Cokie Contemptus

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I can’t stand Cokie Roberts. For me, she personifies the world of snobby, know-it-all Washington punditry. Raised a D.C. political brat, she is now a pampered Washington insider who can’t see issues except through myopic Beltway lenses.
The tone of her commentaries oozes with contempt for her audience as she regurgitates the conventional thinking of Washington’s elites. She offers nothing new, only a bored, haughty recitation of the court whisper.
A low point in journalism—and the period when I became somewhat embarrassed to tell people I’d studied the craft in college&#8212came back when ABC News paired Roberts with Sam Donaldson for its Sunday morning show, This Week.
For an example of Roberts’ thinking, read this column, written with her husband back in 1997, wherein they argue that the internet could become a threat to representative democracy—by giving more power to the people. Horrors!

“If you’re on-line, you’re inside the Beltway,” in the opinion of Graeme Browning, author of the book Electronic Democracy, which argues that the Internet is making individuals more politically powerful. Sounds good, but is it?

Cokie doesn’t want to hear from you. She just wants to keep pontificating from her comfortable perch. Someone get her off of NPR.

My Bank Is Sooooooo Cute

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bankcard.jpg
This, dear friends, is my bank card. Let me emphatically state that I did not specifically request this design. Believe it or not, this is a general issue card design. And it’s from the largest bank in Nagano Prefecture. Only in Japan. I feel self-conscious every time I take it out to get cash from an ATM.
That said, my favorite character is the cross-eyed owl in the background (not so clearly seen in this photo). Obviously, he’s been shunned by the group and is no longer allowed to join in their silly reindeer games and shameless mugging. He’ll just have to learn to get along with the happy homosexual fish back in his neck of the woods.

Featured Food – Yogurt

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yogurt.jpg
It’s always an adventure trying to figure out exactly what you’re buying in Japan. Modern packaging provides many visual clues, which is what I rely on most of the time.
Case in point: yogurt. Take a look at the picture above and tell me the yogurt on the left doesn’t look like the healthy version. This is no heavily-sweetened, high-fat “dessert” yogurt. That would have pastel berry colors and cute little animals buzzed up on sugar.
Plus, I can actually read the large katakana word here—it says “na-chu-re” (that would be “natural”). And there’s a little icon of a human jumping into the air, full of vim and vigor. Finally, there are some unknown additives presented in a style which says to me, “Good for you!”, and which I can only hope remain in the “nachure” realm.
Do you like how I’ve art directed this shot? I arranged all the healthiest foods in my fridge for a snapshot of wholesome eating. Let’s just hope I use that broccoli before it goes bad.

Let’s Look At Engrish!

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Mangled English provides many an entertaining moment here in Japan, as noted recently. I’ve lost count of the t-shirts I’ve wanted to photograph (but never do for fear of the reputation I’d get as the foreigner who takes pictures of the backsides of young girls).
Tonight I stumbled upon a site that lets you enjoy “Engrish” from afar. Let’s enjoy the spirited feeling that rises from seeing Engrish.com.
I can only hope to mangle Japanese in such an unintentionally fabulous way some day.

Teaching English to the Undead

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It was horrible. Three young, female zombies trooped into my classroom tonight and sat down, expecting me to teach them English. They couldn’t have been more than sixteen. By all outward appearances, they looked like a trio of Japanese pixies. Only their dead silence and eyelids that drooped to their knees exposed them for what they were.
Horrified though I was, I took a deep breath and decided to give it a try.
Today’s lesson: Give a speech about your morning. “I get up around 6:00.” (That’s something these zombies can relate to, I thought.) “I brush my teeth. After that, I eat breakfast.” Simple stuff. Or so I thought.
Thirty minutes in and we’re still on drills. Their insidious droning was a narcotic, and I had to fight to stay awake.
Me: “Repeat after me. ‘I get up around 6:00.'”
Them: “I………. get………. up……… around………. 6:00.”
Me: “Great! Excellent! Okay, again. Repeat after me: ‘I get up around 6:00.'”
Them: “I………. get………. up……… around………. 6:00.”
This went on and on and on and—you get the picture. Teaching English can be so exciting!

Butchered English 01

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I saw this printed on an ashtray:

Ashtraies are coming up in a more fashionable and characteristic style now many different shapes—full of ideas it’s a spice to make your life more fashionable with good sense of living.

Wandering

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I spent last weekend in Tokyo, with a side-trip down to Yokohama on Sunday to inspect and photograph a sailboat as a favor for a friend. I left Nagano Saturday mid-day as it was starting to snow. The weather in Tokyo, on the other hand, was excellent.
Saturday afternoon I wandered around Aoyama, where my grandparents lived in the 1930s. I found the neighborhood where they lived and tried to find their address (the house would have been long gone by now), but their actual address no longer exists.
Japanese addresses are notoriously hard to find. Cities are sub-divided into wards, then districts, then neighborhoods, then blocks, then non-sequential houses. There are no street addresses. Finding a specific place usually takes some wandering.

Bah Humbug

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It’s early November, and Japan is already gearing up to celebrate the birth of Christ.
No, wait—that’s not right.
Try again.
It’s early November, and Japan is already gearing up to pray at the church of rampant consumerism.
Christian missionaries—my great-grandparents included—failed to sell Christ here (Japan’s Christians make up only one percent of the total population—good for them, I say), but the Japanese sure converted to capitalism with mind-boggling zeal. Even in the midst of a decade-long recession, shopping remains a favorite pastime, almost a religion unto itself. And modern-day Christmas fits right into the shop-till-you-drop ethos found here.
In Tokyo this past weekend, I saw a tree-lighting ceremony in Ginza. It was November 9! This is insane. Something needs to be done to stop the shopping juggernaut that is Christmas. At this rate, it’ll only be a decade or so before this increasingly inane holiday gobbles up the whole year.

Loora Toora Loo Rye Aye

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This morning on KCRW, they played Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. It’s one of those songs that brings back memories of the early days of MTV.
I remember watching the “Eileen” video many times. I was in high school and living in Denali National Park in Alaska at the time. This was before our small community had television reception, let alone cable. So our friends in a nearby town—which did get television and cable—would tape MTV on video and we’d watch that. Over and over. And over.