Back home

We're home. We took a night flight back to Tokyo and arrived this morning at 7:45 a.m. (A Japan Airlines 747 makes a 16-hour round trip between Narita and Denpasar, Bali's capital, once a day.) We dragged our stuff into our house, Blaine made pancakes for the children, and I took a 3 hour nap!

We had a great trip in Bali - very relaxing, lots of sleep, and we loved being in a warmer climate without the humidity of Tokyo in the summer. The children are getting better about traveling, though Arno lived on pancakes, pasta, and french fries for 10 days.

We spent a week at the Westin in Nusa Dua, which is the equivalent of a gated community for enormous resort hotels, and three nights in Ubud, the alleged "cultural center" of Bali. I took heaps of photos and will write some blog posts about our trip this week, but here are a few of my favorites shots.

Lucinda sipped coconut milk from an actual coconut!


At the Westin, Blaine and I usually read for 1-2 hours every morning in a thatch-roofed pavilion.


Arno at the cliffside Ulu Watu temple.



And this is what I learned on my winter vacation:

- Lots of rich Russians vacation in Bali! The men are huge and hulking, with Russell Crowe's "Gladiator" hair, and the women favor peroxide-white long hair and the flashiest outfits imaginable.

- Being a tourist in Bali couldn't be more enjoyable. Beautiful beaches, well-managed hotels, spa treatments, and it's shockingly cheap - we often spent $36 for dinner for all of us, and we hired a driver for $40 a day. (The traffic is nuts there.)

- As a tourist, though, it's pretty rare to see anything that's authentically Balinese other than, say, people carrying heavy loads of stuff on their heads. Bali is known for its inexpensive, good-quality crafts like woodworking, basketweaving, batik, and silver jewelry. But any impression of this as "culture" is diluted by the craft shops lining the streets in every town near tourist centers. Which doesn't mean I couldn't find trinkets to bring home.

In Bali

We're in Bali - at the Westin in Nusa Dusa. It's one of several hotel resorts along the eastern coast of a peninsula south of Denpasar, the site of Bali's int'l airport.

The 7-hour Japan Airlines flight was thankfully very easy; JAL has great service even in economy class, with decent food, a toy for each child, and a long list of movies to keep everyone occupied. Arno bonded and traded toys with a boy sitting in front of him, making our flight that much easier.

At the Bali airport, we had our first adventure: Blaine had to pay a $200 bribe to the immigration service to enter the country! Though many friends in Tokyo told us how much they love Bali, no one mentioned an immigration shakedown.

Arriving at 10pm, we paid $25 per person for a visa and waited in a long line to present our passports. An immigration agent noticed that Blaine's passport would expire in less than 6 months (5 months and 1 week, to be exact). "So?," Blaine said, with the blase tone of man who's seen to his fair share of third-world airports. We were told that he needed a special visa to enter Indonesia, and he was led to a small office to discuss the situation; the children and I waited for a few minutes and went into the office, where a half-dozen immigration agents were chatting and smoking clove cigarettes.

I took the kids behind a partition to see Blaine, who listened as another official repeatedly explained the situation: Blaine's passport could not be accepted and he would have to return to Tokyo. (Conveniently, the JAL plane was leaving for the return trip in about an hour.) With the kids on my lap, I explained that we were there for a family vacation and would gone in 10 days - couldn't the agent help us? Blaine said he was a journalist on vacation. The man repeated himself, and again, and again. Then, finally, he said that Blaine might come in... if the agent manually entered his passport expiration date as 1 month later.

The kids and I left the office, which I hoped would speed a resolution - fewer witnesses, etc. We waited. Blaine emerged 20 mins later. The man, who was slow to come to the point, had finally written "$200" on a piece of paper and directed Blaine to an ATM. By now it was 11:30pm. The ATM promised dollars but didn't have any. Blaine went back to consult, and was told that 2,000,000 rupees would be acceptable. (The currency is approx 10,000 rupees for $1) He paid, we grabbed our suitcases and arrived at the Westin at 12:30 a.m. The kids were very heroic and didn't whine the whole time.

Since that unpleasantness, we've had a great time. The room is comfortable, hotel staff friendly, the kids love swimming in the warm pools, and there's a fantastic breakfast buffet for $15 for the whole family. We met our Tokyo friends, John Murphy and Rena Singer and their children, at Padang Beach yesterday afternoon for a swim before we found a restaurant w/sunset views. Today, the children are in the hotel's Kids' Club - a big reason why we stayed here - while Blaine and I are hanging out and reading.

I have my camera but can't download to Blaine's computer, so pix will wait until our return to Tokyo.

Age of achievement

I'm turning 41 tomorrow. To celebrate, I'm making gingerbread cookies for Lucinda's winter concert, making a pasta dish for Arno's class holiday party, having a playdate with Arno at a friend's house, and taking the kids ice skating. Then we'll go home, have an early Christmas present-opening, eat a birthday dinner, and pack to go Bali.

I should add here that I've also recently pitched some stories to magazine editors; my sumo story for KIE reminded me how much I like writing as well as editing. But it's true, and I'm only sometimes regretful, that my life in Japan has much more to do with domestic work than with professional work.

So it's been kind of fascinating lately to notice that a handful people I know -- sometimes very well, sometimes very tangentially -- who are my age, are in the news. Mostly for good things, but not always. To wit:

Shaun Donovan, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is married to a woman, Liza Gilbert, who is the sister of my good friend from J-school, Anne Gilbert.

Anne Gilbert, meanwhile, is married to Gordon Goldstein, who just published a very well-reviewed (and by Richard Holbrooke, no less) book, Lessons in Disaster, about McGeorge Bundy. (Those Gilberts are pretty spectacular!)

Next, Jason Grumet, who dated a friend of a friend of mine at college, has been advising Obama about energy issues and was mentioned as a possible Sec'y of Energy. He won't get that job, but he may well be the #2 or, almost certainly, very high up in the dept.

When I was watching a 60 Minutes piece about Barney Frank, I noticed that it was produced by Shachar Bar-on, a brilliant guy who is married to another of my J-school friends, Laura Rabhan, who is, herself, an Emmy-winning documentary producer.

And then comes the Madoff scandal. Bernard Madoff, who was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, apparently stole a lot of money from the Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge fund. The fund is run by Walter Noel, whose daughter, Alix, graduated from Brown in my class (I knew her very slightly) and whose husband is also a top exec in the firm. I can't imagine she's having a very good week.

My point, however, is not that it's all about me. Instead, it's about how many well-educated people - especially but not exclusively men - have, by age 40 or so, very defined, successful lives because they've focused intensely on a profession or subject. Which can turn out well or not.

I should add here that writing about this isn't a self-criticism; it's reality. I'm plenty focused - though not on public achievements - and there's no reason I won't find new achievements by age 50 or 60.

Editorial

The Washington Post has an editorial today (Monday, 12/15) about North Korea based on Blaine's story. The headline: "Three Kernels of Corn." It's worth reading.

Blaine's latest about North Korea...

...is the disturbing story of a 25 yr old North Korean man who is the only known escapee from a DPRK gulag.

It's on the front page of The Washington Post on Thursday, Dec 11, and has been picked up by the Huffington Post, so it's getting lots of attention.

The man, Shin Dong-hyuk, was born in Camp No. 14, ate corn kernels from cow dung, was held in solitary confinement and tortured as a 14-year-old, and watched the executions of his mother and brother. He escaped by climbing over the body of a fellow prisoner who got hung up on an electrified barbed-wire fence.

If you want to read more, this website has an English version of Shin's life story - including a few gruesome drawings he made about his torture.

By itself, Shin's story would be amazing. But Blaine, in his Blainian way, made a larger, more important point: South Koreans have all but ignored Shin because they don't much care what's happening in North Korea right now. And that indifference lessens the pressure -- to the extent that there is any pressure -- on the DPRK to change its ways.

Underparenting

Lately there's been heaps of talk about "overparenting." The New Yorker labeled it "The Child Trap": when accomplished well-educated people view their children as their latest project, as extensions of their successes as adult, and coddle them to distraction.

Overparenting is over-catering to your children and signing them up for every imaginable afterschool activity to sharpen their developing brains, turn them into little geniuses, and set them up for Ivy League educations.

I'm worried that I'm underparenting.

Most 1st graders at Nishimachi have unbelievably busy schedules. On top of 30-60 minutes of homework every night in reading, spelling, math, writing and Japanese, most children have afterschool lessons four days a week. It's typical to hear that these 6 or 7 year olds are learning piano or violin; soccer, tennis or ballet; French or Chinese; have tutoring in Japanese at least once a week, and/or go to Kumon to practice speed-math.

The academic and music training (and pressure to do all of it) may be more intense here than in the US, though, having said that, my 6 yr old nephew, who goes to public school in Iowa City, takes Suzuki piano, scores heaps of goals on his soccer team, and adds up 3-digit numbers in his head.

In any case, knowing and hearing about these other children is making me insecure that I'm the outlying underparent. I keep telling myself that "She's only 6 years old!", but maybe I'm too laid back about Lucinda's schedule.?

This is what Lucinda does every week: She wanted to take hula lessons on Mondays. She has a Japanese tutor on Thursdays. She sometimes has Brownies on Fridays. She doesn't like sports where there's a winner and a loser, quit soccer after one semester last year, and has so far refused tennis. She plays tag for three recesses a day and likes to come home after school to draw pictures, play with her little brother, have a playdate when I can arrange it, watch TV for an hour while I make supper, and do her homework before bed.

Am I underparenting? I'm not sure. Lucinda is doing well in school but not astonishingly so, and I worry that adding new tasks will make her feel exhausted and pressured. But maybe I'm missing an opportunity to introduce her to experiences - especially music or Kumon's math program - that require a fair amount of time and practice? It's a parenting dilemma for the modern age.

Movie tickets

On Friday, which is movie night at our house, we are taking Lucinda and Arno to the movie theater at Roppongi Hills. This is quite rare for us because most American/English kids movies don't come to Tokyo at all or arrive weeks or months after we can rent it on Apple TV.

We're going to see Wall-E - six months or so after it opened in the US.

This is where it gets tricky. The easiest way to buy tickets is over the internet to choose your seats before the theater sells out, as it always does. But Toho Cinemas recently changed its website, and the explanation of which tickets (adult, child, discount, senior) are available at which prices is entirely in Japanese. I guessed at 4 tickets for 1500 yen each, which is probably the adult price; if not, we will have to sort it out on Friday night.

This is the email I received to confirm. Fortunately, I don't have to know Japanese to figure it out.

Kowal Jessica 様

￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
このたびはご購入いただきまして誠にありがとうございます。
Thank you very much for your purchase.

■購入番号 Confirmation Number XXXX　(TEL:080-XXXX-9785)
■映画館 Theater ＴＯＨＯシネマズ六本木ヒルズ　TOHOCINEMAS ROPPONGI HILLS　
■上映日 Date 2008/12/5　■時間 Time 18:40～
■合計金額 Total Price \6,000　■座席番号 Seat Number I-24 I-25 I-26 I-27
■映画名称 Movie （字）ＷＡＬＬ・Ｅ／ウォーリー WALLE/ENGLISH

※チケット発券時には、上記の電話番号と購入番号の入力が必要となります。
*You need the above phone number and the confirmation number
when you pick up your ticket(s) at the vit ticketing machines.

Blaine's latest...

is a dramatic video and story from South Korea about a North Korean defector who gets fights with activists as he tries to launch balloons carrying leaflets criticizing Kim Jong-il. Here's the excellent video and here's the story.

This is Blaine's first experience as a breaking-news one-man-band. He woke up at 6 a.m., talked to the defector, went to the protest, and shot video of the defector arguing with the activists, kicking a man in the head, and launching one balloon. Then Blaine went back to his hotel, wrote a story, edited the video and went to bed around midnight. Eesh!

This is what modern journalism looks like: do everything.

In the US, aquariums like Sea World try to evoke a natural vibe. Not so in Tokyo. I took the kids to the aquarium at the Prince Hotel complex in Shinagawa, where they have a bunch of tanks and a dolphin show.

The Epson Aqua Stadium is at the foot of this tall building.



Up a long escalator, you come to the aquarium part - tanks with fish, of course, and a long tunnel with sawtooth sharks, an odd leopard-spotted stingray, and some enormous crabs.




Then there's the dolphin show. You walk into this stadium with several hundred seats; the stadium smells kinda...fishy.


And there are dancing girls in neon neoprene.


The aquarium hands out yellow rain slickers to people who sit in the front rows (top photo, which is unfortunately dark). As preparation is everything in Japan, businesslike women in gray suits and black pumps (second photo, center) wait with stacks of towels to hand to the drenched.



To share the actual vibe of a Tokyo aquarium - which is not dissimilar from the overall vibe in the busiest parts of Tokyo - I made some videos with my digital camera; not great quality, but pretty funny.

Here are the dancing girls:



I tried to upload the grand finale: a dolphin show on speed with music that sounds like an overjuiced record player and lyrics that are all about "joy and harmony." Seriously. But the uploading isn't working properly, so I'd rather post than wait on it.

Happy Thanksgiving

We're celebrating our second Thanksgiving in Tokyo. This time we're having supper with our friends Laurie and Ken Lebrun and their children Sylvan and Max, who are in school with Lucinda and Arno.

I'm bringing green beans, champagne, fancy cheeses, and this apple pie, which I'm quite proud of.

Arno's birthday video

Blaine edited Arno's birthday video this weekend, and here it is. Cute boy, birthday chaos!

The Superhero's 4th birthday

Arno turned 4 last Saturday, Nov 15, and we all hung out together as a family. He did seem ever-so-slightly more mature, though I could be fooling myself. We did pretty much what he wanted all day:

First, we had pancakes and Arno played with the "Ultraman" toys that Lucinda bought him.


Later, they tried out the JD Razor scooters that they've been demanding. Blaine tried Arno's scooter - it was a little small!




He chose his (and Lucinda's) favorite Italian restaurant, La Boheme, where he enjoyed calamari and an enormous plate of his favorite food, noodles. Ultraman came along.



Finally, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for a mash of ice cream - and a hug from his sister.



Last Sunday, we had a Superhero birthday party at our house with 7 of Arno's friends. Blaine shot a video of the party, which I hope will make an appearance in the next few days.

Blaine's latest...

are several cool feature stories. (I'm way behind in my Blaine publicity work.)

1. On the front page of today's paper (Fri 11/21), Blaine has a wonderfully written "Innovators" piece called "Kafka of the Cubicle,". It's a delightful story about a computer guy who has invented a best-selling comic-book character called "Otaryman." The best thing about the piece is the lede:

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 21, 2008; Page A01

TOKYO -- The American poet Theodore Roethke called it "the inexorable sadness of pencils." It's the desolation of time lost and dreams forsaken while sitting in an office.

Blaine says he read that poem in college! I'm impressed. Lucinda thinks "inexorable sadness of pencils" is very funny and, at dinner, offered "the inexorable sadness of" lots of other stuff, while Arno joked a dozen times about the "inexorable sadness of underpants."

2. Blaine wrote a neat story about incinerators in central Tokyo that burn trash at an extraordinarily high temperature (8500 degrees Centigrade) and use the heat to create electricity (via steam-driven turbines) for 20,000 households, to make sand for bricks and roads, and to heat water for a swimming pool at the "garbage factory," as it calls itself. And this incinerator is odor-free. Could that ever be built in NYC? (Here's the video.)

3. And he wrote a front-page story about this country's amazing "konbini" - convenience stores - that are ever more profitable even as grocery stores and dept stores have been losing money for decades.

He went to "Happy Lawson, a kid-friendly store that overlooks Yokohama Harbor, you can buy fresh sushi and carbon offsets, pay income tax and change diapers, book airplane tickets and sip vodka coolers. There's hot soup, cold beer, fresh bread, clean toilets, french fries, earwax remover, spotless floors, and a broadband-empowered machine that will order home appliances, book concert tickets and sign you up for driver's ed." And here's the video.

What's Going On

(With a nod to Newsday's former editor, Tony Marro, who always headlined his staff memos this way.)

Let's see, lots going on:

- Tomorrow, Nov 15, is Arno's 4th birthday. I think Lucinda will make pancakes for us all, because that's a 1st grade homework assignment as part of the food/health unit.

- On Sunday, seven four and five yr olds will come to our house for Arno's "superhero" birthday party. He chose the theme, and it's generic enough that I can serve Spiderman pasta and Superhero hotdogs and play a Buzz Lightyear game and no one will care. Every kid will decorate a superhero mask and shield and I'm making capes for them to wear (Hopefully my attempt to make eveything will work out all right.)

- I've worked long hours at my magazine, Kateigaho International Edition, this week and Blaine has collected the kids from school and made dinners. Nice role reversal!

- Next week, the kids have 3 days of school and 3 days of vacation wrapped around parent-teacher conferences and next weekend. I'm working on the Nishimachi book fair on Wednesday and getting mildly involved in Nishimachi's spring auction.

- Arno has been very moody recently, mostly depending on his willingness to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. On Monday and Tuesday, after he'd slept badly, he was a total pain. But Wed-Fri, we got him into bed early and threatened him w/toy-loss if he didn't stay there, so he a much happier and more enjoyable creature.

- Lucinda has been very confident lately. We've hired a Japanese tutor for a weekly lesson, which Lu enjoys. She is very proud that she knows all 46 of the hiragana and she is working on reading simple hiragana books. She's also become more interested and confident in addition and subtraction because her teacher focuses on math first thing in the morning. Her other focus in life is the game of Tag, which I think she plays at each of 3 daily recesses. I will write more about Tag at some point.

That's the overall update. We're doing well at the moment.

Post-election post

Geez, it's been almost an entire week since the election, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it. Thrilling result, obviously.

My mom, Sheila, was visiting with my stepfather, Blake. So we threw an election-day party. The Denver mother of a Tokyo friend, Susan Mulcahy, was here, with another Denver friend - whose daughter, it turned out, went to elementary and junior high school with me. Does that make sense? Grandmothers, mothers, and daughters - that sums it up. I also invited some American friends from Nishimachi. We had pastries, lots of coffee from Tully's and, eventually, sandwiches for lunch.

We turned on CNN at 8 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo, which is 6 p.m. Tuesday on the East Coast, just as the first states were done voting. Things went pretty quickly in Obama's favor, as everyone knows.



Arno was an unexpected party guest; his teacher called me at 10 a.m. to say he wasn't feeling well. I brought him home and gave him a little medicine, and he was fine; he even refused to nap so he could hang out w/the grownups and watch election coverage.

Election in Tokyo

In a few hours, we'll go to sleep while America votes. And then we'll wake up on Wednesday, November 5, 2008, and watch the election returns on CNN. I think the first polls close at something like 8:30 a.m. in Tokyo.

My mom, who is a huge Obama fan and volunteer in Denver, is visiting, so we've invited some friends over to watch the returns with us. Should be fun. Full blog report tomorrow.

And if, by some stretch of horror, Obama loses, we're well-positioned to commit suicide.

Elex analysis

Here's what I've been thinking about lately - stories I'd like to see or write if I could. Of course this is predicated by the view that Obama will win tomorrow or hell will freeze over.

1. Look at the difference in nastiness between the Obama and McCain/Palin campaigns. True, Obama did imply that McCain was too old ("erratic") to be president and all but called Palin a ditz (that ad this weekend that featured her winking). But in lots of ways, the nature of the Obama campaign is the dog that didn't bark.

Take, for example, Al Qaeda's apparent/alleged endorsement of McCain. The Obama people didn't even mention it - but does anyone think the GOP would have ignored that for 5 mins had AQ's website promoted Obama?

Everyone thought the lesson of the Bush v. Gore and Bush v. Kerry campaigns was that you had to play as dirty as the GOP and Rove. That is, you had to grab every tiny opportunity to trash people.

But Obama managed, perhaps because of his generally sunny personality and smile and also because he focused mainly on big messages ("We can't afford 4 more years" and "voted with President Bush 90% of the time), to tiptoe through the tulips mostly unscathed without gutting his opponents personally. Kinda like this JibJab video when he flies around on a unicorn spouting "change!".

2. McCain has a weird Senate-ness about him - serial obsessions and language that prove he was stuck on the Senate floor focused on too-narrow issues that don't add up to anything significant. Like earmarks, and Columbia and Georgia (which he seems to mention constantly thanks to his lobbyist foreign-policy advisor), and the Boeing tanker deal he scotched, and "My friends!" I mean, sure, he could still win, but that would be in spite of himself, not because of his approach to campaigning. He's better off in the Senate, and he's lucky he didn't resign, like Dole did.

3. McCain does deserve credit for not playing the Rev. Wright card. This is, of course, what conservative Republicans will say did McCain in: they'll say he wasn't tough enough, he held back, he should have played even dirtier. But McCain and Palin don't deserve any credit for talking about socialism and Communism. That's just stupid.

4. Having said that, the McCain campaign did drop all sorts of anti-black and anti-gay hints at the end of the campaign. Like references to how raising taxes of hard-working people to "spread the wealth" to allegedly non-working people, which to me was an obvious allusion/smear of black welfare recipients. And various mentions of Barney Frank to crowds of Middle America - hmm, gee, why did they possibly mention Frank?

5. Palin is toast. She will run in 2012 and she will fail miserably and slink back to Alaska. Dan Quayle tried to run for President and it just didn't work. Once conservatives don't take you seriously, forget it. Also, it seems likely that there are more scandals buried in Alaska just waiting to turn up - who knows, maybe she won't survive her re-election campaign in 2010?

6. When it's all over, Hillary and McCain will go out to a bar and drink shots of tequila and whine about losing. Can you imagine the conversation: "I can't believe we both lost to Obama!" That would be a good SNL skit in the next few months.

7. I'd like to read a story about how black voters were mobilized in the South, presumably by churches or the NAACP or the Obama campaign. If Obama wins anything in the South, it will be because of black turnout - which takes serious organization, yes, but also serious commitment on the part of black leaders to get every possible voter registered and to the polls. Maybe that story has been written, but I haven't read it.

Election guessing

Back of the envelope guess about battleground states:

Obama will win PA, NC, VA, OH, CO, NV, NM, NH, ND and MT. Which would be a really huge win, and maybe I'm guessing a few states too far.

McCain will win FL, IN, and GA.

I'll go out on a limb and say the Dems will win 60 Senate seats, too. In 2006, everything broke their way in the Senate - so why not now? Maybe Obama voters will deliver an upset in KY or GA. One can only hope to wave au revoir to Mitch McConnell or Saxby Chambliss.

I don't have any idea about House numbers, but it won't really matter. It would be nice if Marilyn Musgrave, a GOP member in Colorado, loses because she's quite horrible.

And Christine Gregoire will be narrowly re-elected as WA governor. Hard to see how that many voters in WA split their tickets, when the state should be very strong for Obama.

So there are my guesses. But I do remember 1994, when I covered what I assumed would be the losing campaign night of an obnoxious GOP House member on Long Island - and he went on to win, along with Pataki (over Cuomo) and heaps of Republicans. What did I know then - and maybe what do I know now?

TV and teen pregnancy

Scanning the web for Monday's news, this WashPost headline certainly caught my eye!

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

Of course one can suspect such things, but statistics leave a much more powerful impression. Here's the lede:

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; Page A01

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.

The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.

"Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy," said lead researcher Anita Chandra. "We found a strong association." The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

All I can add is: Wow.

Visitors from Denver

My mom, Sheila, and stepfather, Blake, are visiting for a few weeks. Sheila's cousin Lisa gave them two "buddy passes" from Delta, where Lisa worked for a very long time (Thanks, Lisa!), and helped them find flights in business class to Tokyo.

This is the second visit for Sheila and Blake together and the third for Sheila overall - we and the children greatly appreciate their presence. They've done some sightseeing and went to Kyoto for 3 days and 2 nights, returning this evening.

Now the kids want their attention for Halloween tomorrow, Lucinda's Brownie investiture, and various events over the weekend and next week. Meanwhile, I'm editing for Kateigaho International and doing other work, and volunteering for Nishimachi's upcoming book fair and spring auction. Lots going on these days.

We are also all waiting impatiently for next Tuesday's election to be over and done with.

This would be funnier if the real possibility of Sarah Palin as President weren't so scary!

Sarah Palin Disney Trailer | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Blaine's latest...

... is a story about the Japanese newspaper industry, which is doing well for now but will struggle when its elderly Japanese readership dies off. I'm sure the story will get some decent play on the Romenesko media gossip website.

Blaine has also been writing heaps of stories about the global economic crisis. The latest is an A1 story about the "spiral" of recession.

The sumo stable

The magazine that I help edit, Kateigaho International Edition, gave me my first writing assignment in Japan: 800 words about the experience of watching sumo for the first time.

I spent several hours a week ago at Kokonoe-beya, a famous sumo "stable". It was fascinating, slightly bizarre and very eye-opening. I've watched it on TV and assumed it was an odd sport. But the sumo guy I interviewed described it instead as a battle in which, he said, you want to "rip your opponent's head off."

We (me, my translator, a Japanese writer and 2 photographers) watched six young guys train for about an hour on the ground floor of the modern building where they also eat, sleep and live. This is what it looked like outside.


And inside the ground floor training/viewing room.


They train 7 days a week. Wearing only loin cloths and sometimes a bit of tape on toes or fingers, they face off dozens of times - losing repeatedly to stronger, bigger men. They are like football players, except that they don't have helmets or any physical protection; there's a good chance they'll wind up face down in the dirt or even with a broken neck.

Most contests last only seconds and have few rules. The two men face each other inside a rice-straw circle, called a dohyo. They touch their hands down on opposing white lines in the center before charging upward at each other. You lose if any part of your body, other than your feet, touches the ground or if you are forced out of the circle.


After each man was exhausted in the ring (among other training exercises), they did a bunch of sumo stomps, in which they lift and extend each leg at about 120 degrees. They are heavyset and sometimes even quite fat - but also shockingly strong and flexible.


At the end of their training, they did some stretches.


Finally, the wrestlers swept the clay floor with twig brooms and wiped down the walls, window sills and every surface in the room. They turned out the lights, leaving natural light for this lovely photo.


We went outside where the wrestlers were hanging out, barefoot, in the street.


I interviewed an articulate 23-yr-old guy, Chiyoshuhou, who's been at it for 5 yrs; he's still an amateur and he is paid a $250 monthly allowance in return for total 24-7 commitment. He described each sumo clash as "a minor car accident." It's terrifying, he said, so the stable master tells them, "You have to force yourself forward."


The wrestlers did their own laundry and dried it on the roof. Here are their loin cloths, which turn out to be about 20 feet long.


Later, I was invited to try their lunch. They eat twice a day and consume enormous quantities of sumo's special "Chanko" stew (made that day with pork, noodles, tofu, vegetables and miso broth), rice, grilled fish, fish eggs, squid, tea, more rice and more rice. Not a protein shake in sight!


Here's what I ate: rice, the stew (which was particularly delicious) and chewy sauteed squid with a brown sauce.


After lunch, in order of seniority, the wrestlers' long hair was combed into fresh topknots by the stable's hairdresser (top photo). The hairdresser combs grease into the hair with a very unusual comb and ties it with a string held in his teeth (middle photo) and folds it over. His implements are in the third photo.






After the hair ritual was finished, the men did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen and dining room, and went upstairs for a long nap in their tatami-matted room. Long naps, I was told, help them get fat.



It was a superfun day of reporting.

On holiday in Tokyo

Lucinda is on vacation this week, and today we went to see the amazing Picasso exhibit at the gorgeous National Art Center, Tokyo.

The "Picasso: His Life, His Creation" show, plus a second show at the nearby Suntory Museum in Tokyo Midtown, presents more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculpture on loan from my favorite museum, the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

At the National Art Center, the works are laid out by period - blue period, Cubism, and so on - with famous paintings of Dora Maar and one I'd never seen, "Massacre in Korea."

In a parenting inspiration, I brought pads of paper for Lucinda and 3 other first graders who came with us (and another mom), and the museum provided perfectly sharpened, high-quality pencils when they saw us take out pens.

The girls seemed overwhelmed by the museum experience at first, but settled down when they started to copy some of the paintings and to, as I suggested, "move the furniture around" on drawings of other girls' faces.

This exhibit, which will close on Dec 14, is super-fantastic. Adults: 1500 yen; elem school kids: Free! I hope to take Blaine back, sans enfants, for a second look.

1st grade conversations

Lucinda and I have been talking about social situations in 1st grade, and I liked the dialogue enough to share it. One background detail: In Japan, children often settle disputes by playing "rock, paper, scissors," or "jankenpoi."

On Friday night, Lucinda told me that she and a friend, Anathea, disagreed about how they would play tag at recess. Lucinda preferred "fairy tag," and Anathea wanted "zebra tag." So they did jankenpoi and Lucinda won repeatedly; Anathea got upset. What, Lucinda asked me, should she do in that situation? I told her to think it over and we'd discuss the next day.

Yesterday (Saturday) I took her to a clothing store and lunch in Omotesando, while Blaine took Arno to the park to play baseball. On the train, Lucinda and I talked things over.

Me: Did you think about your choices in the situation with Anathea? What could you do when a friend is upset about losing?

Lucinda: I could tell her that the next time, I'd be "scissors" and she should be "rock."

Me: That's a good idea. What else could you do?

Lucinda: I could tell her that I'd be "rock" and she could be "paper."

Me: Okay, you could set it up so that she would win and feel better. What else could you do?

Lucinda: I could say that we could play zebra tag first and then fairy tag.

Me: What else?

Lucinda: Well, since I won, I could tell her that we could play fairy tag and then zebra tag.

Children are so literal sometimes, but they also eventually assess the big picture.

Economic troubles

As I wrote the previous post, about our upcoming vaca in Bali, I considered how out-of-touch we are, as expats in Tokyo, with the US financial crisis.

Unlike most Americans in the US, where costs for food, gas, and other commodities have risen and where many people are losing their homes, we pretty much live on a fixed budget with fixed costs, thanks to subsidies for housing, utilities and education from the Washington Post.

We don't have a car (though I often consider buying one), so we're unaffected by gas prices, and I've figured out how to buy groceries here without breaking the bank on $5 Japanese apples or pricey Japanese beef. Also, we've taken a pay-as-you-go approach to credit cards and have zero debt other than our Seattle mortgage. And we almost never buy expensive stuff, clothes, purses, shoes, or trinkets - even though that definitely puts me on the least-well-dressed list among expat wives.

So other than a shocking decline in our 401ks or other investment accounts, which we hopefully won't need for several years, I'm feeling fortunate that we can be cautious about our spending and ride out the next few years.

Vacation planning

We are noticeably terrible about vacation planning: always last minute, usually flummoxed about where to go or where to stay, and hesitant to spend money on an unknown destination.

But we're getting better: We've just decided to go to Bali during the Xmas holiday. We considered the Philippines because it's only a 3 hr flight, but the hotels were really expensive. Then our friends Rena and John suggested renting a "villa" in Indonesia because the plane tix aren't so bad, so I looked at villa rentals.

And now, on the suggestion of our friend Laurie, we've booked a "family special" room at the Westin in Nusa Dua for as little as $160/night, which includes breakfast and the all-important Kids Club, as long as we leave by Christmas Eve. That compares to $300-400/night for the same room after 12/24.

Considering that we'll take one long Asian vacation this year, this is relatively cost effective and should be delightful.

Blaine's latest...

...is a very cool story about geothermal energy production in the Philippines - and the fact that the Bush Admin gutted USG-sponsored geothermal research in 2006.

Meanwhile, a US Geological Survey report released this week says that geothermal plants on accessible public and private land in 13 Western states could "supply about half the electricity now generated in the United States."

Read that again: Half of the US electricity supply. Let's hope that Obama's energy advisers are clipping stories like this.

Hula invitation

Blaine has learned a new video editing program, Final Cut Pro, and this was the amusing test run he shot during our family outing today (Sunday).

The backstory: Lucinda is taking hula lessons at Nishimachi. She practiced her dance in front of Shinagawa train station this afternoon, as Arno slept contentedly in his stroller - in his favorite Superman pajamas. Grammy and Granddaddy are coming to visit us in a few weeks!

Disneyfied, Disneyfried

Japan is the perfect home for Disneyland because Japanese pop culture venerates small characters and cartoons and cuteness. So Tokyo Disney is prime-time for people-watching, cradle to grave.

I'm just going to upload a bunch of pix so you can see for yourself. Click any pic for a closer look.