We woke up bleary-eyed at the Novotel airport hotel in Bangkok after landing at midnight the night before and getting just 3 hours of sleep, but the trip started out as magical and exotic as promised even before we got to Bhutan.

After we boarded our early morning Druk Air flight, the flight attendant welcomed the Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen. Apparently, we were sharing our flight with a Bhutanese princess, though we never saw her on the plane. The flight, we found out, was also to make a stopover in a place called Dhaka, which gave us our first (and only) glimpse of Bangladesh. We were struck by the tremendous poverty just looking out the window. Then 20 minutes before we landed in Bhutan, the pilot told us to look outside the windows on the left side. We did, and there was Mount Everest in all of its glory. I never thought I’d see Mt. Everest and since I’m not a climber, it’s probably the closest I’ll get to it. Finally, when we landed, we saw a small group of officials standing and rolling out the red carpet for the princess. I still can’t figure out where she was sitting because she wasn’t in first class with us. My best guess is that she had a special seat in the cockpit with the pilots.
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Japan is the land of harmony, or “wa”. One of the most important traits for everyone to live peacefully in such a small country is to make sure that you don’t cause conflict or stand out too much. But I’m learning that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get your way, or you have to give in to people. It just means that you have to figure out way to get what you want without being confrontational. I learned about one useful technique to accomplish this at my kimono-wearing lesson this past weekend.

I had bought a beautiful antique obi (the thing that you tie around yourself at the waist) to go with my yellow kimono several months ago, but when I was finally ready to start practicing with it this weekend, my teacher discovered that it was a little too short. She suggested that I go to a kimono shop that she knows to get it lengthened, which you can do by adding other material to the parts that will be hidden when you tie it into an elaborate bow.

After she gave me all the information about what I should ask them to do, she had one last piece of advice for me. She said to me, “They are very fair at the shop, and they won’t try to cheat you, but they are running a business, so they’re going to try and sell you other stuff. Don’t buy anything else. Just tell them that you already have a lot of kimonos and accessories that were passed down from your mother.”

She then quoted a Japanese saying that essentially meant “sometimes it’s necessary to lie.” It gives white lies a whole new meaning.

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.

Bagels are one of those things that the Japanese don’t understand. We’ve come along way from the awful bagel-shaped bread that they used to call bagels, and there are semi-decent bagels to be found here, mainly through frozen H&H bagels or a chain called Bagel & Bagel, though a New Yorker would probably call that a gross overstatement. Still they’re okay in a pinch. What I can’t stand are restaurants that sell bagels but totally don’t get how they’re eaten.

I was at a cafe called Zoka in Akasaka Mitsuke this morning for a German lesson, and I ordered a blueberry bagel for breakfast. I made sure they could toast it beforehand. They told me yes. Literally 10 seconds later, I get a slightly warm bagel, completely unbrowned. I ask them why they can’t toast it, and they re-toast it. Another 10 seconds later, I get a slightly warmer bagel, still untoasted. Now I ask you, who eats a warmed untoasted bagel? They really should be banned from selling bagels if they don’t understand how a bagel should be eaten. The Japanese talk about issuing sushi certification. Maybe New York should consider issuing bagel certification.

I really hate Japan right now. I needed to get my passport renewed so I went to the Passport office bright and early this morning. Before I went, I carefully checked the Web site to make sure that I had everything because I know by now that there’s a lot of documents that you need to prepare. Armed with my passport photo, my current passport, my hanko (chop) just in case, and a self-addressed stamped postcard (which they require you to provide because they can’t spare the expense of mailing you a notification card), I arrived at the office, determined to zip in and zip out.

No such luck. Of course, the one item, they won’t provide online is the renewal form. And of course, that requires the one piece of information that I didn’t have — the address of my official registry. And of course, this is the day that no one in my family, who knows, is reachable. And now I have to go back.

Damn Japanese bureaucracy.

I just spent the last week doing a crazy reporting tour around Europe, going to Dublin, Lund (Sweden via Copenhagen Airport), London and then back to Berlin late Friday. I’m not eager to do something like this again for awhile, given that my first day started out with an 11-hour delay, but it was definately an interesting trip. With the caveat that I had very limited experience in some of the countries, here is what I discovered:

Dublin: It’s a charming city, and the Guiness here is really that good — it’s the only glass of beer I’ve ever had where I’ve finished the whole thing. My Irish companion, whose father used to build Guiness breweries around the world, swears that it’s highly recommended for pregnant women because it contains lots of iron. However, their bathroom doors have no coat hooks to hang your purse and their airline, Aer Lingus, sucks. Not only was the delay unacceptable, they were horrible at keeping you informed of what’s going on. My flight that should’ve landed at noon, landed at 11:30pm. The only thing that can make it worse is traveling with a plane full of patient, cheery Irish people. I waited for a U.S.-style riot in vain.

Copenhagen: Even more precise then Germans. I was informed at baggage claim that bags would arrive in exactly 11 minutes, and on the way back out, there was a sign at security that said the wait in line would be exactly 7 minutes long. Their bathrooms, thank god, did have coat hooks, and they’ve got pretty decent airport shopping but on the minus side, they don’t sell Danishes at the airport. I looked. I can’t really tell you any more than that because I only saw the airport. (Question: does this count as having been to Denmark? Is it kosher to mark Denmark as “been there” on my Facebook map?)

Lund: This is a town on the southern tip of Sweden. We were warned that there was absolutely nothing to do here, but we found Lund to be a lovely university town — a bit like Northampton, Mass., but without the hippies. I also actually had one of my best meals on the trip here, which I’m ashamed to admit was a surprise (When I think Sweden, I think Ikea and their yummy Swedish meatballs).

London: So insanely expensive that converting everything into dollars can make you physically ill. I paid about $70 for a round-trip train ticket to and from Stansted airport into the city, $12 for a quick lunch of a Cornish pasty (meat filled pastry) and a diet coke, $20 for a disposable camera (though they were on a 2-for-1 sale), and nearly $300 for a plain hotel room. I treated myself to tea at the Ritz, and I can’t even think about how much I paid for that. Bathroom doors here also have no coat hooks, which makes going to the bathroom with a coat and a purse a challenge if you don’t want to set it down on the floor. I’m also convinced that British keyboards have an extra key on the second row because I kept hitting the percent key or something when I wanted to hit return. I guess British fingers are longer? All in all, it was a beautiful city, but I don’t think I can go back unless we become multi-millionaires. Which would also be important because I would need to get cosmetic surgery to lengthen my fingers.

I’m in Europe right now. Prague to be precise. It’s amazing (more on that later), but right now I need to rant. About shower curtains, or the general lack thereof in Europe.

We’re staying at a lovely apartment in the middle of old town in Prague, within minutes of the famous Charles Bridge, which is picturesque as long as you don’t have a husband that reminds you that this is where they put up spiked heads a long time ago. Anyway, this apartment is perfect except for the fact that it’s only got a glass shield thingie that covers half the tub, and no shower curtain so all the water gets on the floor. Actually, let me amend that. There is a shower curtain, but it covers the window on the other side of the tub. Last year, when we rented an apartment in Berlin, it also had no shower curtain at all, so you had to stand in a dribble of water to make sure you weren’t making puddles. We’ve also stayed in friends’ homes in Europe with no shower curtains, which makes you feel really bad when you create a big puddle.

Someone, please tell me why they don’t use shower curtains in Europe! Do they like cleaning puddles every morning? Is it supposed to be a natural reminder to wipe up the bathroom floor every morning, or is there some sort of secret benefit or aesthetic to showering without shower curtains that I’m not aware of?

I received an invitation for an exhibit from the Philadelphia Museum of Art today in the mail at work. The invitation was on thick paper and very attractively designed. But imagine my surprise, when I opened it up to see that the printed invitation was addressed “Dear Sir”. The Japanese side of it was just a normal invite.

It really never ceases to amaze me how Japanese people can get this sort of thing so wrong like this. There are so many people now who speak English especially in Tokyo. Couldn’t they have dug someone up and checked with them? Even if they didn’t, everyone has had at least 6 years of English, which is plenty of time to know that “Sir” is for men only.

My invite is going in the trash since the exhibit is obviously not meant for me.

I’ve been horrible about updating my blog. I think part of the reason is because I’ve gotten into updating my status on Facebook, and a lot of times, a line is all you need to share your thoughts with the rest of the world. But I finally found something that I need a little more space to write about.

Fourteen years ago, a good friend of mine — an American who was living in Japan for some time — got together with a bunch of his buddies to do a spoof of the Japan Times on April Fool’s Day. After going through a lot of trouble finding a printer, who was willing to print this, they ran several hundred copies and dropped them off at all of the government ministries in the early morning. The brouhaha, as a result, even made it on the ten o’clock news. My friend had given me a copy years ago, but I had all but forgotten about it until recently. The paper, however, is timeless in many respects, and definately priceless.

The paper has winners like the following:

Headline — Politicians Come Clean

In a bid to improve its flagging image, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party launched a policy of confessing to all prior crimes and infractions to demonstrate sincerity and deep regret. This follows last week’s announcement of a temporary amnesty program where all politicians confessing to sufficiently serious crimes will be eligible for discount fines, suspended sentences and frequent flyer miles.

The front page story about how the Kansai International Airport, which was being built at the time (on landfill) disappeared during unusually heavy rains while the construction crew was at lunch. The picture was of surfers riding past a floating control tower.

But the one that I couldn’t stop laughing about, even though it had nothing to do with Japan, was the tiny section at the back of the paper called “Today’s Chuckle”. It posed the question, “If a person, who eats vegetables is a vegetarian, does that make Jeffrey Dahmer a humanitarian?”

A few weeks ago, I decided to see what all the hubbub was about. You know, the hubbub surrounding that ever popular organization for retired drunks, condemned quitters and judgmental born-again Christians known as Alcoholics Anonymous.

For over a month now I’ve been drunk free. Notice how I didn’t say drink free. Drunk free means I allow myself a drink (as in one drink) at night, usually a scotch and usually around 9:00pm. I nurse the damn thing until the cows come home, shit all over the meadow, are butchered and appear in the meats section at your local grocers. Drunk free means I haven’t been buzzed or wasted. Drunk free means I’m craving sweets like crazy. Drunk free means I bought a pack of Marlboro Lights last week. And guess what!? It’s working.

At my first and only AA meeting here in Tokyo, I was confronted by the force of a collective raised eyebrow and an intense, accusatory gaze. It demanded to know, “What are you doing here?” To which I replied, “To learn more about the Church of Latter Day Saints.” Dead silence. I think I heard a cricket commit suicide.

I quickly learned that in order to attend the meetings regularly you had to stop drinking completely. If you didn’t, you weren’t welcome back. If you did, they had some cool-aid for you to drink.

So I’m going it alone. I honestly thought it would be harder than it has been. Will I get drunk in the future? Certainly. Will that future be anytime soon? Probably not. Why the fuck not? Because I like knowing that I have control over me and it’s become a bit of a game. And God knows, I like me a good game and will not give up so easily…give up drinking that is.

I swear I will kill the next person who asks me when I’m taking my summer vacation.
Every summer, I go through this routine where person after person asks me if I’m taking a summer break. When I say “no,” there’s this shocked pause, followed by sympathetic sounds. It’s all just really tiresome.

Where does it say that everyone should take summer vacation, and if you’re not, you’re to be pitied? People here just don’t seem to understand that Americans take vacation whenever it suits them during the year. I don’t want to take a vacation during the summer when all the schools are on summer break, everything is crowded and expensive AND it’s hot no matter where you go unless you’re going south of the equator, where it’s winter. I happen to like working through the summer and taking my big vacation in the early spring (which incidentally shocks people too, though with envy)

Some things, I just wish people would leave me alone about.

Japanese cabs used to not only be clean, but the drivers were some of the best there is. They knew every road, every shortcut, every trick for getting around traffic. Not anymore. Yes, the cabs are still clean. But the drivers are clueless. In this spirit, here is my list of cabs that I hate.

- Cab drivers, who deliberately take congested roads, thereby driving up the fare. Everyone knows that Roppongi Dori is busy especially in the evening. Don’t take it.
- Cab drivers, who don’t know where they’re going. If you’re going to be a cab driver, at least know where the major intersections are.
- Cab drivers, who only know the major roads, or at least pretend to. This adds on a few hundred yen sometimes.
- Cab drivers, who don’t know where they’re going but won’t admit it.
- Cab drivers, who drive slow on purpose.
- Lazy cab drivers, who drive by and pretend not to see you because they don’t want to pick up the fare.

I’m getting worked up just thinking about this.

Patrick and I went to the new Midtown buildling to dine with some friends at the Union Square Tokyo last month.
That in itself is a whole ‘nother story that we will go into on Fugudiaries (hint: it was terrible), but afterwards, we both used the bathrooms as people are wont to do before they leave a place. Because the restaurant itself doesn’t have a bathroom, customers have to leave the place to use the common one on the floor. At Midtown, you walk down a hall. The first left is a larger private bathroom for the handicapped with automatic doors that you can open and close with a button. The second left is the mens’ room and the womens’ is at the far end.

Well, as we were coming out, the handicapped bathroom opened up, and we were surprised to see not one, but two people inside. A woman with a very short skirt and a skimpy top walked quickly out, while a man was still inside looking like he was throwing up in the sink or something. Patrick’s theory is that she was a prostitute since she walked out without saying a word to the guy.

Until that day, I actually liked the handicapped bathrooms because they were large, private and often available even when there was a line for the ladies’ room. I just hadn’t considered how else people might take advantage of its roomy interior. Now I know.

My partner and I went to Seoul last weekend for the hell of it. A dear friend warned me that as a vegetarian I should bring a stash of saltine crackers with me on the plane. I chose to ignore her advice. And I lost one kilo because of it.

Koreans have never met a pig they didn’t like. You see barbecued hog jaws piled on top of each other at outdoor markets. They love their cows too. At most local restaurants, you sit Indian-style on the floor and inhale a feast of cow inards and side dishes that include tiny, whole fish seasoned with what looks like diarrhea juice. Yummy!

During our day trip to the DMZ, our tour bus stopped at some fly-infested, Korean barbecue dive for lunch. On the way there, the tour guide asked if anyone was a vegetarian. I was delighted that she asked this question and was happy to discover that there were two other herbivores. So the totemo genki tour guide pranced over to my seat and asked if egg was okay. I said yes and she smiled like I had just told her that she had won a million Yuan.

Egg. Hmmm, egg. How would it be served? Scrambled? Hard-boiled? Sunny side up? No, silly goose. Raw! My bowl of veggies came with a raw egg in the center.

It’s hard for me not to get “that face.” “That face” that my partner says annoys him until the cows come home. And I mean this quite literally as the waitress placed before him a sizeable portion of beef. “That face” that he says makes him see red. “That face” that says I’ve become Joan Collins on Dynasty.

My partner asked if I was going to eat my lunch. I looked at him with “that face” and said, “I’m not going to eat a fucking raw egg in some fly-infested shit-hole!” The men at the next table looked up from their dead cow. I said that I was going for a walk and quickly left. But my baby new that “going for a walk” was code for I was going to find some beer.

There was a gas station next door. I bought a can, sat at a table outside, contemplated my behavior and thought about the DMZ. I downed the tall boy quickly so that I would not get caught. You can’t visit the DMZ if you’ve had a drink earlier that day. Not even one. That’s like telling me I can’t have chocolate chip ice cream when I go to Baskin Robbins. Plus, I hate anyone telling me what I can and cannot do so it was my mission to have a drink before I stepped foot on North Korean soil.

Thank God I opted for the hotel room with executive lounge access. With the exception of one lunch, I ate all my meals at the exec lounge in the Westin Chosun. Scrambled eggs with salad for breakfast. Cheese with salad for dinner. All three days and nights. Now that I weigh 70 kilos, I’m two kilos away from my flat stomach, summer weight. I should go back to Seoul for a week!

Two things you might not have known — Japanese LOVE kitsch and the prime minister’s wife has a blog. If you’re wondering what those two have to do with each other, check out the photo of the Barney cushion on it.

You may wonder what that thing is. Please, let me enlighten you.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what Japan’s First Lady decided to give the wife of the leader of the free world, aka Mrs. Bush, on her first state visit to the White House. Barney is their dog’s name. If it looks hand-made, it’s because it is. She says in her blog that she asked a friend of hers to make it. She also says Mrs. Bush loved it.

I, for one, would love to know what she really thought. Okay, I admit that I give people hand-knit sweaters as baby gifts (fyi: I’m a good knitter so it’s none of that lopsided stuff). And, maybe, just maybe, I would consider giving one to a muckety muck, who has everything in the world that I could afford. But a cushion???
It’s not even big enough for the dog!

Please let me know if anyone has seen this dumped in the garbage somewhere. Or would they burn something like this to make sure no one will find out and it doesn’t turn into an international incident?

If you walk around Tokyo these days, you’ll find that a lot of the kiosks (newsstands) at JR stations are closed.
You may think it must be a holiday or something, but no. I was watching the news one evening when I found out why. Japan Railways went a little bit overboard with its restructuring and discovered too late that it fired, I mean downsized, too many of the part-time workers, who man the stalls. One in three stalls are closed, as a result, which means Japanese commuters won’t be able to readily buy their drinks, candy, and “sports newspapers” aka dirty magazines. I’m trying to think of something clever to say about this situation, but I really can’t. Sometimes, the news speaks for itself.

I don’t know why, but Japanese LOVE slogans and mottos. If you walk into a train station, a poster will say, “Children are watching. Mind your train manners” or simply, “Walk! Don’t run”. Elevators in traditional office buildings might say, “Quiet please in the elevator. You don’t know who is listening” (which is actually pretty smart advice) or, like I saw the other day, “Greet your colleagues with a smile.” If you look around, I can guarantee that you will see slogans everywhere. In fact, until recently, men would walk around neighborhoods, clapping two blocks in a steady rhythym shouting, “Take care with fire!” in a solemn monotone. It’s a holdover from when people had wood-burning ovens or gas stoves with valves that needed to be closed every night. The practice has all but disappeared, though I know it’s still around in some areas because I heard it recently.

Japanese are trained in slogan-writing as a child. When I was in fifth grade, I remember homework, where we had to create our own poster about staying healthy. In sixth grade, we had to create a poster, about an environmental issue — I vaguely remember doing something about smoking, but there were others on littering or pollution.

The best one that I saw recently was a bathroom in an office building. The toilets were Japanese style, where you have to squat. Right at eye level, there was a piece of paper that said, “How you use the toilet is a reflection of yourself.”

I emailed in sick early this morning. Cough, cough. Seriously, my throat is a bit scratchy but I mostly called in “sick” because the thought of dealing, by myself mind you, with that too large of a group of overly pampered children for an hour was too much to bear. And honestly, I’m thinking of quitting that part-time gig or at the very least, working fewer hours.

Because I don’t have to work, my bullshit threshold is low. This means that when I hint that I don’t want to be alone with ten children between the ages of four and nine with varying degrees of English proficiency, I mean that if you continue to assign this challenge (nightmare) to me, I’ll walk. Get someone else to play London Bridge or read Curious George. Incidentally, I have no idea how the same damn story can be so appealing to those kids over and over again. I keep hoping that halfway into yet another tale of Curious George’s misadventures, the “man with the yellow hat” takes out a Smith and Wesson and wastes that fucking monkey.

Today started like every other except that I knew I had the day to spend doing whatever the hell I wanted to do. I put on my favorite shirt that I got at this vintage shop on the Lower East Side when I was still living in New York and took a stroll thru Nakameguro and by the Meguro Canal. I had a proper lunch at Michelangelo’s in Daikanyama. Salad, pasta, dessert, coffee and a couple of glasses of red wine, of course. I then went window shopping at those furniture design shops down the street. I just got back to the apartment. So much to do and see literally steps from my apartment. I didn’t get on a train to do or see any of the above.

So why the fuck do I bother with a job at all? Guilt? Self-worth? Masochism? Do I crave a life of leisure? To be some spoiled bitch? Maybe. Maybe not.

Moving to Japan meant shifting my definition of self from me-centered to we-centered. I say “we” a lot more now. “We” like that restaurant. “We” get our green tea there too. “We” think that place is overrated. There is a lot of “we” going on and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

The money I do make from my part-time gig allows us to more easily say “fuck it” and go to the Westin near our apartment and have a martini and read the FT on a Sunday afternoon (eventhough we’re technically a day late for the FT they always find one for us at the gift shop). Would we do this anyway? Probably. But it would be harder to justify.

And that’s really what it’s all about anyway, right? To justify. Can I justify my life? Not to others but to myself. And do I really need to?