Please stand by

I flew standby to LA last week. On the way back to Tokyo, it took a few tries to get on a plane. While I was waiting to be picked up from the empty departures drop-off zone at 1 am for the second night in a row, I noticed this stencil on the ground. I'd been rejected from three flights in 36 hours at that point. Wait here. Yeah, I got it.

Reconstructing 3/11

Get yours now.

Our Man in Abiko has done it again. But this time, it's completely different. Quakebook was a fast and raw response, a time capsule of a moment, put together to help people in need by raising money and awareness. The immediacy of it was what made it compelling. In Reconstructing 311, Our Man asked journalists to take their time and go deep about the impact of the disaster on the fields that they know best. I helped edit this collection, and I learned something from every piece.
Philip Brasor gives a blow-by-blow of how Japanese news outlets covered the disaster and its aftermath, how they compared with the international media, and where both fell short. Reading about politics usually makes me itchy. (I probably shouldn't admit that.) But Michael Cucek's tale of how Prime Minister Naoto Kan saved the day is as fascinating and readable as it is controversial. I'm probably biased since I know and like Tohoku volunteer Jamie El-Banna, but I like the straightforward way he weaves a frank explanation of the problems facing communities trying to rebuild into stories of his life as an accidental full-time volunteer. (Check out this video of Jamie first, so you can read his piece in the appropriate British accent.) Jake Adelstein goes beyond the meme of convoys of yakuza driving supplies to evacuation shelters to untangle the history of disasters and organized crime in Japan, and in the process reveals a bit about his own relationship with the gangsters.
And that's just for starters.
This is an interesting book, and it's also an interesting kind of book, a stab at what the future of publishing and journalism might look like. It costs $2.99 and you are pretty much guaranteed to learn something about the situation in Japan now, a year ago, and in the future. Please buy a copy and ask someone else to, too. Still not convinced? Listen to what Our Man himself says about it.
Done? Now head on over to Amazon to download your copy.

You knew I was a TV crew when you let me in

When the TV crew rang the bell and came into my apartment, I pointed to the row of slippers I'd laid out and said in Japanese, "Please come in, help yourself to slippers if you'd like." TV crew? Yep. Stay in Japan long enough and you're bound to be looking into a TV camera sooner or later. I'd gotten into this when they contacted the Quakebook people about being part of a 3/11 anniversary program. I thought originally that it was about media, social networking and how foreigners' news sources differed from what Japanese people were reading. At a preliminary camera-free interview at my place, the producer seemed to be after a different story: he wanted to know how many times a day I'd called home and what my mother's "words that echoed in my heart" were as I went to the airport and why I like Japan more than America. By that time, I felt, sinkingly, that it was too late to back out.

More intensity

When the entire crew of six came over, the first thing the director did was tell one of his underlings to take all the Japanese magazines and hide them (his words) under the English ones. As they were setting up lights and plugging in boxes, the interpreter suggested to the director that I do at least part of the interview in Japanese, since she'd heard me speak at the first interview. "Absolutely not," he said. Speaking only English in the interview didn't bother me, but his adamance did. It seemed like he had already decided who I was, and speaking and reading Japanese wasn't part of that. I'm almost surprised he didn't ask us to put shoes on to clomp around the apartment. He did ask me to do other silly things that edged closer and closer to flat-out re-enacting the day. I grudgingly changed sweaters to give the impression that we were filming on different days, though he didn't say to what end. He asked to see the camera I'd used to take pictures off the balcony, then to see the balcony, then if I could just hold the camera up like I was taking pictures. And actually, could you just aim toward the ground and actually take a few? It seemed way too late by that time to talk about the differences between interviewing and acting and which one we were there for. (This was a few weeks ago. I've seen a few interviews with actual survivors on other Japanese TV stations, and they all feature footage of the person standing where they had been standing and holding up their cameras. Just because it's standard doesn't make it unsilly.)

When, as the crew leaving, they filmed the inevitable ding-dong-we-'re-entering-the-home-of-our-unwitting-subject shot, I was instructed to wait ten seconds after the doorbell, then open the door and say, "Nice to meet you." To the guy who hadn't spoken a single word of English in the three times we'd met. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll use what they got in a journalistically responsible way, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm kind of hoping now, if they do use any of it, that they go all the way. Make the footage grainy black and white, or maybe red-tinted, and make it look like it's shaking. That might be the best way of all to get people to think about how the news worked and didn't work in the aftermath of the disaster.
UPDATE: This is the video. Don't blink.

Gel nails and apocalyptic girl talk

How did it come to this?

The last few times I've been home, I've gotten hooked on manicures. They only last a week at best before the chipping starts, but it doesn't matter so much when they're about the price of lunch at a deli. Here, a regular manicure still starts to look shabby after a few days but costs more like dinner for two at a neighborhood diner. Gel nails, simple or covered in gems, are more on par with a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant. However, they harden like formica after a few seconds under UV light and last until you go back to get them sandblasted off. Salons get you in the door with steep discounts for your first gel appointment. The model is flawed: they all offer the cut rates, including 'free removal of another shop's work,' but no incentive to stay once you're there. There's not much reason not to go nail-hopping and use this first-time discount every time. So at my boss' urging, I tried one introductory offer, and then another, and here we are, with glitter and "holograms," little silver disks that look like stones but are flat.
I used an app called Nails Cafe to find a little place hidden behind a rental car garage near Shinjuku Station. The woman looked like a classical violinist and was friendly but not overly inquisitive. I looked at the customer tipped back in a recliner a few feet away getting eyelashes glued with pointy tweezers to her eyelids, one hair at a time, and asked if they had had customers during the earthquake. She said that by chance they hadn't. Then she brought up the latest scientific gossip in the back of everyone's minds: the revised likelihood of a big quake hitting Tokyo head-on in the next few years. "If that happens, you know, everyone in Shinjuku will just die." She paused to look at the edge she'd filed on my nail and moved to the next one. "It won't be from the tall buildings collapsing, although the smaller, older ones probably will," she said, "It will be from the falling glass."
Next nail. "The glass in the skyscraper area will all shatter and fall and cut right through anyone who's outside."
She compared three nails at once and moved on.
"So it's better to stay inside?" I asked.
"Yes. Except," she said, picking up a fluffy brush to dust them off, "the third and fourth floors. The third and fourth floors get crushed flat. That's what happened in Kobe. Other hand, please."
I asked if that was true.
"I saw  it on TV. The first and second floors were stronger, and the floors above stayed intact, but for some reason, the third and fourth were just obliterated. What floor do you live on, by the way?"
I told her the eighth, and she said, "See? You'll be okay, then."
"Really? Even if the bottom floors are destroyed?" I asked, as she finished filing the second hand.
"Well, probably not," she smiled.

I love this stuff: Shokubutsu Monogatari soap

My friend always has a good laugh when she remembers that this is my favorite soap, but it is. They don't sell it among those beautiful collections of imported bath stuff at cosmetics shops; the only place I reliably find it is at the convenience store. It's usually a hundred yen.
It must have been at one of the homey local hot springs in Miyazaki that I smelled it for the first time, because every time I use it I think, Ah, the smell of a Japanese bath.
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"Plant Story"