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Posted by: Timmy on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 06:24 AM
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From 9 to 5, Hiroko Yokogawa toils at a small architectural design firm, doing clerical work and managing accounts. But even when her shift is over, her day’s work is nowhere near done.
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Read full article: 'Young Japanese Seek Second, and Third, Jobs' (7008 bytes more)  
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Posted by: Timmy on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 05:01 AM
Business
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Japan Airlines (JAL) has announced its restructuring plan after filing for bankruptcy protection on 19 January.
The struggling airline intends to cut a third of its workforce, more than 16,000 jobs, and close unprofitable domestic and international routes.
Some of the job reductions will be gained through early retirement and the sale of subsidiaries.
The company also intends to reduce by 103 aircraft the number of planes in its fleet.
'Rehabilitate quickly'
JAL is a member of the One World alliance, which includes American Airlines and British Airways.
Like other major global airlines, JAL has been hit hard by falling passenger numbers during the global economic downturn and faces an increasing challenge from Japanese rival All Nippon Airways.
"By fully implementing these measures, the JAL Group will aim to become profitable from the first fiscal year of the plan and thus rehabilitate quickly," the airline said in a statement.
It said its headcount would be cut from 48,714 at the end of 2009 to 32,600 by the end of this year.
The restructuring plan is being orchestrated as part of a government-backed bail-out after JAL's bankruptcy in January with more than $25bn in debt.
The bankruptcy of Japan Airlines was one of the country's biggest corporate failures to date.
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Posted by: Timmy on Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:34 AM
Business
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Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, said Friday that he would take steps as needed on currencies as the yen surges, and would meet with the Bank of Japan governor, increasing the possibility of the central bank’s easing policy soon.
The yen edged lower after Mr. Kan’s remarks as Japanese policy makers struggled over how to put a cap on the currency, which hit a 15-year high against the dollar this week and threatened to derail a recovery led by exports.
The ruling Democratic Party’s options on fiscal policy are limited because of the country’s large debt burden, so it is leaning on the central bank to ease policy.
“There are investors who are expecting the Japanese authorities to take some measures if the yen appreciates sharply,” said Mitsuru Sahara, chief manager for currency derivatives trading at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
“It’s possible that the government’s stimulus steps and the B.O.J.’s easing measures will be announced together, even before its next meeting,” he said, referring to the central bank’s rate review in early September.
“There’s a growing view that Japan could even conduct solo intervention if the yen rises sharply.”
The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaaki Shirakawa, is scheduled to be in attendance at the Federal Reserve’s seminar in Jackson Hole, Wyo., until Monday. Mr. Kan said he would meet Mr. Shirakawa after his return to Japan.
Mr. Kan said the government would outline measures on Tuesday to support the economy and grapple with the strong yen.
“Excessive currency moves can harm the economy and the financial system,” he told reporters after visiting a small factory in the Tokyo suburbs. “We will take firm measures when needed.”
The fate of any economic package could be complicated, however, by a ruling Democratic Party leadership vote on Sept. 14, in which a party powerbroker, Ichiro Ozawa, is challenging Mr. Kan.
Debt markets are already pricing in the chance of an easing of rates. With short-term rates already very low, investors are pushing down the longer end of the yield curve — in other words, anticipating lower interest rates for longer-term debt — although the yield curve steepened on Friday as banks sold superlong bonds to take profits.
The Bank of Japan is hesitant to return to a full-blown easing of monetary controls since that policy, which involves flooding markets with extra cash under a liquidity target, had little effect in beating deflation when it was in place until March 2006.
Japan has not intervened in the currency market since March 2004, when it ended a 15-month, 35 trillion yen ($315 billion) selling spree aimed at rescuing an economic recovery.
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Posted by: Timmy on Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 02:58 AM
Politics
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The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.
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Read full article: 'New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign' (7087 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 02:51 AM
Culture
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THE mention of Japanese whiskey was once most likely to recall Bill Murray’s Suntory Time ad campaign in “Lost in Translation.” But over the last decade, the drink’s reputation has experienced a meteoric rise. Any lingering doubts were put to rest in 2008 when Nikka’s Yoichi Single Malt 1987 and Suntory’s Hibiki 30 Years Old won the World’s Best Single Malt and World’s Best Blended categories, respectively, at the prestigious World Whiskey Awards. Since then, Japanese offerings have continued to earn accolades annually, often with prices to match.
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Read full article: 'Signature Blends at Tokyo Bars' (2898 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 01:24 AM
Business
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Japan's core consumer prices index fell for the 17th month in a row in July, underlining the country's entrenched problems with deflation.
The index, which excludes fresh food, fell 1.1% from July last year.
Deflation is adding to economic worries in Japan, where the strong yen is making exports more expensive.
Japan's "lost decade" of deflation in the 1990s hit company profits as consumers delayed purchases to await even cheaper deals.
The fall in the consumer prices index was slightly bigger than the 1% drop in June.
The Bank of Japan has so far held off from any substantial measures to tackle deflation, forecasting that consumer prices will turn positive in the fiscal year to the end of March 2012.
Japan's government was due on Friday to outline measures to support the economy and contain the strong yen, which hit a 15-year high against the dollar this week and could derail an export-led recovery.
"Given the yen's gains, exports will slump temporarily and slow Japan's economic recovery. Japan will thus remain in deflation for another two to three years," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
Earlier on Friday, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters that the yen's strength was having "various impacts" on the economy and that the situation was "serious".
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Posted by: Timmy on Friday, August 27, 2010 - 01:17 PM
Politics
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After just three months in office, Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan faces a challenge from a scandal-tainted power broker within his own party in a leadership race that could hamper the government’s response to a debilitating economic slowdown.
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Read full article: 'In Japan, Party Ex-Leader Will Challenge Premier' (2231 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 04:04 AM
Global
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Sausage-loving Germans are being offered degrees in their favourite subject - bangers.
Expert Norbert Wittmann has set up the Sausage Academy in Neumarkt to offer qualifications in the appreciation and preparation of German sausages.
Students can earn a BA diploma - Banger Authority - by boosting their studies with extra seminars in lager choices, mustard appreciation and which oompah band music goes with different types of sausage.
Serious students can go on to take a masters' course in what German's consider the holy grail or sausage - the Bavarian white.
Academy principal Wittmann explained: "I love it. I have to eat white sausage twice a day. Sunday is the only day I don't eat white sausage.
"I have students from all over the world and I am glad to be spreading the good news about German sausage around the globe," he added.
So far 1,300 students have graduated this year with the BA certificate.
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Posted by: Timmy on Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 12:41 PM
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GROSS domestic product figures for the second quarter show that China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy. I have been traveling while on leave from the university in Tokyo where I teach, and was in Paris when the news broke last week. My first reaction, frankly, was one of relief. In English, perhaps, one might say it was “a load off my shoulders.”
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Read full article: 'Japan and the Ancient Art of Shrugging' (4550 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 08:15 AM
Business
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The strength of Japan's economic recovery came under question on Monday as second-quarter growth figures came in sharply below economists' expectations.
Growth in the country's gross domestic product slowed to an annualized, seasonally adjusted pace of 0.4 per cent in the three months ended June 30. That was far below the revised 4.4 per cent pace posted in the first quarter and economists' predictions of 2.3 per cent for the latest period.
The figures also appear meager against those posted for the quarter by the world's other giant economies. The US reported annualized growth of 2.4 per cent while Germany generated a robust 9.1 per cent, its fastest pace since reunification, on the back of surging exports amid a weaker euro. China may have overtaken Japan to become the world's second largest economy after posting year-on-year growth of 10.3 per cent in the quarter. Beijing published revised data on Monday raising its GDP for the first quarter.
The sharp deceleration of the Japanese economy was due to slower net export growth and weaker personal and residential consumption. Private inventories were also a drag, though this could mean that companies are rebuilding stockpiles after having wound them down in the second quarter.
With Japan reliant on trade for growth, slower exports will add to concerns that the global recovery is weakening at a time when the effects of domestic fiscal stimulus are waning. Economists are likely to trim their Japanese GDP growth estimates for the year.
Slower export growth is a challenge for Japanese companies at a time when the yen is trading close to a 15-year high against the dollar as risk averse investors pile into the currency. Although authorities have stepped up verbal intervention, analysts are skeptical that direct intervention from the Ministry of Finance is likely.
Monday's GDP figures could add to pressure on policymakers to find other ways to deal with slowing growth and the impact of the stronger yen on the recovery.
Last week the central bank kept its economic assessment unchanged and did not announce any further easing measures.
"The appreciation of the yen [is one of the biggest risks] which could damp yen-denominated profits of exports, which then may have negative repercussions on domestic capital spending," said Kyohei Morita, Japan economist at Barclays Capital.
Naoki Iizuka, an economist at Mizuho, predicted that if the yen rose to about Y80 and stayed there, companies would focus their capital spending overseas.
On a price-adjusted basis, effective exchange rates are slightly below the average of the past 30 years, suggesting there is still room for the currency to rise further without direct government intervention.
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Posted by: BillyBobJoe on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 07:58 AM
Global
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JAPAN has bowed to global pressure to end the parental abductions of children from broken international marriages. Japan is the only major industrial nation that has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention that requires the return of wrongfully kept children to their country of habitual residence. Tokyo has decided to ratify the treaty, the Kyodo news agency said, but will not sign up immediately as it needs time to bring its domestic laws in line with those of other signatory nations.
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Read full article: 'Japan to join Hague Convention' (1001 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 05:14 AM
Global
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After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday.
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Read full article: 'China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy' (7666 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 12:50 PM
Crime
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A hardened computer hacker has been arrested on suspicion of writing a computer virus that systematically destroys all the files on victims' PCs and replaces them with homemade manga images of squid, octopuses and sea urchins. Between 20,000 and 50,000 computers may have been infected.
Masato Nakatsuji, 27, of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, was quoted as telling police: "I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested."
He was collared in 2008 for violating copyright laws by creating a computer virus that replaced data with an anime image. He was serving a suspended sentence for that offense when he was arrested in connection with the latest virus.
Police are investigating him on suspicion of property destruction, because the new virus destroyed files on victims' computers. It is the first time that Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department has arrested someone for property destruction in connection with disseminating a computer virus. According to the police, since the virus makes it impossible to retrieve the original computer files, those files have effectively been destroyed.
Specialist police officers handling high-tech crimes said Nakatsuji is suspected of writing the Ikatako (squid-octopus) virus, which was distributed using the Winny file-sharing program in May, disguised as a file for anime songs.
A 37-year-old unemployed man downloaded the file to his computer and it became infected with the Ikatako virus. About 11,000 of the 64,000 files on his computer were destroyed. When he realized something was wrong, the man pulled the plug on his computer, preventing further damage.
The virus gets its name because infected files are replaced by manga images of a squid, octopus or sea urchin. If the virus is left unchecked, all files in the computer's hard disk become infected. When a user tries to open a file, all the individual can access is a manga image of a marine invertebrate.
The virus also is programmed to transmit all the files in the infected computer to a server believed to have been set up by Nakatsuji. Police said he had told them that the server contained data from about 50,000 people. Police have confirmed the existence of data for about 20,000 computer users.
Nakatsuji, who was convicted for violating copyrights in his previous case, was quoted as telling police he felt he would not be arrested again because he had created the manga images for Ikatako himself, therefore avoiding a violation of the copyright law.
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Posted by: Timmy on Saturday, August 14, 2010 - 09:06 AM
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ON a December morning in 1991, Toshikazu Sugaya’s quiet, anonymous existence in this sleepy city north of Tokyo ended abruptly with a knock on his door.
It was the police. They wanted to question Mr. Sugaya, then a 45-year-old divorced school bus driver with no friends, in connection with the grisly murder in 1990 of a 4-year-old girl. After 13 hours of interrogation, during which Mr. Sugaya says the police kicked his shins and shouted at him, he tearfully admitted to that murder and to killing two other girls. He was convicted of one murder and sentenced to life in prison.
But last year, after prosecutors admitted that his confession was a fabrication made under duress and that a DNA test used as evidence had been wrong, Mr. Sugaya was released. A court later acquitted him.
The disclosure that Mr. Sugaya had been wrongfully imprisoned for more than 17 years shocked Japan even more than his conviction as a serial killer had. His release drew a barrage of news media coverage, shaking the public’s faith in the police and the courts at a time when Japan’s prolonged economic decline has created growing doubts about Japan’s national institutions in general.
Mr. Sugaya, now 63, has become a national figure, and perhaps the country’s most vocal critic of forced confessions — a recurring problem here. He has written or co-written three books, including one titled “Falsely Convicted,” and tours the country giving talks about his experience.
“I tell people not to believe the police,” said Mr. Sugaya, a small, slightly built man whose face seems almost hidden behind a large pair of wire-rim glasses. “Look what they did to me.”
Indeed, with slumped shoulders and an almost cowering demeanor that brings to mind a frightened animal caught in car headlights, Mr. Sugaya seems as unlikely a crusader against the abuse of power as he did a serial killer. But he can be disarmingly open, and his voice exudes a quiet confidence that he says he acquired in prison, where he learned to fend for himself.
During those years, he said, he met other convicts who told him they had been convicted because of false confessions. He said a desire to help them and others is one reason he has embraced his newfound celebrity, though he remains visibly uncomfortable with all the attention.
“I want to go back to my quiet life of before,” Mr. Sugaya said. “But when I think that others have suffered the same treatment as me, I want to work to help them.”
Before his ordeal, Mr. Sugaya described himself as a shy man who avoided conversations and rarely said more than a few words. After a marriage that lasted just three months, he divided his time between living with his parents and spending weekends alone at a small house he rented.
Unbeknown to him, the police had been following Mr. Sugaya for a year before his arrest. A witness had told them that Mr. Sugaya had been at a pachinko game parlor about the same time that the 4-year-old victim, Mami Matsuda, was last seen there.
In 1991, after his initial confession and subsequent arrest, Mr. Sugaya said he spent weeks concocting increasingly complex stories about how he murdered Mami and two other girls who had been killed in the 1980s. Mr. Sugaya, who said he had never really met any of the girls, said that at the time he was actually afraid that the police would discover he was lying and would start shouting at him again, a prospect he said paralyzed him with fear.
THE police now admit that they missed glaring discrepancies between Mr. Sugaya’s fabricated accounts of the killings and actual forensic evidence. Mr. Sugaya said he took the girl away on his bicycle; a witness reported seeing a man lead her away on foot. Mr. Sugaya also failed to identify the sites where the bodies had been buried.
Still, even when Mr. Sugaya started to proclaim his innocence midway through his trial, judges, prosecutors and Mr. Sugaya’s own defense attorney ignored him, apparently in the belief that his initial confession was correct. Legal experts say this reflects the extreme importance that Japanese prosecutors and courts still place on confessions.
Mr. Sugaya said the question he is now asked the most is why he confessed so quickly to crimes he did not commit. Describing himself as insecure and “excessively spineless,” he said his willpower just seemed to collapse after what he said were hours of police officers screaming at him so loudly that his ears still ring 19 years later. He said he finally confessed to all three killings just so the ordeal would end.
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Read full article: 'Falsely Convicted, Freed and No Longer Quiet' (3038 bytes more)
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Posted by: Timmy on Friday, August 06, 2010 - 01:42 PM
Global
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A Japanese tanker damaged last week in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman was the target of a terrorist attack, the United Arab Emirates state-run news agency has said.
It said remains of home-made explosives had been found on the hull of the M Star, which was damaged last week while travelling from Qatar to Japan.
Two days ago, an al-Qaeda-linked group said it was responsible.
Officials previously said the ship may have been involved in a collision.
The crew of the ship reported an explosion shortly after midnight on Wednesday last week. One person was injured.
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Read full article: 'Japan tanker was damaged in a terror attack, UAE says' (1838 bytes more)
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Other Stories
- Young Japanese Seek Second, and Third, Jobs
(Sep 06, 2010)
- Japan Airlines slashes workforce
(Sep 01, 2010)
- Japan’s Leader Says He’ll Move to Rein In Surging Yen
(Aug 29, 2010)
- New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign
(Aug 28, 2010)
- Signature Blends at Tokyo Bars
(Aug 28, 2010)
- Japanese media get tour of death chamber
(Aug 27, 2010)
- Japan's struggle with deflation worsens as prices fall
(Aug 27, 2010)
- Japan police arrest relatives of dead 'centenarian'
(Aug 27, 2010)
- In Japan, Party Ex-Leader Will Challenge Premier
(Aug 27, 2010)
- Sausage University
(Aug 25, 2010)
Past Articles
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