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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 3, 2002

Japan masters the art of noise

There is no cure, no medicine, no surgery that can reverse the damage done. You probably won't die of it, but the unknowing victims number in their millions and are usually only diagnosed after it is much too late. This totally preventable scourge is noise pollution and Japan is arguably one the world's...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2002

Bridging North-South gap

During the Cold War, the contours of the U.N. agenda were shaped by East-West and North-South fault lines. While the East-West divide disappeared with the Berlin Wall, the North-South divide continues to plague the organization, undermining its relevance at times. There is evidence of a recent relaxation...
COMMENTARY
Dec 2, 2002

A 'liberal' disposition for creating wealth

MANILA -- Often I begin workshops or classes dealing with liberalism by asking participants to share their definition of that political concept by jotting catchwords on little cards that are then collected and pinned to a moderation board. Not only is this method, as I have come to learn, highly participatory,...
EDITORIALS
Dec 2, 2002

Rigorous, fair inspections first

United Nations-led inspections of areas where Iraq is suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction have resumed after a hiatus of four years. On the first day, last Wednesday, an 11-member team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, or UNMOVIC, as well as a six-member...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 2, 2002

Women's creativity waiting to be tapped

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Several months ago, I mentioned I would be addressing the gender question in a future article. I received several letters urging me to do so. A couple of correspondents, however, argued that the question of women is a purely domestic affair and not relevant to the theme of "Japan...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Dec 2, 2002

Single mom, sons taste the expat life

In August this year, Nhora Prieto, a native of Colombia, and her two sons arrived in the tiny town of Shichinohe, Aomori Prefecture -- with a population little over 10,000 -- where she now works as an assistant language teacher of English.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Dec 2, 2002

Click beetle

* Japanese name: Ubatamakomeshiki * Scientific name: Paracalais berus * Description: Click beetles have a hinged body and a spine beneath the thorax that fits into a groove under the abdomen. They are 16-19 mm long, with flattened, elongated, bullet-shaped brown bodies. Also known as snapping, break-back...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2002

China has robbed Keio University, Japan's Foreign Ministry of their independence

NEW YORK -- Japan has been in an uproar since five of its citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents more than 20 years ago were allowed to return home Oct. 15. But an even more ominous event for the country, though not prominently reported by the mass media, occurred last month: the "kidnapping"...
SOCCER / J. League
Dec 1, 2002

Sanfrecce gets kicked out

KOBE -- Vissel Kobe and Kashiwa Reysol managed to escape relegation, but Sanfrecce Hiroshima joined Consadole Sapporo on the trip to Division Two on Saturday, the final day of J. League Division One second-stage and regular-season action.
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2002

Strange public works allergy

Sunday saw the opening of the long-delayed Morioka-Hachinohe extension of the Tohoku Shinkansen (Northeast Japan bullet-train line). Local people will be happy. But don't expect great outbursts of joy elsewhere. Japan is into one of its periodic antipublic works moods.
BASEBALL / MLB
Dec 1, 2002

Kudo becomes highest-paid pitcher

Veteran pitcher Kimiyasu Kudo was handed a 60 million yen pay rise on Saturday when he re-signed with the Yomiuri Giants on a one-year deal that makes him the highest-paid active pitcher in Japan.
MORE SPORTS
Dec 1, 2002

Suntory bags East Japan rugby title

A rugged workmanlike performance saw defending company and national champion Suntory secure the East Japan Company Championship following a 33-20 win over a determined NEC side at Tokyo's Chichibunomiya Stadium on Saturday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Dec 1, 2002

Writer on the borderline

Haruki Murakami is Japan's most important and internationally acclaimed living writer. "Norwegian Wood," his fourth novel, has sold more than 2 million copies since it was published in 1987. His latest, "Kafka on the Shore," has sold more than 200,000 copies since its publication in September, and has...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Dec 1, 2002

Drop-dead cool bands percolating in Tokyo's underground

The things I first heard about Marble Sheep really sounded baaad, and I don't mean BAD in an irreverently cool Iggy Pop or Keith Richards kind of way.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002

'Mongrel' seeker after new self-understandings

"One day, people will realize they are a mongrel people with a mongrel history."
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 1, 2002

A look at the trials of the uprooted

Though so-called international marriages continue to become more commonplace in Japan, the authorities still treat them as glaring exceptions that call for special treatment. If you're not a Japanese national and you want to make sure you can stay in Japan in the event you divorce your Japanese spouse,...
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002

Essential dangling modifiers

Yuko, 38, an office worker, has keitai straps appropriate for each season -- furry ones for winter and beaded ones for summer. When the temperature changes, she adds another to her collection.
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2002

Accusations put Pakistan on defensive

ISLAMABAD -- Weeks of adverse publicity surrounding the alleged exchange of Pakistan's nuclear knowhow for North Korea's missile technology has a familiar ring for South Asia's second-largest country. Many of the latest allegations have emerged from American newspaper sources. Although U.S. Secretary...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002

New ways to kei-mmunicate

"The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas -- and friends will converse with each other without leaving home."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 1, 2002

A trip down Japan's garden path

THEMES IN THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE GARDEN ART, by Wybe Kuitert. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 284 pp., including 25 pp. of color plates and 72 pp. black-and-white photos, drawings and plans, $50 (cloth) LANDSCAPE GARDENING IN JAPAN, by Josiah Conder, with a foreword by Azby Brown and an...
EDITORIALS
Dec 1, 2002

Out of the garret

Here's what the late English poet Philip Larkin had to say 30-odd years ago on the subject of money: Clearly money has something to do with life/ -- In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire. . . .
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002

Tapping into the future of wireless communication

In late 2001, domestic heavyweight NTT DoCoMo, flying high on the popularity of its i-mode mobile Web service, launched the world's first ultrahigh-speed, "third-generation" wireless network.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 1, 2002

South Korea helps Japan to get more trendy

As we draw to the end of the so-called Year of Korea and Japan, which was sort of forced on the two neighbors by FIFA, we should take a moment to reflect on just how much closer the countries across the Sea of Japan have grown in the past 10 months.
JAPAN / KANSAI BEAT
Nov 30, 2002

Literature museum goes into cyberspace

KOBE -- The opening earlier this month of a new museum of literature in Hyogo Prefecture was marked by the usual ceremonial pomp.

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’