Lost In Translation

Kichijoji Nights

While my Aussie friends Edward and Jeleesan were in Japan, they were staying with our Japanese friends Ritsu and Tomo in their lovely house nearby Inokashira Park in Kichijoji. As a result we spent a couple of evenings in and around their home. Saturday we ate a local sushi restaurant that had extremely fresh and expertly prepared sushi. After that we checked out a funky A Clockwork Orange-inspired bar, The Milk Bar, that I had read about on the internet. The picture above is at Kichijoji station.

It was located in the heart of the entertainment district and, as you can see in the picture below, had a very original interior-complete with A Clockwork Orange being played on the TV screen above the bar.

The following night we had a dinner party at Tomo and Ritsu's house, and they prepared some lovely food (see below) and provided some tasty wines.

Here are the dinner attendees from left to right: Ritsu, Tomo, Edward, Sayuri, Tony, and Jeleesan.

NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2007

The NY Times annually publishes a list of 100 notable books and a Top 10 for the year. These two lists have just come out this week and it looks there's plenty of good reading ahead. Of the 100, I have read only one, What Is The What? by Dave Eggers.

I see that Martin Amis' A House of Meetings is out in paperback already, so I imagine I'll probably read that sometime soon. I am interested in the National Book Award winner Tree of Smoke after reading a laudatory review in Harper’s. However, the other nominees have also provided what look like some interesting reads, Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris, Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, and Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis. Some others in the top 100 I want to read include: The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta, After Dark by Haruki Murakami, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and On Chesil Beach by Ian Mc Ewan.

A Night in Shimokitazawa

My Aussie friends Jeleesan and Edward (above left to right) last week so we had a night out with Ritsu and Tomo (next to Jeleesan and Edward in the picture), and Tony (not pictured). We started out iwth a drink at Heaven's Door across from one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo-Shirubee, which has a great service, an eclectic fusion menu, and a lively atmosphere as well as reasonable prices that won't break the bank. Then we went to Ushi-Tora, which was mentioed in an article about craft beers in Japan by the NY Times here.

Here's some of the excellent fusion fare at Shirubee. Suigyoza or steamed dumplings and on the left and garlic and chili pepper edo mamae (hot salted soybeans marinated in garlic and chili pepper served hot-delicious).

Here we have Dragonballz (named after the cartoon series)sushi-with ikura (fish eggs), avocado, and shrimp on vinegar rice. To the right is a jalepeno tomato pizza as well.

Oden is a fairly common cold weather dish in Japan, but the presentation is all Shirubee-phallic daikon (Japanese radish).

I Married A Communist

I have to say that I really enjoyed Philip Roth’s I Married A Communist. It is part of the American Trilogy that also includes American Pastoral and The Human Stain, both of which I have yet to read. Roth tackles the usual Rothian themes of sex, marriage, and the Jewish American experience, but the post war political themes interested me despite the fact that our popular culture has been inundated with references to McCarthyism and the Red Scare with movies like Good Night, and Good Luck. Nathan Zuckerman tells the larger than life story of Ira Ringold aka Iron Rinn, the left leaning radio actor that was doomed to fall. His story is one of rising above his modest beginnings as an uneducated ditch digger to the lofty height so the upper Eastside that ends in humiliation and betrayal. Roth doe an excellent job of recreating post WWII America and its attitudes. The story within the story is the story of Nathan Zuckerman’s development and surrogate father that helped lead him to become a novelist.

The Frugal Traveler / Seattle

The Frugal Traveler visits my former home, Seattle, and mostly eats his way around the city:

THE dining room at Cascadia — one of Seattle's top restaurants, with a cutting-edge chef, luminous décor and a cellar lauded by Wine Spectator — was empty. No one sat on the green banquettes, eating Alaskan king crab with white-truffle gnocchi under the coppery mahogany paneling, and empty wineglasses sparkled on white tablecloths. Only an occasional wandering waiter disturbed this stillness.

Across a frosted-glass divider, however, Cascadia's bar growled with energy. Every stool was taken on this Friday night, and upscale Seattleites mobbed the lounge and the sidewalk tables, where the setting sun warmed their faces and melted the ice in their cocktails. Of course no one was at dinner — this was happy hour.

To the Frugal Traveler, no phrase is more inspiring than “happy hour.” The prospect of two-for-one drinks and post-work camaraderie fills his heart with hope. If only every hour could be happy! But in Seattle, those 60 minutes of joy have been elevated into evenings not only of cheap drinks but also of discount gourmet snacks at the classiest restaurants. From midafternoon till long after midnight, one can graze on the delicacies of the Pacific Northwest, and still get change from a Jackson.

Recent British Cinema

Over the past few months I have seen a number of interesting contemporary films from Great Britain. For example, there’s Green Street Hooligans starring Elijah Wood as a wayward American who gets caught up in the hooligan culture via his sister’s (the always lovely Claire Forlani) husband’s brother. The film glamorizes hooliganism as it tries to condemn it at the same time. A typically mainstream version of hooliganism.

Made In Britain stars a very young Tim Roth as an antisocial skinhead with above average intelligence that is just born bad. A caseworker takes a shine to him due to his intellect, but wastes all the good will as he commits one self-destructive act after another. It is a riveting performance by the young Roth.

I was quite intrigued by Red Road, a Scottish film that is difficult to categorize. At first, it seems to be a film about voyerism, but then the main cahracter, convincngly played by Kate Dickie, inplicates herself in the life of the mysterious man she is observing. It is a film about vengeance, justice, and forgiveness. However, it is a mystery-suspense film as well. I don’t want to give too much away, but it is a film that deals with personal reactions to grief, vengeance, and closure.

I’ve been a fan of the 7 Up series since college, which must have been when I saw 35 Up, because the latest installment is 49 Up. It is fascinating look at socioeconomic class and how it affects people as well as giving the subjects an opportunity for self-introspection that seems to be a burden for some. Whenever I see the series it makes me review my own life. In a sense it was the first reality show since it has been going on for over forty years now. It’s interesting how it sometimes becomes meta as the subjects comment on director Michael Apted, his line of questioning, and the series’ effect on their respective lives.

London To Brighton is another upbeat story about a runaway who accidentally kills her first john and goes on the lam to Brighton from London. There are plenty of unsavory characters including a hard luck prostitute that takes the young girl in under her wing despite her better instincts. It is oddly hopeful in the end after a surprising climax.

Joneji Temple

This temple is at Kurihira not far from our apartment. There are lots of funerals here on the weekends.

There's some nice landscaping outside the temple.

Here are some Jizo (guardian of children) statues infornt of the temple, a common sight in Japan.

Spielbeg And Urban Malaise?

Keith Phiipps (of the Onion AV Club) re-evaluates Close Encounters of the Third Kind, inlieu of the 30th anniversary DVD edition, for Slate and makes an interesting analysis of pre-family Spielberg:

Steven Spielberg became a household name with tales of action, adventure, and, beginning with Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, visitors from other worlds. It's a subject he would return to again and again, and one he approached with the zeal of a true believer. Prior to making his 1977 follow-up to the breakthrough hit Jaws, the young director had spent years clipping mentions of UFO sightings from newspapers, talking to ex-military men who believed in a cover-up, and befriending experts like J. Allen Hynek, whose scale of UFO encounter types gives the film its title. But take a closer look at Close Encounters, particularly if you haven't seen the movie in a while, and you realize the movie has a rather un-Spielbergian subtext. The protagonist, a young suburban dad penned in by the responsibilities of fatherhood, leaps at the first chance to leave those responsibilities behind. Given the opportunity, in the movie's final scene, to board the aliens' mother ship and fly away, he doesn't spare a thought for the wife and kids he's leaving behind. The stars await.

This from the director who has been ratifying the importance of family for a quarter-century now, in movies as diverse in their subject matter and genres as E.T., The Color Purple, Hook, Empire of the Sun, and Minority Report. Spielberg himself acknowledges that Close Encounters is a different kind of movie. "I would never have made Close Encounters the way I made it in '77, because I have a family that I would never leave," he said in a 1997 making-of documentary. "That was just the privilege of youth." But though he's twice re-edited the movie—in 1980 and again in 1997—each time casting a more skeptical eye on Neary's abandonment of his family, the act of abandonment still stands out. It's a glimpse of a different Steven Spielberg than the one we've come to know.

All three versions of Close Encounters are included on the new three-disc "30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition DVD," and in all three our protagonist is Roy Neary, a Muncie, Ind., electric company lineman played by Richard Dreyfuss (the actor Spielberg has often referred to as his onscreen surrogate). Roy becomes obsessed with aliens after seeing a UFO firsthand. Dispatched to investigate some strange outages, he gets lost along an Indiana back road and buzzed by a small, colorful alien ship. After returning home, Roy is able to focus on nothing else. He begins collecting newspaper clippings and turning every pliable substance he can find into a shape he'll later discover is Wyoming's Devil's Tower. When he eventually raids a neighbor's yard for chicken wire so he can build a living-room-sized sculpture of that landmark, Roy's wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr), packs their three children into the family station wagon and leaves both husband and film behind.

The Great White North

The New York times has a travel article that focuses on Tsurunoyu Onsen in Akita prefecture:

It was after a three-hour train ride north from Tokyo, heading for Tsurunoyu Onsen, that I learned Tsurunoyu isn’t an onsen at all. “It’s really more of a hitou,” Moto, my guide, delicately pointed out. We were in Honshu Island’s far-north prefecture of Akita, winding our way up the unpaved road to the 300-year-old mountain lodge, and Moto seemed especially intent on setting me straight. An onsen, he explained, is a natural hot spring. A hitou is a natural hot spring that is hidden. Ah. Hiddenness being perhaps the most prized characteristic in Japanese culture — second only to a love of drawing precise distinctions on a minute scale — I undertood this was a critical difference.

Tsurunoyu finally emerged from a gulch in the hills. It seemed tiny. The original lodge is flanked by a handful of low thatch-and-wood structures added over the decades, all backed by a sheer, massive wall of coniferous green. In the middle of the compound is a stream that runs down the hillside and alongside a shallow, oblong pool of hot, ice-blue water that bubbles up from the ground, where people soak for hours at a stretch. Until World War II, Tsurunoyu was something like a sanitarium; the ill and injured came here to recoup with the help of the water’s healing minerals. It’s the oldest and most picturesque of seven hot-spring inns in the immediate area, known collectively as the Nyuto onsens. In a 20-mile radius, there are some dozen more — but those are not really hitous and, according to Japanese logic, draw fewer visitors.

See No Evil

Bruce Wallace, of The LA Times, had an interesting article that ran in The Daily Yomiuri today about the lack of autopsies in Japan and the police's tendancy to avoid classifying murders as murders to keep the stats down. This became an inssue in a recent controversial case where a young sumo wrestler was beaten to death by his stablemates and it was classified as a heart attack:

TOKYO — Photos of the teenager's corpse show a deep cut on his right arm, horrific bruising on his neck and chest. His face is swollen and covered with cuts. A silhouette of violence runs from the corner of his left eye over the cheekbone to his jaw, and his legs are pocked with small burns the size of a lighted cigarette.

But police in Japan's Aichi prefecture saw something else when they looked at the body of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old sumo wrestler who arrived at a hospital in June. The cause of death was "heart disease," police declared.

As is common in Japan, Aichi police reached their verdict on how Saito died without an autopsy. No need for a coroner, they said. No crime involved. Only 6.3% of the unnatural deaths in Aichi are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2% of cases.

Forensic scientists say there are many reasons for the low rate, including inadequate budgets and a desperate shortage of pathologists outside the biggest urban areas. There is also a cultural resistance in Japan to handling the dead, with families often reluctant to insist upon a procedure that invades the body of a loved one.

But Saito's case has given credence to complaints by a group of frustrated doctors, former pathologists and ex-cops who argue that Japan's police culture is the main obstacle.

Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher homicide rate in their jurisdiction, and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, the group alleges. Odds are, it says, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in the world.

"You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined," says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division. He says senior police officers are "obsessed with statistics because that's how you get promotions," and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate.

Japan's annual police report says its officers made arrests in 96.6% of the country's 1,392 homicides in 2005.

But Saikawa, who says he became disillusioned by "fishy" police practices and in 1997 left the force in disgust after 30 years, claims that police try to avoid adding homicides to their caseload unless the identity of the killer is obvious.

"All the police care about is how they look to people; it's all PR to show that their capabilities are high," Saikawa says. "Without autopsies they can keep their percentage [of solved cases] high. It's all about numbers."

The former policeman has written a memoir of his time on the force. Called "Policeman at the Scene," it describes a police culture that has chipped away at the effectiveness of an autopsy system created during the U.S. occupation after World War II.

"The police textbooks taught us not to trust doctors," he says, adding that police officers indirectly pressure doctors to sign death certificates without an autopsy. "Doctors are afraid of the police. They are afraid of retaliation. They worry the police could prosecute them for malpractice. So they are easily pressured.

"There is no one refereeing the police," Saikawa says. "It's scary."

After the war, Americans created a medical examiner's office for Tokyo after learning that thousands of deaths in the postwar rubble were being ascribed to starvation without any forensic examination. It was soon discovered that a tuberculosis epidemic was the main culprit.

The system was soon expanded to six other big cities which, for the most part, are the jurisdictions where autopsies are done with the most frequency (in 2004, autopsies were conducted in 29% of Kanagawa prefecture's unnatural deaths; 18% of those in Tokyo). But much of the country remains without a fully functioning medical examiner system.