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May 14, 2024
 

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GETTING THINGS DONE

COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
May 3, 2000
Following old paths
Last Sunday we considered flowers -- peonies, azaleas and wisteria -- and the best places to see them during our Golden Week holidays. Here is one more outing to add to your flower calendar. The Tokyo Garden Show 2000 is being held through May 7 in the large open space in front of the picture gallery at the Meiji Shrine outer garden. Closest subway stop is Gaienmae. People arriving for the first time in Tokyo often remark about how green the city is. Here color becomes the theme. Do choose the garden show as one of your destinations as you enjoy Japan's annual spring vacation.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 30, 2000
Creating memories
Recently, in California, I was sitting next to an elderly woman on a bus. We exchanged a few words, and then I asked if she had always lived there. She said yes, but that she had traveled all over the world. She began counting the places and the list seemed endless. Among them was Japan. She paused when she was through, smiled, and then said, "I saw Mount Fuji." Nothing more, but no more was necessary. It was a statement needing no elaboration. Then she stood up. It was her stop. The woman sitting across the aisle also got up and took her hand. Then I realized that she was blind. And I thought how wonderful it is she has all these memories from her sighted days, and how fortunate that what she sees most often is Mount Fuji. It is sublime, and viewing it on clear days against blue skies -- and especially in the winter with a covering of snow -- it is a memory for a lifetime.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 23, 2000
On to Hawaii -- maybe
It is not surprising that I often become quite involved with readers and their problems. Take June Wong, who grew up in Hawaii but had to come to Japan to learn the hula. She was impressed by a group of Japanese women dancers and joined them. "I love my teacher and every one of my hula sisters," she wrote. Her teacher, who in turn loved Hawaii and the hula, hoped to share her enthusiasm with anyone who wanted to learn. It was an unknown and carefree group until this year when they entered the King Kamehameha Hula Competition in Okinawa. The winner would qualify for the finals in Honolulu in June. Although they had no expectation whatsoever of winning, they did.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 19, 2000
The first to go
The outlook for the economy may be brightening, but the glow is not apparent among museums. First to close was Seibu's museum in Ikebukuro, followed by the Roppongi Arts and Crafts Museum in 1998 and Mitsukoshi's Shinjuku museum which closed last year. Next will be Tobu's Ikebukuro museum, which will close next March. It is true that for the most part this reflects the dismal outlook for department stores, but it is disappointing that cutbacks usually affect cultural programs first. Over the years, department stores have sponsored many excellent exhibitions and it is sad to note their passing. While nothing can take their place, there are still many museums throughout the country. Watch for announcements of their shows and support them when you can. For example, the outstanding Art Tower Mito is celebrating its 10th anniversary with an exhibition called "Seeing, Wearing, Transcending -- Two Centuries Moved by Fashion" along with a special Hanae Mori display, "Meeting of East and West." Fashion shows with leading world designers are also being featured. Check www.arttowermito.or.jp/ for more information, or call (029) 227-8111. Mito, famous for plum blossoms, is a little over an hour from Ueno by JR limited express. If you want to know departure times, call JR's English-language information number, (03) 3423-0111.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 16, 2000
The season
Last week I made a pilgrimage to my favorite places for "ohanami," cherry-blossom viewing. They were late this year. The cold weather and rain were enough to make us all but give up, but that day the sun came out and so did the blossoms. Once in a rare while, when they bloom while it is still cold, there will be snow, breathtaking white flakes settling on the delicate pink petals. I hope that some season you can have that experience.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 12, 2000
Sweeter dreams
I wrote recently of the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, and the instant Westernization it prompted. The government encouraged efforts to make foreigners feel at home. One was directed toward ryokan and many of them installed Western-style toilets and created a few rooms with Western beds. The beds were rarely the tourist's choice. They wanted to try the Japanese way with futon, but this was balanced by some Japanese who at that time had never slept on a bed and wanted a Western experience. I remember one room that I saw with a bed. Actually, a guest would have to crawl in because it completely filled the small space allotted to it. I don't know how anyone tucked in the sheets or smoothed the bedspread, but the ryokan owner was pleased, feeling it was a good investment in promoting international relations.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 9, 2000
At the top
There is little need to write what a wonderful city San Francisco is, how much there is to do. On the day I arrived, I could have joined a ghost hunt, had a tour of a teddy bear factory, heard a lecture explaining how California once was an island, seen an exhibition of Japanese "shibori" fabrics at the airport museum, and attended any number of music, dance and theater performances. There are also many well-known hotels, but generally when I consider great hotels, I think of Europe with its centuries of quality and tradition or the Orient with its exotic images and dedicated service. Sometimes you will find a combination. Recently, after giving a lecture in Kobe, I stayed overnight at the Osaka Ritz-Carlton, surprised at the rich furnishings, the heavy silken draperies, the general sense of opulence that is rarely found in Japan. It even passed the ultimate test: In the lobby I met friends I hadn't seen for years who were making a nostalgic trip to Japan.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 2, 2000
Time traveling
There have been many observations about nostalgia. Nostalgia's not what it used to be, There's no "stalgia" like nostalgia -- but nostalgia is where I am today. I have just returned from three weeks in California, and it is a nostalgia mix, what I have left behind, what I have gained, from living so many years in Japan. During my drive from Narita to Tokyo, and seeing everywhere the changes that have occurred, I remembered 1964, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, the year I began writing this column. The games were a showplace for the world to see what Japan had accomplished in the short span of time since World War II ended catastrophically in complete surrender.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jan 12, 2000
Win some, lose some
Like many of our readers, I continue to miss Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons. Now I have 366 of them in a millennium collection brought up to date with color and appropriate historic dates which the publisher, Andrews McMeel of Kansas City, calls "a refreshingly irreverent retrospective of the last thousand years." It is ecologically correct because the calendar and the box it came in are made of recycled and recyclable paper, a new claim to me. The first cartoon shows a burning village in the background, a Viking boat beached far above the shoreline and a group of Vikings. The leader says, "Everyone can just put down their loot and plunder, and Sven here -- yes, Sven, who was in charge of reading the tide chart -- has something to say to us all." The historical note, dated 1003, says, "Vikings begin a three-year visit to the northern continent in the Western Hemisphere. Indigenous people thought it was only going to be for a couple of weeks." It is going to be a great year.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jan 9, 2000
Well done
Have you seen a mumsettia? They were apparently big sellers during the Christmas holidays this year in the United States. It is a poinsettia in a pot surrounded by white chrysanthemum plants. "It's lovely and very Christmasy," a friend writes. We will probably have them here next year.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jan 5, 2000
Good deeds
I wrote this column before Y2K became a reality instead of a speculation. I had water, a charcoal stove, six cans of tuna, batteries, and the hope that since I was ready, nothing would happen. But I didn't know. Now I do: Being prepared pays off again. Perhaps there was a hint of disappointment. We were expecting something!
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 26, 1999
Point of view
Here is a count-your-blessings column for the yearend, reminders of what we may miss but also of what we gain by international exposure. First, a list of what Japanese like best about the West, and then, Western views of living in Japan.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 23, 1999
Yearend nostalgia
There is something about the holiday season that brings out nostalgia. Old times are recalled. We reach out with Christmas and New Year's cards to friends we haven't seen for years. A lot of conversations begin with, Do you remember . . . It seems that although most people anticipate the opportunities and challenges that will come with the new year, there is a reluctance to let go of the old. This is especially true when we are not only readying to welcome a new year but are also adjusting to the idea of a new millennium. As one of my cards so aptly put it, Here's wishing you a very happy New Year; may it last for a thousand years.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 8, 1999
Beyond coping
Certain products come in many shapes and sizes, and a reader must thank the Italian Trade Commission in Tokyo for the successful ending of her search. She was looking for a special kind of Italian support hose made by IBICI and she wondered where she could buy them in Japan. It could be an endless search, but it only took a phone call to the trade commission and a fax explaining exactly what she wanted. A short time later, I had the answer, and the reader now has the name of a person who will help her at Yoyo Corporation, the company that imports that brand.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 5, 1999
New entry
I have long relationships with some of my readers. One contacted me first with a challenging project -- teaching her cat to use a scratch post -- and moved on through a wedding at a shrine and later a divorce, and finally the establishment of her own business. We have never met but we are friends so when she wrote about her new career I was interested, especially since it was with a company whose name I knew well in other days when home was Indiana: Rexall Drug Store. Before megastores and discount outlets, Rexall had a reputation for reasonable prices and quality products. Now Rexall has become international and Rexall products, focused on health-care and diet supplements, are sold to customers by trained distributors through direct marketing -- a sales technique used by many companies that accounts for some $30 billion in annual sales in Japan. Her enthusiasm about Rexall products is well founded. She had worked for many years with cardiac surgery patients and reports that many former colleagues are using Rexall preventive health-care products with excellent results.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Dec 1, 1999
Catching up
Recently I quoted letters from a university English writing class commenting on a column about General MacArthur. That prompted a letter from longtime resident G.A. Chandru who has done much over the years to promote his adopted city of Yokohama as well as Indian culture and products. A few years ago when I complained about the poor quality of typewriter ribbons now that nylon has replaced cotton, he sent me several cotton ribbons from India that produced the clear, dark letters I remembered. Today he adds to our store of knowledge about MacArthur. He tells us that the general landed first in Yokohama and until he moved to the Dai-ichi Insurance building in Tokyo, he used the Hotel New Grand as his office/home. His room was on the third floor and Chandru says he sometimes takes people interested in Yokohama's history there to see it. He reports that the bed, desk and chair are the same ones used by MacArthur.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Nov 27, 1999
Unwelcome companions
Thanks to e-mail, a vast assortment of unsolicited information comes my way. Some of it is even interesting and occasionally I share it with you. My amazement is not so much with the information I am sending your way today as it is with the person who noticed it and then did the necessary projection. I wonder if anyone would answer yes to the question in the first sentence: "Did you know that Friday, 11/19/1999, was the last date with all odd numbers we will have until 1/1/3111? On a more positive note, 2/2/2000 will be the first all-even day we've had since 8/28/888." I wonder what people were projecting then. I suppose it depended on where you were. In China, there were the fading glories of the Tang dynasty, and Japan was starting its rich Heian era. Where I come from, I suppose people were gathering acorns and hunting buffalo.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Nov 24, 1999
The ultimate solution
This notice was posted recently on my neighborhood bulletin board -- To people who feed stray cats: Please also take care of spaying or neutering them. While strays have become a problem recognized by the government, little has been done to eliminate it by the most obvious way: providing an inexpensive spaying/neutering service since few people will pay the usual 30,000 yen to as much as 100,000 yen for an operation for a stray cat. What to do! Even rounding them up and disposing of them, a solution which many strongly oppose, is not effective since cats can now produce three or even four litters a year.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Nov 17, 1999
Getting things done
From time to time I have been asked to remind people that although Japan is a very safe country, there are times when it is not. The yearend has always been a time when people should be especially careful. In old Japan, all debts had to be paid by the end of the year, but even a cursory perusal of today's news shows that massive debts have been passed on, often scandalously, from year to year. However, the warning is still appropriate at lower levels. Pickpockets are more active in the safety provided to their profession by relaxed crowds enjoying yearend parties, and robbers know people are likely to have more money around the house.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Nov 10, 1999
Pre-holiday planning
It seems a bit early to be writing about Christmas, but there is a lot of planning to do if you must ship things home, or even pack them to take with you. That's why the Tokyo charity-oriented International Ladies Benevolent Society now schedules its ILBS Christmas Fair even before we have ordered the Thanksgiving turkey. This year it will be held on Saturday Nov. 13, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the American Club in Azabudai. Call (03) 3583-8381 if you need directions. Everything that is on sale has been donated, and all proceeds go to charity. You will find toys, gifts, children's clothes, holiday decorations -- lots of things to brighten the season. You may even brighten your own. Companies are generous in their contributions for raffle prizes, and your 250 yen expenditure per ticket might be a very good investment if you win one of the special gifts. This is a well-attended benefit performance, so go early for the best selection. This year's chairwoman is Barbara Uribe, wife of the Mexican ambassador, who has arranged surprise prizes from there, and publicity is being handled by Kay Brennan, wife of the president of United Airlines, so you can guess what some of the top prizes will be.
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