Lost In Translation

Deconstructing The Sonics

My brother sent me this hilarious link from McSweeny's, Understanding the Seattle SuperSonics by Comparing Them to Girls You May Have Dated in College by Charlie Williams. Here's a sample:

Ray Allen—Out of your league. You knew that long before you met her because you already absolutely knew who she was. But somehow everything lined up. Your jokes were on, the hair looked great, and your friends helped you play it perfectly. So you and Ray hooked up for a couple of weeks. You and Ray Allen! You knew it wouldn't last—she was smarter and funnier and way better-looking than you—but you treasured your time together all the more since you knew how finite it was. Ultimately, she wanted to have "the talk," but even then it was so concise, pleasant, and, yes, cute that you felt fine. Later, she transferred to a better school. You still Google her, more out of admiration than longing.

Katz's Delicatessen

After five days in the capital, I took a three hour Amtrak train ride from DC to New York. Shortly after arriving, I met my friend Arun (who was on JET with me and until last fall, he went to graduate school at Georgetown and is now living in NYC, was living in Japan), at the legendary Katz's Delicatessen on the lower east side not far from where I was staying.(incidentlly, if you are looking for a good cheap, clean hotel-The Off Soho Suites Hotel is a good bet) We had corned beef and pastrami sandwiches on rye with pickles. They were totally filling and the meat was extremely fresh and flavorful-a real treat.

Huey Lewis and the Developmentally Disabled

I've added another link to my sidebar for my old friend Eric's blog, The Concrete Donkey. He has a link (the post on Friday August 6th) to a great story about Huey Lewis and the News and their popularity among the developmentally disabled community, among other interesting posts-check it out.

Ben's Chili Bowl

Audrey and Jon just live a block away from the famous Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street. It was listed as one of 20 places to travel to just to eat at in the August GQ. I got a chili dog and a cup of chili, but regret not geting the chili burger after seeing Jon's. Good chili is something that is hard to come by in Tokyo.

Sidenote: In the same isue of GQ that drew my attention to Ben's Chili Bowl was an article on the best food cities in the world, which were Los Angles, Bangkok, Madrid, and the Piedmont region. I was happy and agreed with the inclusion of Bangkok, but the omission of Tokyo seems criminal to me. It seems New York was also quite upset at being overlooked. I don't know LA or Piedmont well enough to comment, but I'm not sure Madrid is even the best city to eat in Spain...Barcelona anyone? San Sebastian?

Washington D.C. General Impressions

I basically spent two weeks in Seattle and Spokane visiting family and friends, before heading east to Washington DC. I visited DC about 5 years ago to visit my college friend Hadley, who is still living there, and my friend Michele, from the JET Program in Koshigaya, who is also still living in the area. In addition another couple of friends have moved there, Jon and Audrey-both of whom I’ve known for more than 15 years.

I did the tourist thing 5 years ago, so this time was mostly spent hanging out with freinds. But we did some touristy things that I didn’t do last time I visited. For example, we went to the National Art Gallery and The Library of Congress. The National Gallery had some impressive pieces and had this great waterfall wall in the foyer between buildings. (see below)

The east building of the Library of Congress was impressive. It almost reminded me of Versailles outside of Paris for its ostentatious decoration inside. (see below)

I think DC has changed a lot since I was last there. It’s going through extreme gentrification. You can see building cranes all over the city from Jon and Audrey's rooftop. Jon and Audrey, in particular, are living in a neighborhood “in transition”(Logan Circle): trendy restaurants and luxury condos side by side with liquor stores and methadone clinics. I think my freind Hadley put it best when he described DC as a city of extremes and contradictions: black/white, rich/poor, upscale/ramshackle, big city/small townish, etc.

I like the fact that it is easy to get around-the second most comprehensive metro system inthe US-I’ve heard. There are lots of nice little neighborhoods with restaurants, cafes, and bars: Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, etc, and it seems to have a large educated, liberal population-walking around café you see people studying for the GRE, MCAT and LSAT, reading books. I think it would be intersting to be in the middle of the political circus as well. There are plenty of galleries, theaters, and museums. The weather was pretty brutal though-on par with Tokyo’s humidity, but I’ve heard this last only about 6 weeks. I definately think I could live there.

Refusing The Past

I can't believe that items like this (from Japan Today) still make the news:

Court dismisses damages in libel suit over wartime beheading game in China

Wednesday, August 24, 2005 at 07:39 JST
TOKYO — The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday dismissed a damages suit filed by the relatives of two executed Japanese soldiers against two newspapers and a journalist over publications that said the two competed against each other to be first to behead 100 Chinese soldiers during wartime in 1937.

Three family members of the two Imperial Japanese Army soldiers filed the lawsuit seeking 36 million yen in damages against the Mainichi Shimbun, the Asahi Shimbun and Katsuichi Honda, a journalist and former Asahi reporter. Judge Akio Doi said it is difficult to prove the news articles were fabricated in view of the fact that one of the soldiers made remarks taken to admit he had been involved in the reported beheading contest.

I have been to Nanking, China and have visited a museum that has physical documentation of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops while occupating Manchuria, and this was one of the documented stories. Yet I have an intelligent, liberal minded, well-travlled doctor freind who also visited this museum and called it the "liar's" museum. The refusal of the Japanese to confront their bloody past was compared to that of the Germans in an excellent book by one of my favorite Japanese scholars, Ian Buruma, in his book The Wages of Guilt.

Update: Part of the problem is that the increasing conservative government is omitting the less than flattering facts from junior high school and high school textbooks. There was an interesting piece in The Last Word column about the younger generation's ignorance of war crimes committed by the Japanese in WWII in last week's Metropolis.

Hiroshima Memorial At Green Lake

On August 6th I met my friend Joey Akamatsu at Green Lake in Seattle and we comemorated the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima by launching paper lanterns on Green Lake. There were volunteer groups of Japanese Americans writing mesages in Japanese on the paper. As you can see, it was a beautiful specatacle.

Absence Excuses

This week’s US Culture column addresses class absence excuses that the Japanese teacher gets from community college students, which reflects American culture. However, she doesn’t really compare it to Japanese absence excuses.

Perhaps, this is because students rarely give them. I am quite strict on attendance since there are usually only 24 classes a year and I make this very clear the first day of class. I can only fail a student if they miss more than 1/3 of the classes. Furthermore, in a communication class participation is key, so if a student regularly attends and tries I will pass them even if they have failed every test. But if a student regularly misses class and still passes tests, they will fail. Mastery involves more than being able to pass paper tests (of course this opens the can of worms regarding class size and evaluation methods). But there are always a few students who wander into the class 6 weeks after the first class with no textbook or excuse as to why they haven’t been attending class, and the gall always amazes me.

Most students know my policy, so if they argue for an excused absence it is usually because of an unofficial club activity and I tell them it is their option to attend class or tennis tournament or whatever, but they will suffer the consequences. My first year I accepted these documents, because I thought they were official and got burned-one student brought in more than 10 of these documents, but I was forced to accept them since I had accepted similar documents from other students. But now I let them know they are not acceptable. Occasionally a train is late because of an accident or weather, and that results in a missed class. Many students live as far as two hours away. I’ll excuse them if they can foster proof-that is a stamped ticket from a train station proving that a train was behind schedule. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of students attending funerals as well-sometimes I am skeptical, but I feel I have to take their word on this and give them an excused absence.

I am also quite strict about tardiness, but I am considering becoming tougher. I find this extremely rude, since most students don’t even apologize for coming late and disrupting class. My current policy is that one tardy is acceptable, but two equal one absence, and I keep deducting points from the 100 each student begins with at the beginning of a semester. However, I am thinking about marking students absent who are not in the classroom when I take attendance, because sometimes I have 6-8 students entering class within the first half hour-but more than 45 minutes is an automatic absence. I confront any student who is habitually late and it’s usually because they oversleep. It’s these administrative details that I find most tedious, despite their necessity. I think one of the reason students are so lax about attendance is that in large classes friends will sign eachother in and the professor don't really to check if they are all legit, most, if not all students, have their education paid for by their parents, and the lack of rigor involved in passing classes. In fact, we are often advised by administration not to fail any students unless they fail to conform to the attendance standard. I guess this is so that incoming places are kept open-there is an entrance fee for incoming students in addition to tuition.

Ryan Adams At The Sandpoint Festival

While visiting in Spokane, I had the opportunity to go to the Festival at Sandpoint with some friends to see Ryan Adams and The Cardinals play at an outdoor festival in nearby North Idaho. Here's the group in the picture above:(top) Pat Simmons, Karyn, me (bottom) Eric, Mark, and his wife Kristin. It takes about 90 minutes to get there and North Idaho is absolutley gorgeous this time of year. There was good food and they sold alcohol at the festival. I was really excited to see Adams, since he is currently one of my favorite artists, and he didn't let me down. Although he didn't play all of my favorite tunes (he has a very large backlog of songs), he did play my favorite song "Dear Chicago" and most of my favorites off of his latest release Cold Roses, as well as some songs from earlier albums. He also played some of the songs in newly inspired arrangements. The most disconcerting thing about the concert was his unintelligible nonsequitors and comments in between songs as he smoked, rambled, responded to catcalls from the audience, and generally acted as if he smoked a lot of wacky weed prior to the concert. But all in all, an inspired performance, that I imensely enjoyed. In fact, it inspired me to pick up the one album that I hadn't bought yet, Rock N Roll, which I am enjoying as well.

Summer School Series

Salon.com has had an interesting weekly series this summer called Summer School, in which writers/critics read and discuss classic books that they hadn't got around to reading. It has been an opportunity to revisit some old favorites (War and Peace, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenia, The Prince, Madame Bovary, and Lord of the Flies), allow me to reconsider some books that I was curious about reading (The Wapshot Chronicle, The Art of War, Little Dorrit, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and inspire me to seek out a couple of classics that I haven't gotten around to myself (Lost Illusions by Balzac and The Wings of the Dove by James).