The Japan Times: News & Business

Narita airport awards tokens to 800 millionth passenger (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The number of passengers who have passed through Narita airport, Japan's largest international gateway, passed 800 million on Monday, the airport's operator said. The timely travelers were Fuminori Ogiso, 38, and his wife, Yuki, 44, of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. They were leaving on an eight-day tour of European countries, including Germany and the Czech Republic.
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Bubble era's aviation legacy: Too many airports, all ailing (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Japan has 98 airports, and most of them are operating in the red as a result of exaggerated demand forecasts and rampant, costly and arguably pork-barrel construction projects. The transport ministry hopes to mitigate the problem by selling off the management rights to 27 state-owned airports as soon as 2014. The ministry also plans to issue an airport reform blueprint by summer.
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Foreign bloggers take in disaster zone (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The Foreign Ministry is inviting prominent overseas bloggers and tweeters to visit areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The ministry launched the initiative to revive tourism in Tohoku's disaster zone and wants the foreign guests to write about the progress that has been made in rebuilding its devastated communities so the world will know the area is still an appealing holiday destination.
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New entrepreneurs jump ship, go to Silicon Valley (lun, 06 fév 2012)
For an emerging generation of Japanese innovators, the dream isn't a job for life at a big company. They have new ambitions, and they're determined to go places. Especially Silicon Valley. Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in Northern California, particularly since the earthquake and tsunami last March. They include Naoki Shibata, who took the plunge by giving up the sort of life many Japanese in past decades spent their lives trying to attain.
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Rising bond auction demand defies growing debt-burden concerns (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Demand has risen at every note and bond auction in Japan this year, helping the nation maintain the world's second-lowest borrowing costs on a debt burden poised to exceed ¥1 quadrillion. Last week's sale of 10-year notes attracted bids for 3.72 times the ¥2 trillion offered, the highest so-called bid-to-cover ratio since April. It was the sixth-straight sale of debt this year where demand increased, boding well for Thursday's auction of 40-year bonds, the longest maturity. The benchmark 10-year yield slid to 0.94 percent on Feb. 3, within 0.5 basis point of the 14-month low reached in January.
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FSA seeks disclosure on bank salaries (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Citing an international trend to clamp down on risk-taking that could lead to financial disasters similar to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, banks will soon be required to disclose the salaries of employees who earn as much as board members do, a Financial Services Agency official said Monday. Starting in July, banks will have to disclose how many such employees they have and their collective salaries each year, FSA Supervisory Bureau official Tsuyoshi Saito said. It "will be up to each bank" to disclose any further information, he said.
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Oita mom admits dumping girl's body (lun, 06 fév 2012)
A woman who reported her 2-year-old daughter missing last fall has been arrested on an initial charge of dumping the child's body in the woods but has denied killing her, Oita Prefectural Police said Monday. Yuko Emoto, 35, called police in September to say her daughter, Kotone, disappeared from her car during a brief stop at a supermarket.
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Teen ballerina brings home prize (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Teenage dancer Madoka Sugai returned to Japan early Monday after winning the top prize at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne ballet competition in Switzerland last week. "I want to become a dancer who can move audiences," the 17-year-old from Kanagawa Prefecture told reporters at Narita airport, expressing gratitude to her supporters.
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Capital pain: pay, bonuses (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The recent international jamboree at Davos provided ample opportunity for the "great and the good," as well as the not so great and not so good, to enjoy gourmet meals and doubtless lashings of champagne ultimately at the expense of tax-payers. The participants also had time to exchange views on current world issues. A good deal of time was spent on the problems facing the European economy, not least the extent of youth unemployment which has reached crisis proportions. But for the British media the dominating theme was that of excessive executive pay and bonuses, especially bonuses for bankers.
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Egypt muddies waters of relationship with U.S. (lun, 06 fév 2012)
When the government of erstwhile U.S. ally Egypt shut down 17 Western prodemocracy groups, trashed their Cairo offices and slapped travel bans on some of their staff, political relations between Washington and Cairo hit a new and unexpected low. Just a year after a tumultuous political uprising topped the long time rule of President Hosni Mubarak, the once close ties between the United States and Egypt have soured.
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Priests peer into future on frozen Nagano lake (lun, 06 fév 2012)
A Shinto ritual was held Monday on the frozen surface of Lake Suwa in Nagano Prefecture to make predictions on weather, social trends and crop harvests based on a streak of elevated ice cracks observed Saturday for the first time in four years. A priest from nearby Yatsurugi Shrine, together with devotees, checked the exact location of the streak of cracks and performed a purification rite. The predictions will be made later at the shrine by comparing data with past records.
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Sony, Panasonic keep sliding as Samsung soars (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Japan's biggest makers of phones, TVs and microchips say they'll lose about $17 billion this year, about three-quarters of what Samsung Electronics Co. will spend on research to lengthen the lead over its competitors. Sony Corp. more than doubled its annual loss forecast for the year ending March 31 as it named a new chief executive officer, while Panasonic Corp. and Sharp Corp. predicted the worst losses in their histories. Their combined losses compare with the $22 billion that Samsung, Asia's largest consumer electronics company, said it will invest in capital expenditures.
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U.S. agrees to scrap 'zeroing' practice (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The United States agreed Monday with Japan to discard a practice called "zeroing" and to pay back the excessive tariffs it has been collecting from the Japanese bearing industry since May 2010, the Japanese trade ministry said. Japan and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding in which the latter said it would sign a draft amendment of U.S. Commerce Department rules within seven days to abolish its use of the zeroing method to settle trade rows.
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Incumbent Kyoto mayor re-elected (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Incumbent Kyoto Mayor Daisaku Kadokawa, an independent supported by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and major opposition parties, was re-elected Sunday to a second four-year term after defeating the Japanese Communist Party-backed candidate he defeated in the previous election. With the incumbent's performance a key issue in the two-horse race, Kadokawa, 61, emphasized the fiscal and administrative reforms he made to the municipal government and efforts to closely cooperate with the governor.
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Prices soar as eel catch continues downtrend (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Prices for young eel have surged to their highest amid a string of extremely poor catches, and the government is looking for countermeasures, it was learned Monday. Fishermen mainly go after wild glass eel caught at the headwaters of rivers so they can produce farm-raised eel to satisfy high summer demand for "unagi."
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Boeing checks 787s for problem in back (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Boeing Co. has started conducting checks and repairs on its 787 Dreamliner after detecting a problem in the aft section, media reports said Sunday, quoting an emailed statement from the company. Structural stiffeners were found to be improperly joined in the rear of the fuselage, but Boeing said the finding did not pose a "short-term safety concern," according to the reports.
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Sales of imported cars surge 21% (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Sales of new imported vehicles, including those built abroad by Japanese firms, soared 20.8 percent in January to 17,937 units, thanks to fuel-efficient models, an industry body said Monday. Compared with the previous January, sales of foreign-brand cars, trucks and buses surged 28.9 percent to 13,093 units, while those of Japanese-brand vehicles rose 3.3 percent to 4,844 units, the Japan Automobile Importers Association said.
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Cuisine targeted for UNESCO list (lun, 06 fév 2012)
An ad hoc committee set up by the Cultural Affairs Council endorsed a plan Monday to get Japanese food culture listed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list. The government will present its formal nomination to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization by the end of March so a decision on the listing can be made as early as autumn 2013.
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Getting value for votes (lun, 06 fév 2012)
In March 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the August 2009 Lower House election was held in an unconstitutional state because of a large disparity in the value of one vote between depopulated rural areas and populated urban areas. Although the court did not nullify the election results, political parties must strive to quickly reduce the vote-value disparity so that the next Lower House election will be held in a constitutional state. The possibility cannot be ruled out that Lower House will be dissolved this year, leading to a snap election. If the election is held without reapportionment, the Supreme Court may nullify the elections results, thus putting Japanese politics into confusion. In addition, Feb. 25 is the deadline for the Lower House apportionment panel in the Cabinet Office to submit a reapportionment plan to the prime minister.
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U.S. proposes moving marines to Iwakuni (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The United States has sounded out Japan on the idea of transferring about 1,500 U.S. marines based in Okinawa Prefecture to Iwakuni air base in Yamaguchi Prefecture as part of a broader plan to review the realignment plan for U.S. forces, sources close to Japan-U.S. relations said Monday. Those 1,500 marines represent nearly half of the 3,300 or so Okinawa marines that Washington is considering moving to other Pacific areas instead of Guam — the sole destination for transferring around 8,000 Okinawa marines under a 2006 bilateral accord, the sources said.
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Suzuki's April-December net falls 4.7% (lun, 06 fév 2012)
Suzuki Motor Corp. said Monday it logged a consolidated net profit of ¥40.62 billion for the April to December period, down 4.7 percent from the previous year after suffering a sales drop in India and damage from the strong yen and natural disasters. In the nine-month period, the automaker also reported a group operating profit of ¥87.71 billion, down 5.1 percent, on sales of ¥1.80 trillion, down 6.7 percent.
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Utilities face hike in redress fund ante (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The government plans to make the nation's 12 nuclear plant operators start paying ¥150 billion a year to the state-backed facility set up to help Tokyo Electric Power Co. compensate people affected by the Fukushima disaster. That's is 1½ times the initially proposed amount, sources said.
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Questions over stress tests (lun, 06 fév 2012)
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) on Jan. 18 judged "appropriate" the results of the stress tests of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture. On Jan. 31, an International Atomic Energy Agency team determined that Japan's stress tests of reactors are "generally consistent" with IAEA safety standards. We beg to disagree; the stress tests are seriously flawed because they do not incorporate the causes and lessons of the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The Fukushima crisis has demonstrated that Japan lacks truly reliable nuclear safety standards. Of Japan's 54 reactors, only three remain in operation. When they undergo regular checks in late April, all the nation's reactors will be offline. The government must be watched closely because it may use the stress test results to justify restarting nuclear power stations without fully disclosing all relevant information.
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