The New York Philharmonic held a concert in North Korea earlier this week, and the Wall Street Journal focused its story on the spontaneous five-minute applause that occurred at the end of the concert, where there was a lot of clapping, waving and even cheering. The article went on to talk about the lengths that the North Korean government went to in order to prepare for the visitors, and the connections that the musicians felt with the attendees, even as it mentioned the political issues.

By contrast, it was interesting to watch this morning’s news on Japanese television, where there was no mention of the encores at the end, but showed face after face of grim-faced North Koreans during the concert, clapping solemnly. The Japanese network used the images as a way to point out that North Koreans were just acting according to instructions by the government, and how some of the tenseness (and Kim Jong-Il’s lack of appearance) reflected the problems of U.S.-North Korea relations. That evolved into a discussion about how screwed up things were.

Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as impartial coverage, but I found it to be an interesting example where this was very evident. The truth might be somewhere in the middle of the two interpretations, but I was startled by the degree of manipulation on the Japanese network.

There are some things I will never understand about Japan no matter how long I live here. One of those things is the relative freedom people here seem to feel about pointing out physical attributes. It’s fairly normal here for variety show MCs on television to talk about the size of a young female celebrity’s breasts, and the women themselves will sometimes even start a conversation about it.

But it’s not only on television. It seems that one of things that people here think is a sign of affection or friendliness is to comment on someone’s weight. That’s not a problem if you’ve lost weight, but that’s not necessarily always the case. I was in the elevator of my office building last week, when two guys (colleagues?) bumped into each other for the first time in a long time. After the initial “long time no see” greetings, one guy pleasantly asks the other, “Did you gain weight?” The other guy replied laughing — “Yeah, I did, and I’ve even bought a snack right now.”

I was trying to come up with any scenario in the U.S. where that kind of question would be appropriate.

Today was my grandfather’s 49 day memorial service. As the kindly priest explained it, people used to bury their dead right away to avoid decay and family members would visit the grave every 7 days for four weeks. Since cremation became popular and as people have started to die, not in their homes, but elsewhere, the ashes are kept in the home so the dead can rest at home for awhile before they go to “the other side”.

I’m a Catholic so I don’t quite understand everything about the ceremony, but it was clear that most of my relatives didn’t either. I find most religious ceremonies to be spiritual and this priest had a great chanting voice, but I was worried about having to sit with my feet tucked under me, which can be very painful if you’re not used to it. Fortunately, modernization had helped take care of that problem. Since the last time I attended a Buddhist ceremony, it appears they discovered stools.