Latest Japan News
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N.Z. emerges as guinea pig for global tech firms
The Japanese general public's interest in the global warming issue has been sagging of late, and few LDP government leaders appear ready to try to prop it ...
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Peer pressure drives applause study
Sheep mentality?: Actor Jackie Chan claps with other Chinese delegates Tuesday at the opening of a film festival in New Delhi. New research shows that individuals feel pressure to join people clapping, even if they don't agree with the sentiment. | ...
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Woman finds calling in aging district
Working woman: Nabi Togo serves meals using vegetables donated by neighbors and fish purchased nearby at a restaurant she operates in a refurbished home in Fukutsu, Fukuoka Prefecture, in April. | ...
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Zimbabwe’s bovine bank a cash cow
William Mukurazita’s deposit at the bank has four legs and moos. Zimbabwe’s first ';cattle bank'; has just opened its books in a unique kind of banking where owners bring in their animals as collateral against cash loans. For many rural poor in the southern African country once wracked by world-record inflation, it’s the first bank account they’ve ever had. ...
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Loeb Sony drive based on faith in Abe
Corporate activist Daniel Loeb took his team to Japan in April 2012 to determine if the world’s third-largest economy was ready for investment. The Bank of Japan had set a new 1 percent inflation goal, an encouraging step in a country where growth had stagnated for two decades. Yet Loeb wasn’t convinced until October, when polls signaled that the next prime minister would be Shinzo ...
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Online drugstore chief cheers Abe on in deregulation fight
Edward Snowden, the fugitive former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked secrets about America’s spying operations, often hung out online with foreigners in Japan who shared his interests in anime, video games, martial arts, the stock market and the expat lifestyle. Snowden, who ...
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Monsoon floods kill over 120 in India
Military helicopters carried out emergency food drops Wednesday for thousands of people stranded by flash flooding from early monsoon rains that have killed at least 120 in northern India, officials said. The states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have witnessed torrential rain at least three times as heavy as usual since last week, when the annual monsoon broke a fortnight ahead of ...
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Pitch to G-8 colleagues leaves Abe in a bind
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by pitching his economic policies to his fellow leaders at the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland, has put himself in a bind with the need to show a blueprint for achieving both growth and fiscal rehabilitation. The just-completed summit at the Lough Erne golf resort near Enniskillen was, first and foremost, the place for Abe to explain to his G-8 colleagues ...
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Darvish’s winless run hits six after loss to A’s
Yu Darvish is like the rest of the Texas starters — still without a victory in June. For the ace from Japan, the winless streak goes back a little further than that. Brandon Moss and John Jaso homered and the AL West-leading Oakland Athletics beat the Rangers 6-2 on Tuesday night, becoming the first team to beat Darvish four times. ';They just hit off very good pitches,'; ...
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Venus Williams to miss Wimbledon for first time
After 16 consecutive years of always showing up at Wimbledon, winning five titles along the way, Venus Williams pulled out of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament Tuesday, citing a lower back injury. Williams, who turned 33 on Monday, had never missed Wimbledon since making her debut there in 1997. She won the singles trophy — it happens to be called the Venus Rosewater Dish — in ...
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Asian trio punch World Cup tickets
Having everything to play for on Tuesday, Australia, Iran and South Korea all secured berths at the 2014 World Cup on a dramatic final day of Asian qualifying. They join Japan, which was the first nation to qualify. Australia beat Iraq 1-0, waiting until the 83rd minute before Josh Kennedy headed home the winner that secured second spot in Group B. Iran booked its place with a disciplined ...
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Sprinter Campbell-Brown suspended pending probe
Veronica Campbell-Brown’s agent insists one of the cornerstones of Jamaica’s wide-ranging sprint success ';is not a cheat,'; even though the test results disagree. While her case is being decided, the three-time Olympic gold medalist will sit out and her country will try to make sense of one of its longest-held fears: a high-profile track star getting busted for doping. ...
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Japan looking for Italian tonic after poor display against Brazil
Edward Snowden, the fugitive former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked secrets about America’s spying operations, often hung out online with foreigners in Japan who shared his interests in anime, video games, martial arts, the stock market and the expat lifestyle. Snowden, who ...
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Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty
Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn’t work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that carries with it the curiosity of a detective who chases ghosts. Invariably, she is known to makes things that are as much about her ...
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Get worldly with duo Charan Po Rantan
The two sisters of Charan Po Rantan say they’re content in their own world. On latest album, ';Futae no Rasen'; (';Double Spiral';), the duo dwells on remaining inside this world — a place soundtracked by an accordion. ';I didn’t play with friends (growing up) and was always in the closet with my accordion,'; 24-year-old Koharu Matsunaga tells The ...
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Producer Yosi Horikawa goes all natural on ‘Vapor’
Yosi Horikawa’s beats burble, hiss, slosh and gurgle. On his debut full-length, ';Vapor,'; the 34-year-old producer may wield some identifiably hip-hop rhythms, but they’re tangled in a rich, intricately detailed tapestry of field recordings, sampled percussion, snatches of tribal chants and warm, guileless synthesizers. It’s the best thing you’ll hear all year ...
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For a nonverbal theater group The Original Tempo has a lot to say
';The Yellow Raincoat Squad’ is charming and engaging. This is another one of those productions that defies description but is a must-see for all ages,'; wrote Catherine Lamm in The British Theatre Guide in August, 2009. Lamm was reviewing one of Japan’s best-kept theatrical secrets: The Original Tempo (TOT), a nonverbal but highly kinetic Osaka-based performance-arts group ...
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Persuading people to vote
As the official July 4 start of the Upper House election campaign nears, political parties are preparing to step up their activities geared to the election. The big problem with Japan’s recent elections has been low voter turnout. Political parties have the great responsibility of rousing people’s interest in politics by presenting in-depth analyses of Japan’s current ...
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Alternative view from Wales
Wales touts Hitachi reactors ,'; which focused on the intention of Hitachi Ltd.’s subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power to build a nuclear power station at Wylfa on the island of Anglesey, Wales? Welsh Economy Minister Edwina Hart is reported as saying that ';many locals are looking forward to the Hitachi project.'; She did not mention that many locals are ...
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India and Japan are different
Edward Snowden, the fugitive former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked secrets about America’s spying operations, often hung out online with foreigners in Japan who shared his interests in anime, video games, martial arts, the stock market and the expat lifestyle. Snowden, who ...
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India and Japan are different
Edward Snowden, the fugitive former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked secrets about America’s spying operations, often hung out online with foreigners in Japan who shared his interests in anime, video games, martial arts, the stock market and the expat lifestyle. Snowden, who ...
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Squash an Olympic contender
Wrestling faces off with baseball, squash in bid to return to Olympics ,'; makes much of the chances for wrestling and baseball/softball being shortlisted for inclusion in future Olympic Games, but barely mentions the third contender — squash. Yet not just in Japan, but worldwide, squash is by far the most popular of the three, with well-established squash leagues in much of ...
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Globalization So much blather
Too many inward-looking students ';: As a retired professor, I still teach part time at two supposedly elite institutions. Frankly I am looking forward to giving it all up so that I will no longer have to gnash my aging teeth over students who seem to cultivate blissful ignorance. Yes, much of it is the fault of their ';environment,'; but then the culture ...
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Foreign meddling led to wars
The trouble within Islam ,'; is dripping with unintended irony. He slams the Mideast, Muslim countries particularly, for being incompatible with a modern, pluralistic world. The problem with this is that the Middle East is a huge chunk of our world, with millions upon millions of people, and this is their world as well as ours. He seems to imply that it is the West’s job to dictate ...
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Sony pulls PS3 firmware update on reports of bricked systems
supposed to provide "improved system stability" after a number of users reported the new firmware was bricking their systems. "Hi guys, we're aware of reports that the recent PS3 update (4.45) has caused," PlayStation ...
Japan Featured
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Japan focuses on next big export
Smart grids are the way of the future, according to a Japanese consortium of seven companies that want to invest in the cities of the future and pave the way for the next big export to come out of Japan.
Japan is already one of the leading high-tech industries of the world, producing gadgets and appliances that are sold globally, from cars and microwaves to robots for use in surgery, space and mines. The country is a major manufacturing hub, there are Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Nintendo appliances in homes across the globe and many of the world’s most famous export brands have their headquarters in Japan or were founded in Japan. Read more
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