This morning, a M 7.1 earthquake rumbled the ocean floor off the coast of Japan, spreading fear and panic among normally-placid sea anemone and vent-dwelling tubeworm populations and raising troubling concerns about the ability of local ecosystems to cope with such disturbances without comprehensive planning at the seabed-wide level.

Okay, maybe it didn’t. Being a child of the media age has kind of conditioned me to think of everything as a crisis. Well, I’ve also had people asking me whether I’m okay.

The quake was 300 miles offshore–and the focus was buried unusually deep. I didn’t feel it at all, and the reports on the websites of the major dailies are buried by this point–the Princess’s wedding and the Koizumi cabinet’s budget capers, you know. There was a tsunami warning, but it was downplayed even as it was being made.

Quick Japan news: the ROK Foreign Minister took a swipe at Japan for the Yasukuni Shrine issue at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Pusan:

Ban stated, “Japanese leaders have not been capable of squarely acknowledging past history; their pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine are undesirable.” While he avoided mentioning Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister [Taro] Aso by name, he did criticize the policies of the Japanese side.

I believe that Ban is usually referred to as the “Foreign Minister” in English, though the kanji title would mean something closer to “Minister of Diplomacy and Trade.” Whatever his title, and however generic his statement, it is evidence that the ROK is not softening toward Japan on the Yasukuni issue–not surprising, given that Koizumi’s new cabinet includes a new member or two known for nationalist leanings.

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The seven federal ministries asked to cut their budgets have come up with only ¥28.9 billion of the requested ¥630 billion. That’s a whopping 4.6%. Let’s hope the regional government bodies don’t spend it all in one place.

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The government has established a central processing center for information about possible money laundering and financing of terrorism.

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Has anyone heard anything about Minerva? Minerva is the probe that was launched off the Hayabusa spacecraft and was supposed to land on the Asteroid Itokawa. Apparently, the Hayabusa was ascending too fast and so the Minerva’s trajectory was screwed up–such aerospace geeks who may be reading this will probably be wincing at that description, but I was only half-paying attention to NHK when the announcement was made. There didn’t seem to be a way to get the Minerva back on course, so they were fearing it might be lost. I hope not. Japan’s aerospace programs have had a lot of embarrassing failures over the last several years.

Yoo-hoo! Madonna? You’re a native speaker of English. STOP OVER-PRONOUNCING YOUR Rs LIKE AN EXCESSIVELY EARRRRRRNEST ESL STUDENT! Okay?

I did like this part, though: “If you don’t like my attitude then you can F off / Just go to Texas–isn’t that where they golf?” Heh-heh. Funny.

Audrey…whoops!…Jeff has been posting at Beautiful Atrocities with some regularity again. Here‘s the latest. Hilarious.

You may recall that even of the federal ministries have been instructed to cut their budgets for subsidies; the odds are that they won’t reach their targets:

The deadline passed at noon today for responses from seven federal ministries to a proposal to cut a collective ¥630 billion from their budgets, as apportioned by the Prime Minister. By noon, the number of submissions was stalled at two: from the Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry and from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The other five, such as the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, are set to submit their proposals this afternoon, but [their proposed cuts] are not expected to meet the ¥630 billion objective. The Prime Minister’s office indicates that it expects things to be settled up by the end of the month, but the journey promises to be rough.

I haven’t seen an update since that story was posted at 13:00, and if there was one on NHK, it was delivered while I was out of the room.

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So this whole bird flu thing? Gives me deep thoughts. Like, you know, what if we all totally get sick and die? We’ve certainly been hearing about it, though there was nothing that seemed interested enough to post. Today, the Ministry of Health, Labor…oops! Labour–the u is very important…the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare announced that it’s going to take a six-phase approach to preparation:

On 14 November, the MHLW unveiled a “plan of action” that stipulated a phase-six policy to contend with new forms of influenza; the risk that such forms will appear has increased. [The policy provides for] coordination if certain measures become necessary: the stockpiling of antiviral drugs will be increased on a large scale; in the event of a global outbreak, schools will be closed and large assemblies banned, commuting to workplaces will be restricted, and citizens will be instructed to restrict their movements by international air and maritime transport. Taking the MLHW’s directive into account, prefectural governments will begin generating independent proposals [for their own local policies] in earnest.

The worst-case scenario, as projected at the moment, is one fourth of the Japanese population infected.

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Among other threats to health, there’ve been a lot of interesting homicides in the news here lately. One of the more chilling is one that, fortunately for the intended victim, didn’t come off. The chilling part is that the plan could be put into motion in the first place:

The arrest of a 16-year-old girl who allegedly tried to poison her mother to death with thallium raises the question of how the student was able to obtain the poison so easily even under tightened controls following similar crimes.

The investigation by the Shizuoka prefectural police has so far found that the high school student in Izunokuni possessed various kinds of chemicals. About 30 substances, including thallium, were seized during the police search of her room at her home.

The girl told the police she had bought the thallium at a nearby drugstore.

However, the Poisonous and Deleterious Substances Control Law bans drugstores from selling such poisonous substances to those aged under 18.

It also requires buyers to submit a form listing their name, address, occupation, the amount of chemical they have bought and other items when they purchase such substances.

The Health, Labor [!] and Welfare Ministry instructs drugstores to check buyers’ identity and ask them why they want to buy toxic substances.

Someone apparently read Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse .

In another archetypal case–this time with a more tragic ending–a high school girl in one of the outer municipalities in Tokyo Metro was killed by a classmate with a crush that spiraled out of control:

A schoolboy accused of killing 15-year-old Yua Koyama last week because she had gone cold on him had been seen gazing longingly at her suburban Tokyo apartment for hours some weeks ago, a witness told the police.

The 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also told investigators that he burst into the Koyama home without prior notice as soon as Yua’s mother, Kimiko, left for work on Thursday, the day he is alleged to have killed the fellow student from his high school.

Police have transferred the boy to the Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, where he awaits his fate.

NHK reported the day after the killing that a neighbor had heard noises coming from the apartment, including the girl’s screams for help, but assumed that she and her mother were having a fight.

Atsushi was here this weekend, one of his short stays–in the door at 11 a.m. on Saturday and on the train back to the airport at 5 p.m. on Sunday. But he’s been stressed lately, so it was good to be able to attend to him, even if only for thirty-six hours. We went to the Meiji Shrine, where the leaves hadn’t yet turned but the wooded walk was beautiful as always. Saturday night, we went out with two friends for Korean barbecue.

Actually, come to think of it, we went for drinks at a Scottish-themed pub first, so I guess we were subconciously working a peninsular-peoples-persecuted-by-their-more-aggressive-neighbors kind of thing. When I asked where the toilet was, one of the bar guys (Japanese) gave me the most frankly lascivious once-over I’ve gotten in quite a while–and it wasn’t a gay bar, BTW. Must be the influence of that fiery Celtic spirit.

Anyway, about more literal kinds of fire: Several months back Japundit linked to this NYT article about Korean restaurants in New York, and it made me wonder anew why they haven’t caught on more. That Korean food in Korea is way hotter than what most Westerners are going to want to contend with isn’t a difficult problem to address, after all. And unlike the Japanese food that was made fashionable, which emphasized raw flesh and bizarre creatures of the deep, Korean barbecue and rice dishes are comparatively, comfortingly familiar-looking to Americans. Oh, and they’re delicious–the stuff in Japan is toned down, but it’s still spicy enough to be stimulating. Great cold-weather food. And as far as the service goes…uh, complaints about brusque service in New York? Whatever.

The one problem I can see is when the hot stone bowls and open-fire cooking hit America’s skittish-schoolmarm safety obsession. On Saturday, Atsushi, our friends, and I sat around a gas-lit brazier in the middle of the table, spreading sliced beef, chicken, and vegetables over the metal grid. It was all you can drink. We drank. Well, except for Atsushi, who doesn’t.

So after an hour or so, there were three tipsy fags flinging rounds of beef tongue rather sloppily over the flames. (I was reminded–frankly but not at all lasciviously–that I was the only one with hair on the backs of his hands that might get singed. A little lasciviousness might actually have been nice at this point, given that the reminder was coming from my boyfriend, but he’s not big on even mild PDAs.) A lot of those last pieces of kalbi were probably just a little more well-done than they might have been under more alert supervision, but hey, it all goes to the same place. Good weekend, and Atushi gets to come home again the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Should I be worried about the facility with which Eric can unravel truly loopy states of mind? Our junior senator in Pennsylvania kind of wigged this weekend:

Santorum, a conservative Republican and usually a strong Bush ally, said the unpopularity of the war should be shared between the White House and the media.

“Certainly, mistakes were made,” Santorum said of the war’s conduct. “But that’s a criticism you can make of every conflict.”

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“Terror is nothing more than a tactic,” Santorum said.

He noted Bush recently redefined the conflict as a war on Islamic fundamentalists.

Bush, however, used the “war on terror” moniker in his speech at Tobyhanna.

I’ve always thought the designation “War on Terror” was silly-sounding. Perhaps it might have been better if the Bush administration had sat around for a few extra days, with ad hoc committees and posterboards and magic markers, and devised a better one. But it’s been around for years now, it’s basically serviceable at signalling that we’re fighting anyone who would resort to a particular unconscionable low, and we all know what it means. Making a dramatic point of dissing it makes you sound kind of lame.

Eric writes:

Santorum has my sympathy, as it must be tough facing a pro-life Democrat. But if he runs to the right of himself and Casey holds the center, I’m not sure there are enough Toomey-style voters to carry it for him.

There don’t seem to be. While the hard right has its complaints about Bush, I’m not sure it’s going to see back-stabbing as the right approach. Those who aren’t so hard-right are likely to be even less receptive.

Today, Alice’s teatray offers this slice of very good seedcake:

I’ve finally figured out what I want to say about Maureen Dowd’s argument about most men only marrying women who are younger/ poorer/ dumber than themselves: (a) what else is new, and (b) why would anybody want to marry “most men” unless they are distinctly average themselves and therefore perfectly happy with the status quo anyway?

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It isn’t easy to find a fantastic life-partner. The best things in life are not supposed to come free, you have to work at them. But not necessarily in the way you might expect: attending hundreds of singles-meets might be part of the job, but more important than that is living your life as well as you can, reaching out to other human beings in an attempt to contribute to the world on a personal as well as professional level, and stretching your own preconceptions and seeking out life’s challenges rather than shrinking from change.

It’s a real head-scratcher when people who aren’t looking for ways to be thoughtful and interesting wonder where all the thoughtful and interesting people are. Why would they be hanging out around you? one wants to ask.

I think Dowd may have some other problems, though.

She was on Larry King this morning; somehow, I don’t think I’d ever seen her live. Well, the show was taped, but I mean, I knew what she looked like from her photograph, but I didn’t remember her voice and mannerisms.

Oh, my.

I suppose I should have expected this–in fact, once I saw her, it all made sense. Maureen Dowd is a major tease. It was so obvious I giggled into my apple streudel. She flipped her hair. She simpered. She did that thing where girls cast their eyes downward momentarily and then–with their heads still tilted slightly, intimately forward–glare liquidly up at you from under arched brows and thick lashes. Her mouth worked itself into a sassy-petulant moue so frequently you could have made a drinking game out of it. I didn’t see her move her upper arms forward surreptitiously to squeeze her boobs together, but every other arrow in the flirty-girl quiver was there.

Now, personally, I say: Work it, baby. But if you’re going to work it, at least in that fashion, there’s something important you need to do. You have to integrate your intellectual jousting with your girliness (or maybe some women find a way to divide them firmly) so they don’t seem schizo. Otherwise, you’re sending potential mates a subliminal message that you don’t know what you want and aren’t quite together. Not knowing Dowd, I wonder whether she does in person what she does in her writing, which is to careen, seemingly uncontrollably, between analytical chilliness and giddy sassiness. It’s the uncontrollable part that gives off “STAY AWAY!” vibes. In a culture in which couples make lives in their own little households, without the constant presence of the larger clan to bring things back to equilibrium when tensions arise, you’d have to be nuts to choose a spouse who promises to be an emotional pig in a poke.

This opinion piece is an excellent example of why I avoid The Japan Times. It’s full of hot air about “cultural diversity,” and if the triteness of that inescapable phrase isn’t enough of a turn-off, just wait until you see where the writer, one Kazuo Ogoura, goes with it:

What I find worrisome is not the general American reluctance to adopt this phrase but rather the underlying trend in contemporary American society of apparent opposition to the notion of cultural diversity. Specifically, there appears to be a movement in contemporary U.S. society to restore a more traditional form of American culture while simultaneously pushing back the inroads made by Hispanic and other cultures. A somewhat alarming thesis imagines floods of Mexican immigrants dividing and weakening traditional American culture. Whatever the intentions of those who expound them, the existence of such ideas suggests an undercurrent of thought in American society that seeks to restore a more homogenous vision of America, to the detriment of cultural diversity.

If this trend continues, and if cultural diversity is denied or neglected, it will endanger the development of human society, for diversity ultimately provides flexibility. One can easily grasp this link between diversity and flexibility by considering biological diversity in nature. Unless biological diversity is maintained, living species cannot survive climatic and ecological change. And just as biological diversity guarantees the survival of species in spite of environmental changes, so cultural diversity provides for the survival of human civilizations.

I expend a lot of energy extolling the politeness and respect for ceremony that makes life in Japan, even in super-crowded Tokyo, work smoothly. But I’m sorry, the nerve– THE NERVE –of some Japanese government flack sermonizing at AMERICA about domestic cultural diversity and fear of immigrants is just way too much. This is the country in which a nurse with a Japanese mother and Korean father, born and brought up here, was denied promotion because her citizenship is not Japanese, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court. (BTW, if you read that article, there’s more to the situation than nasty Japanese and noble, put-upon Koreans, but it serves to illustrate the point that if former Japanese officials are going to address respect for diversity, criticism should start at home.)

It’s certainly possible to find rank xenophobes in America, but anyone with even a passing familiarity with the public debate over border security knows that any “thesis” that “imagines floods of Mexican immigrants dividing and weakening traditional American culture” is held by very few. The major worries with regards to Mexico are economic (expensive welfare programs for illegal aliens, for example) and defense-based (slack security could allow terrorists in along with migrant workers and other job-seekers). You don’t necessarily have to favor numerical caps on immigration to favor strict policies to deal with those who come in without permission and documentation.

The most mainstream “cultural” concern that I’m aware of revolves around the use of English. Many of us oppose hand-holding bilingual public school classes because a lack of native-level English impedes the assimilation of immigrant children into the workforce–not just American, but global. However, no sensible American wants to interfere with people’s ability to speak Spanish at home or in businesses established to cater to immigrant markets, or to celebrate festivals from the old country. If there’s a movement to get us all to start living like some fantasy-nostalgia version of Connecticut WASPs in the 50s, I haven’t heard of it. And Professor, Mexicans are Chicanos, not Hispanics. Don’t make that slide in front of a Puerto Rican if you expect to remain known as a diplomat.

Speaking of theses, Ogoura’s–“And just as biological diversity guarantees the survival of species in spite of environmental changes, so cultural diversity provides for the survival of human civilizations”–is inane, or at least conveniently foggy. If we view the globe as a cultural ecosystem, then sleekly gorgeous, genetically pure, low-birthrate Japan is the equivalent of, like, the cheetah. America may, in 2006, be looking for ways to limit immigration, but it is already the product of a hodge-podge, a century and a half in the making, of peoples that have contributed their different resources to the general culture. In a world of nations brought closer together by technology, perhaps diversity can be achieved not by walling each country off in its little cell of cultural maintenance but by allowing disparate influences to be more subtly woven together within nations, or even cities and neighborhoods.

And I haven’t even gotten to what, as the friend who sent me the link remarked, is the biggest problem: “the inherent assumption that ‘cultures’ must be protected from individual choices.” Yes, one does have to wonder how these American cultural exports are finding consumers where no one is interested in buying them. Must be our mind-control rays. Sheesh.

Thank you to all Americans who have served in the military–always, but especially this Veterans Day. The rest of us are in your debt. Since I have relatives still in England, thanks and a happy Armistice Day to British veterans as well.