI Corp. and Softbank Mobile Corp. -- it heralds the...
BUSINESS
Sep 2, 2006

Asahi Tec to buy U.S. car parts rival Metaldyne

Auto parts maker Asahi Tec announced Friday it will buy U.S. rival Metaldyne Corp. for $1.2 billion.
EDITORIALS
May 25, 2006

A love that can't be legislated

The Diet has started discussions on a government bill to revise the Fundamental Law of Education. First and foremost, the bill represents an attempt to lay down a legal basis for using education as a means of instilling "love of nation" in students. While love of nation is something that should grow...
COMMENTARY
May 17, 2006

Taro Aso has a history problem with Australia

When Foreign Minister Taro Aso visited Australia recently, did he know that the father of the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, had been a Japanese prisoner of war in the notorious Changi jail in Singapore? And if Alexander Downer Sr. had been sent to a certain camp in Kyushu, as some 200...
BUSINESS
Apr 7, 2006

Cell phones for crime-wary kids see brisk sales

With the cell phone market saturated with 90 million contracts, handset makers and phone companies are moving to create new demand by focusing on children and safety.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2006

NHK to take on global broadcast giants?

Can NHK become an internationally known broadcaster like the BBC or CNN?
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Nov 18, 2005

Trying very hard to be trendy

Building a brand spanking new store from the foundations up is usually the preserve of European luxury brands, but down in Harajuku, a huge new concrete monolith called Tokyo Hipsters Club is an exception to the rule.
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2005

Nine out of 10 Japanese read newspapers every day

About 90 percent of people read newspapers on a daily basis, according to a recent survey by the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association. The figure was nearly unchanged from two years ago.
JAPAN
Oct 6, 2005

Weekly admits plagiarizing wire poll stories

The weekly magazine Shukan Kinyobi has apologized to Kyodo News and Jiji Press for plagiarizing stories from the two news agencies about the Sept. 11 general election.
EDITORIALS
Oct 2, 2005

Theory, antitheory and folk tale

A t the end of "A Brief History of Time," his 1988 best-seller about the latest scientific thinking on the cosmos, the British physicist Stephen W. Hawking posed a tough question in deceptively simple terms. "Why," he asked, "does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
EDITORIALS
Jan 27, 2005

Trimming a lifetime perquisite

The Japanese public has expressed anger over the fact that members of the Diet are entitled to such fat pensions. In response, a parliamentary panel has recommended that there be at least a 70-percent increase in premiums and a 30-percent cut in payouts. These proposals probably will take effect in fiscal...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 20, 2005

Examining the exotic ins and outs of marrying a foreigner

Elsewhere in the world, mixed marriages are no big deal. In Japan, however, the kokusai kekkon (international marriage) is still an issue tinged with exoticism and other-worldliness. Witness the enormous success of manga series "Daalin wa Gaikokujin" (My Darling is a Foreigner), and you'll see the point....
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2004

Bush foes keep fingers crossed

CAMBRIDGE, England -- While the world looks on, tens of millions Americans will go to the polls next Tuesday, along with millions of American expatriates, for what is being billed as the election of the century, or at least the most important election in our lifetime. And while non-Americans cannot directly...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 19, 2004

Foreign branding

Being called a 'gaijin' is not unusual or harmful, says Cai Evans Before I start, let's get one thing straight: I am well aware that the term "gaijin" has pejorative overtones and that its etymology is grounded in a history of discrimination and exclusion.
EDITORIALS
Oct 15, 2004

Enough words, let's see some action

The Social Insurance Agency, which has been accused of corruption and criticized for wasteful use of pension-insurance premiums, has announced a set of countermeasures aimed at reforming itself through its own efforts. However, many of the measures are presumed to have been enforceable within the existing...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2004

Taj Mahal survives foibles of humanity

MADRAS, India -- Sadly, India continues to let its heritage and history decay. For example, recently when a scholar from the country's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi asked India's National Archives, also in the same city, for a document, the request was not entertained. The scholar...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.