Category: Uncategorized

It’s a damned shame that Northwest Airlines got to www.nwa.com before the real N.W.A. It must lead to some interestingly misdirected search engine queries, though. (Of all the major carriers, Northwest has always seemed the most straight outta Compton to me.)

Well, after a 10-hour flight, a two-hour layover in the Twin Cities, a two-hour flight, 30 minutes of waiting at baggage claim, and an hour of SuperShuttle fun, I’m back home. And I discover I left the kitchen lights on for two weeks. Damn.

There’s nothing quite like blogging against the clock — my 30 minutes of rented Internet access come to a merciful close in a few minutes, and I’m racing to hit submit before having to offer up another 500 yen. Japan’s been great, if a little too Westernized for my taste. Anyway, it’s back to the lap of business-class luxury for me, in a few short hours. Now it’s time for a quick postcard-writing marathon. See you all soon back on the other side of the big puddle.
Final Japan aside: On the walk from my hotel to the Foreign Press Center every day, I pass the Bank of Pakistan’s Tokyo branch? Who’s their customer base nowadays? What kind of CD rates and home equity lines must they be offering to make Joe Tokyo think, “Boy, that’s where I want to put my money — it’ll surely be safe there”?
Final blog-format aside: I hereby promise fewer blog posts in the form “Declarative phrase: pithy commentary after the colon. Rhetorical question? Rhetorical question?”

According to election returns in my old hometown of Toledo, Bob McCloskey has defeated Shawn Gill in the District 3 city council race, 5,968 to 0. Zero. Did Shawn forget to vote for himself? Does his mother not like him? Has he no friends?

Well, nothing screams “birthday wishes” like a laptop that suddenly refuses to admit it has a hard drive. So it’s back to hitting shift-7 for an apostrophe on this bizarre Japanese computer that switches into kanji characters without warning. (Actually, this keyboard layout is very similar to the keyboard on my very first home computer: an Amstrad 1512, complete with 512K of RAM, no hard drive, two 5 1/4-inch floppies, and a screen resolution slightly worse than most Palms today. Amstrads were/are British-made, so maybe we Americans are the ones with the screwed-up keyboards. Ah, I remember waiting anxiously for MS-DOS 3.3 — those were the days.)
Tuesday: I didn’t realize it was my birthday until I saw the date on the day’s paper at breakfast — I guess life’s a little too disorienting right now. I met up with Kiyomi, my translator, and headed to the Tokyo Institute of Technology (where, one hopes, they aren’t too attached to their acronym) to interview Prof. Hiromitsu Muta, who researches educational trends. When reporters conduct interviews, there are two basic possible outcomes: either the subject will answer in curt, three-word answers in an attempt to be as unhelpful as possible, or he will go on and on for hours on end without even the slightest prompting, like a windup toy. And within that second group, there are the people who go on and on helpfully, and those who go on and on about the most bizarre, off-topic subjects until you start to feel dizzy. Dr. Muta was a talker — I think I asked two questions in the first hour — but the good kind. The man knows his stuff.
That afternoon, Kiyomi and I went to the education ministry to interview Satoshi Ashidate, who is in charge of Japan’s national curriculum standards. (Actually, it isn’t the education ministry; it’s the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. I’m trying to picture what the American equivalent would be: one person in charge of the GED, the Museum of Modern Art, the Super Bowl, particle-accelerator research, and Windows XP.)
Interviewing people through a translator is tough. Kiyomi is great, but everything takes twice as long, for obvious reasons. So it’s hard to get any sort of flow going. But everybody’s been a pro.
That evening, I was planning to blog, but my laptop decided to pine for the fjords, cease to be, go to see its maker, join the choir invisible, which left me without a connection to the wired world. (Marie, one of the reporters here, teases me constantly about my computer addiction. I think she’s right.) I was settling in for an evening of Japanese rugby on the telly when a couple of the other journalists decided to take me out for a birthday dinner, which was quite nice. Since it was a special occasion, we went to get some Kobe beef, the legendary Japanese luxury. (These cows get more massages than businessmen at an airport brothel.) Unfortunately for Kobe producers, Japan recently had its first case of mad cow disease, so the Japanese have pretty much cleared all the beef from their menus. The place was empty, and the owner was obviously quite happy to see four gaijin willing to risk their lives for steak you can cut with chopsticks. It was delicious, and less utterly outrageous in price than I’d expected. (Just $55 or so — thank heavens for a per diem.) Then we all went out in search of beer in Shibuya, Tokyo’s version of Times Square. Along with the three of us Americans was Mike, an editor at the National Post in Toronto, who was shocked by my knowledge of Canadian media gossip (I was shocked too, to be honest). We spent most of the night taunting each other over the events of 1755, when my people (the Acadians, who became the Cajuns) got kicked out of Nova Scotia by his people (the Scottish johnny-come-latelys, who became unimportant drunkards). Much fun was had by all.
We wandered home guided by the lights of the Tokyo Tower, which is the biggest rip-off of the Eiffel Tower imaginable. I’m sure our hosts selected our hotel for us because it’s right next to the tower, which means that it’s basically impossible to lose your way home — if you can see the tower, you’re not lost.
Wednesday: Visited another school. (On Monday, I spent the afternoon at Azabu Elementary, interviewing people for the education story I’m working on.) This time, I went with Kiyomi to Mita Junior High School, which sits somewhat ominously in the shadows of the imposing Kuwaiti embassy. Japanese kids from junior high on wear uniforms, and the boys at Mita wear Nehru jackets, which look just smashing. I interviewed this one kid who had a slightly shaggy hairdo and round glasses; with the Nehru, he looked like John Lennon circa-Yellow Submarine. (Well, an Asian John Lennon, at least. Maybe a Sean Lennon?)
Then, when that was over, I went to MOO, I HATE YOU, MOO! MOOOO! YOU SUCK! MOOO! (Sorry — a little mad cow coming on.)

In Kiribati, it’s already my birthday. Here in Tokyo, I’ve got to wait another three hours. Were I still in New Haven or Toledo, it’d be 17 hours. Back in Dallas or Rayne, it’s 18. Wherever you are, I’m getting old.
As a kid, of course, 18 was the goal age; that was the drinking age in Louisiana back then. Then Connecticut drinking laws intervened, and 21 became the marker to match. Now 26 shoves itself in my face. I’ve long postulated — and will now, for the next 730 days, defend to the death — the idea that 27 is the peak human age. Why? Because that’s when, statistically, baseball players peak: they still have all their physical skills, but they’ve also got the mental maturity for greatness. But that still gives me only two years to win a couple Pulitzers, become a rock star, and bring peace to the Middle East.
Then today, in a discussion session at the FPC, I learned from the wonderfully named Teddy Jimbo that businesses in Japan have something called the Rule of 38. You see, until age 38, you’re giving more to your employer than you’re getting — working long hours, often for little money, trying to climb that infernal ladder. But once you hit that magic number, the poles flip, your production drops, and you start earning more than you’re actually worth. (This is the excuse Japanese companies use to defend never hiring older workers — they figure they’d be paying for their senescence without having gotten the benefits of those early go-get-em years.) So maybe I’ve got a little time before my uphill climb turns into a downhill slide after all.
(And in case you’re wondering, there were only two 27-year-olds on the two World Series rosters. The Yankees had superstar shortstop Derek Jeter; the Diamondbacks could offer only mediocre backup first-baseman Erubial Durazo. How’d they do? The overrated Jeter had 62 postseason at-bats, but was horrible: only four RBI, an anemic .226 average, and a .275 on-base percentage. Noble Durazo, in contrast, used his 15 at-bats wisely: three RBI, a solid .333 average, and a .455 OBP. No wonder good triumphed over evil in the end.)

Just got a spam (“amazing new income opportunity!”) from xpbunnies@yahoo.com. My first thought at seeing that address: Of course! I can’t believe it’s taken this long for Microsoft and Playboy to launch a joint venture!

There’s something oddly comforting about watching the World Series from your Tokyo hotel room. (Even more so when the Yankees lose.)
It’s Sunday, and I’ve devoted the day to doing as little as possible. It’s a lofty goal, but so far I’m doing a good job of achieving it. Yesterday was something of a washout, literally and figuratively: the rains started coming down in earnest mid-afternoon, which sent me and some of my colleagues scurrying for cover and, later, for the hotel. (Not before my leather jacket got soaked, alas. Any advice for dealing with sopping wet leather?)
Before the rain, we went to Meiji Shrine, a Shinto affair dedicated to Emperor Meiji (and Empress Shoken) after their deaths in the 1910s. (Although, like everything else in Tokyo, it was blown to bits during dainiji sekai taisen; it was rebuilt in 1958.) Saturday was ol’ Meiji’s 149th birthday, the Autumn Grand Festival, and Culture Day, a Japanese national holiday, so the place was packed. There were hundreds of little kids decked out in elaborate kimonos or traditional samurai outfits, their beaming parents walking beside them. (Kimono fact of the day: they can’t be cleaned by any traditional method. If a kimono becomes stained, it is taken apart, thread by thread, cleaned, then completely rewoven. It was a sloppy day, so I fear some serious unsewing was going on last night.)
Culture Day at Meiji Shrine means lots of yabusame (archery on horseback) and martial arts demonstrations. It also meant bumping into none other than Sakurako Tsuchiya, the sake brewer from a few days ago. She was selling her wares to the crowds. (Bonus Sakurako fact: she got a master’s in computer programming before becoming the country’s most celebrated sake brewer! Could she get any better?)

If I’m going to pay $42 for dinner, I expect something more than a crappy buffet. And when there’s dessert — and at that price, damn it, there will be dessert — it shouldn’t be grey. This city is outrageously expensive; thank heavens I’m not picking up most of the tabs.

Life imitating crabwalk:
October 18, 2001, at crabwalk.com: “I’m also rooting for a long and productive career for these guys [New York band the Strokes], because that increases the likelihood there’ll someday be a cover band called the Diff’rent Strokes.”
November 2, 2001, at pitchfork’s music news column: “NME reported earlier this week that, with the insane hype following the band around the UK (it’s worse there than here, believe us), the Strokes have already inspired a cover band. Going by the downright shameful moniker of Diff’rent Strokes, the band apparently recreates all the 11 songs from Is This It (12, if you include “New York City Cops”) using a Casio-style keyboard. But Diff’rent Strokes are no run-of-the-mill Bjorn Again — they’ve got a record deal! The incredibly prestigious UK label Guided Missile (anyone? anyone?) will, according to a post to their webboard, release their debut album on December 3rd. Yay.”
I hope this will teach you all to listen to what I say very carefully. I can see the future. (And also, my apologies for the Internet-wide electron shortage, no doubt caused by the epic-poem length of my last post.)