Karaoke with 2nd graders

Last Saturday afternoon, Lucinda and I met school friends and their moms for two hours of karaoke. We went to a place in Roppongi, the famously sleazy nightspot where Americans get robbed after imbibing spiked drinks. But it's perfectly harmless in broad daylight.


I've never sung karaoke and had no idea what to expect; a stage with a microphone? Totally wrong. We took the elevator up to the 4th floor and found super-mod living rooms, each with shiny couches, cocktail tables and a flat-screen TV on the wall.



Ours had couch seating for 9 people and 2 shiny silver microphones. Btw, each mother-daughter pair paid a very cheap 1000 yen (about $11) because one mom joined the karaoke club.


You choose the songs out of this enormous phone book-sized listing, with songs in English, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog for Filipinos (click the pic for a close-up view)...


...and you punch the song ID numbers into this wireless device.


The television queues up the songs and shows the words over very cheesy B-roll video. Among our selections: "Summer Lovin'" from Grease, "Piano Man" by Billy Joel, a few songs from High School Musical, "Stop in the Name of Love," "Holiday" and "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna, and a bunch of others.

Lucinda loved it (she'd gone with a friend once before), and so did her friends. Here are a few pix...



...and one potentially headache-inducing video of the high-speed "It's a Small World."

Vietnam in Afghanistan?

One of our good friends in New York, Gordon Goldstein, has been getting a lot of ink lately because his book Lessons in Disaster, about the Vietnam War and JFK's and LBJ's National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, is said to be on President Obama's nightstand. (The book just came out in paperback... order at Amazon!)

Frank Rich featured the book in a recent NYT column entitled "Obama at the Precipice.". And the Wall St. Journal cites Lessons in Disaster in its story today, Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages.

What a wonderful achievement for Gordon and his wife Anne Gilbert (who went to Columbia University's J-school with me). Gordie worked on the book for more than a decade and it was published last year. He and Bundy collaborated until Bundy died, in 1996, and the Bundy family withdrew its consent for the material. So Gordie had to make the tough decision to go on alone with the project, and according to a review in the NYT by Richard Holbrooke last fall, it was clearly worthwhile.

Congratulations, Gordie!

Incidentally, I interviewed Gordie for a piece I wrote for Salon.com in 2003, "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President," when the Iraq War was going south.

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.

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.

"Buzz Lightyear is a real person"

When Arno had a day off from school last week, I took him to Tokyo Disneyland. What a day. 12 hours of Buzz Lightyear, It's a Small World, Mickey and Donald, Peter Pan, waiting in lines, and a nighttime Light-Bright parade. It was a lot of fun, though, and Arno was thrilled with the experience. This is what he looked like all day, pointing at stuff and saying, "Look!"


We went with my friend Laurie Lebrun and her son Max, who is in Arno's class at Willowbrook, and our friend Rachel and her daughter Audrey. Max is one year older than Arno but the boys get along really well. Laurie drove. Here's the highway in Tokyo and what we saw when we arrived.



Inside, the boys checked out the castle and Halloween decorations.





I've heard horror stories about crowds and hourlong lines for each ride. Fortunately, it wasn't that crowded and we also got lucky with our timing.

Our longest line - 45 mins - was for our second ride, Peter Pan's Flight. Arno totally loves Peter Pan. You climb into a pirate ship and sail, lickety-split, thru scenes from the movie. The ride lasts, like, 3 minutes, which is a bummer, but I did catch some quick pix that will be familiar to other experts of the Pan oeuvre. (This posting has too many pix, but what the hell.)



We spent a lot of time in Tomorrowland because the boys are really into space. There was the kinda-scary 3D movie MicroAdventure, a derivative of the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"...


and Arno's and my favorite ride, Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. (We got a "FastPass" that reserved a ride-time, so we didn't have to wait in line.)



This ride was more active than most: you use an astroblaster gun to fire lasers at targets. Superfun! Here's a short "you are there, too" video.



And the StarJets ride. The boys wanted to wait until it was dark so it was more like "real space."


Disney serves mediocre food. Arno had french fries for lunch. I had a shrimp fritter (only in Japan?). But who cares? When the crowds flocked to a daytime parade, we hit the kid rollercoaster three times in a row with no line!

My least favorite ride was the Grand Circuit Raceway. Too noisy and smoggy. But the mini cars did make for good pix. Here's Laurie and Max...


I could barely squeeze into the car.


Here's Rachel and lovely 2-yr-old Audrey. Rachel's husband, Chris, is Disney's marketing manager in Asia. (My mom and Rachel are both Wellesley grads.)


Arno thought Pirates of the Caribbean was "too scary." I liked it when my family went to Calif. Disneyland 30 years ago, but now every other pirate looks like Johnny Depp. We went on the Jungle Cruise and to the Country Bear Theater. Tom Sawyer's Island closed at dusk - before we arrived. Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin broke down as we waited in line. Small World was eh. We skipped Pooh's Hunny Hunt because of the 1 hour line.

The boys went crazy in Goofy's Bounce House - though they were allowed only about 4 minutes for bouncing.


We stayed late to see the nighttime parade: Disney Princesses decked out like the Electric Horseman. It was pretty.


I'm going to overdose on Disney this month. In a few weeks, I'll take Lucinda (with some Nishimachi friends and their moms) to Tokyo Disneyland during her fall vacation.

A sad anniversary

My very good friend, Lauren Terrazzano, died one year ago today at age 39. This photograph of Lauren with her husband, Al Baker, was taken on Bear Mountain in March 2007, one year after they were married. She died two months later.

Lauren was a phenomenal journalist and my excellent friend since we were in graduate school together. We spent many hours commuting from Manhattan's Upper West Side to Newsday's office on Long Island - telling stories and jokes and obsessing about our careers.

Lauren was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2004, when she was 36. She fought it off with chemo, surgery and radiation in 2004/05, and a second time soon after she and Al were married. In the last half-year of her life, Lauren wrote a column called "Life, with cancer" that drew readers from across the country. The New York Times also featured her in this story about young adults with cancer.

I miss you, Lauren. I think of you often and wish you were still with us.

Meeting an old friend

Proving the value of keeping old friends, I recently had lunch with my freshman roommate at Brown, Yuhki Nakamura King.

Yuhki was visiting her parents for the New Year's holiday here. She had an unusual life growing up: her father was once a star pitcher for the Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants, and she attended an elite private girls school with the sisters of Crown Princess Masako.

Here's Yuhki, who lives in London with her husband, David. We last saw each other in London in 1998, shortly after I met Blaine. She recently quit her banking job to study linguistics, and has a well-read blog about Japanese cooking (too bad for me it's in Japanese).



Living in Tokyo helps me understand Yuhki much better than I did when we met 20+ years ago. She is very individualistic, outspoken and quite tall for a Japanese woman - and I can see why, as she says, she believes that living here would be a social and professional straitjacket.

I also see why Yuhki brought such exotic clothes to college. Her metallic rolling suitcase was packed with purple and white and black lace shirts and dozens of bangle bracelets because she loved Prince. I was a 17 yr old from suburban Denver who scotch-taped pictures from Vogue on my dorm walls.

The fact is, we had nothing in common except a college admission letter; she remembers that I wrote her a nice note asking if she'd like to share a subscription to The New York Times, when she'd been cramming for months to learn enough English to attend an American college. I was so clueless!

It was great to see you again, Yuhki.

Good friends in Seattle

Even though we've been here a few weeks, I didn't want to forget about our last visits with so many good friends in Seattle:

We had waffles and lattes for the umpteenth time at the home of Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Adrienne Fairhall and their children, Eliot and Anselm.







We went to the Seattle Tennis Club with Josie and John Amory and their sons, William and Thomas, for a swim and supper - and ice cream.






We took the ferry to Vashon Island to hang with the fine Kellison-Straleys: Julia, Nick, Georgia and Oliver. Lucinda and Georgia are especially great pals.





We went up the Space Needle for the first time with Bill and Eileen Yardley and their children, Clara, Louisa and Jack D. (Bill is the Seattle Bureau Chief for the New York Times.) Arno is STILL talking about Clara, who held his hand as we walked along Queen Anne Blvd. (Apologies for the dark foto of the Yardley family.)






Without an official photographer present, we had a delicious dinner with Sam and Lisa Verhovek and Margaret Lane and Steven Caplow. This was a nice bookend to a goodbye party we attended in 2003, when we were fresh off the plane from NYC, in honor of Sam and Lisa's move to China for the Los Angeles Times.

And we had many playdates with, and attended a goodbye party for, Maryam Mohit, Erik Blachford and their children, Jake, Sedi Ann and Theo. They've just moved to San Francisco.

Don't forget us! We may well be back in Seattle in 2010 or 2011.