If you want to know what to know what a city might look like if Asia, Europe and the U.S. were mixed in to one, you should go to Hong Kong. I arrived here a day early on a business trip, so I can take in the city since I’ve never been here before. In some ways, Hong Kong is disappointing because it looks like any other cosmopolitan city. On the other hand, it’s probably the most comfortable city I’ve ever visited in Asia. The streets are clean, the transportation is modern and most people speak English. Hong Kong might officially be part of China, but having been to three cities in China, I can tell you firsthand that it’s nothing like the rest of the country. For one thing, toilet paper is available in restrooms and you can even flush it down the toilet — a minor thing perhaps, but nonetheless important. The food here is good too. I spent the late afternoon, early evening in Causeway Bay shopping and grabbed a noodle soup and shanghai dumplings for dinner. It was northern style (noodles made without eggs), but a lot more flavorful than the ones I’ve had in Beijing. All in all, it’s been a satisfying beginning to a one week stay.

 

 

In the too-disgusting-to-keep-it-to-myself department, there was a new sign up in the stalls in the ladies room at the office today. It said something to the effect of the following: “There have been several occasions recently when ‘used sanitary napkins’ were left sticking on the wall of the bathroom stall. Please place them wrapped in the sanitary bins provided.”

Enough said, I think.

Postscript: A colleague friend of mine and I had a debate today about who put the napkins on the wall– A woman with a nasty habit or a pervert. Any thoughts?

I got back from Dalian, China where I was on a short visit to see my father who was finishing up a one-month study abroad (after retiring last June). I’ve always heard that there is no such thing as independent media in China, but I now have an inkling of what that actually means. I was interested to note that the English language newspapers had nothing on the biggest news right now — the violent protests over the derogatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper and the new photos that have emerged related to the abuse in Abu Gharib prision. Instead there was an article on politics in Thailand.
On the other hand, I was amused to note some of the other news they had. One such winner was a story about condoms being a popular Valentines’ gift.

One of the few events that I care about in the winter Olympics is figure skating. But the Japanese coverage of the Olympics is quite ridiculous. I understand that every country can be very patriotic when it comes to the Olympic games, but I had to laugh at the coverage of men’s figure skating. Japanese media had been billing its only male figure skater, Daisuke Takahashi, as a serious medal candidate. It was amusing to see the commentary on the short program because the commentator played up Takashashi’s program as much as possible even though he ranked fifth and his performance was clearly not medal quality. The commentator was very reserved in his commentary of Plushenko even though it was perfect.

Coverage of the long program was even worse. The headline during the entire event was Takahashi vs Plushenko even though Takahashi was nowhere close to touching Plushenko. His performance was so poor that even he had to laugh at his abysmal score. Even then the commentator played up his performance while criticizing a couple tiny mistakes that Plushenko made.

Coverage of the snowboarding events were much the same way. That was actually more ridiculous because the gap in the level between the Japanese athletes and the top athletes was huge. I suppose though that it’s understandable given that Japan has not gotten a single medal. This after everyone thought Japan could rack up record medals this year.

I received a birthday card yesterday from a resort in Bali that we visited two years ago. The thing is — my birthday was a month ago. Upon closer inspection of the envelope I saw that they screwed up my address. In fact the only thing they got right was my name and the prefecture (Tokyo). If, for example, my address was something like: Akasaka Garden Hills 303, Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 000-0000

They wrote it as:
1-11 Asaka Garden Hius 000-001 Tokyo

You get the idea. There’s no way you could figure out what the actual address is given that there was no ward name in a city with 23 wards, the street numbers were completely wrong, and the apartment name was wrong, so you couldn’t even figure out which area in the ward it was supposed to be sent to. In the U.S., it would’ve been returned to sender and rightly so. In Japan, they apparently took the time to actually try and figure out to whom it was intended for.

I’d heard of the amazing people at Japan Post, but this was the first time I’ve seen them in action. Somebody must have taken the time to look for the name addressed on the envelope in all of Tokyo. This would not be difficult in the U.S. since I’d stand out with a Japanese name, but in Japan, it’s a feat. I heard that Japan Post in the past has printed information about mail they couldn’t find homes for in the newspaper in the hopes that intended recipients would recognize their mail. I don’t know if they do that still, but it’s impressive.

On the other hand, they did spend a month finding me so they can send through a card that was essentially a marketing ploy.

My pet hermit crab Gonzo died. The really sad thing is that we didn’t notice until  today.  Let me explain.  We were convinced that Gonzo was getting ready to shed his skin because he stopped eating a lot and spent a lot of time digging. Before he shed his skin the last time, he buried himself in the gravel underneath his water and food bowl. He was doing that again.

Well our cameraman noticed that he hasn’t been seen at all in the past few days, so I decided to look under his bowl. And there was his body.

We’re not quite sure what happened, but the consensus is that maybe his blood pressure got too high or he didn’t get enough nutrients from the popcorn he ate. If he lived by popcorn then he also died by popcorn.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but it does seem awfully convenient that Princess Kiko is pregnant. For those who aren’t on top of the news about Japan’s royal family, there’s been a huge debate recently about whether to change the law to allow females to succeed the throne because the crown prince and princess have a daughter and no son. The prime minister was supportive of the idea, but there have been vehement objections about changing the 2,000 year old tradition (conveniently ignoring the fact that empresses have existed in the past).

Just as the bill changing succession rules looked like it could be passed, lo and behold, we find out that the crown prince’s younger brother’s wife is pregnant, and the prime minister is pulling back his support. Consider the facts:

• She’s 39 years old
• It’s been nearly 12 years since she’s had a child
• It was leaked to the press even before her husband was told (can we say doctor?)
• It was announced at six weeks, which is way too early to publicize especially at her age

Clearly she was following someone’s orders. The question that comes to my mind is — was there some intervention in the pregnancy process and did they engineer a boy? A colleague told me this is illegal in Japan, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop them — the country is certainly desperate enough. On the other hand, it would be typical of the Imperial Household to announce the preganancy before they know whether it’s a boy or girl and end up with another girl.

It’s really a sad situation all around. The younger prince and his wife are going to be raising children until nearly 60, and the pregnancy itself is a big fuck you to the Crown Princess, whose been driven to illness by the pressure to have a son.