Al Gore, is that you?

The other day I was babysitting, playing with the two-year-old child in the living room of a brand-new, state-of-the-art apartment. No one but us was at home.

All of a sudden, a voice came out of the air.

"You are using too much electricity!" it said quite sternly.

I almost leaped out of my socks I was so startled.

"You are using too much electricity!" it repeated.

Clever lady that I am, I realized it was a robotic recording somehow connected with the electricity meter and not Al Gore. Still, it was startling. And true. I turned off the unnecessary lights in the apartment.

Who, I wonder, will turn off the world's other electrical excesses?

Hurray for Longitude!

You may have noticed the shape of Japan as seen on a map or a globe. Long and narrow, it stretches north and south. In longitudinal terms, it runs from about 35 degrees N to a little more than 46 degrees N.

And that's a good thing. If it stretched east and west, the only "bonus" would be some extra time zones. By extending from the sub-tropics in Okinawa almost to the sub-arctic in Hokkaido, Japan gives its people the advantages of a wide variety of climate options that affect everything from way of life to agricultural products.

There is snow boarding and skiing on fresh powder this very minute near Mt. Yotei in Hokkaido. You can still swim in the ocean if you are in Okinawa. Here in Tokyo, we are admiring the autumn colors and the slight nip in the air.

If you are a farmer in Okinawa, you may be watching your sugar cane ripening before the harvest at the end of January. If you farm in Hokkaido, you are probably eating buttered and baked potatoes from October's harvest and looking around for things to do until the snow melts next spring.

It takes about 4 hours to fly the length of Japan and less than an hour to fly across it. What a lucky break, geographically speaking.

You Saw It In Summer...

And now you can see Mt. Yotei (Hokkaido) in winter.

The Nightingale and the Shoguns

This year's NHK historical drama was about Atsu-hime, the little girl from Kyushu who grew up to be the mainstay of the Tokugawa ruling family.

Tokugawa is the family name of the longest-lasting line of warlords (shogun) in Japanese history. The founder was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He succeeded Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was the successor to Oda Nobunaga. There were only those three who could claim control over Japan in its then entirety, though there are many others whose names live in Japanese history.

Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu were vastly different in style and temperament, and they are sometimes used as personality prototypes. One summation of their characters provides the theme of a children's song about nightingales.

The song asks the rhetorical question, "What will you do if the nightingale won't sing?"

In the song, Nobunaga answers, "I will kill it. Kill it I will."
Hideyoshi answers, "I'll make it sing. Make it sing, I will."
Ieyasu's reply goes, "Then I will wait. I will wait until it sings."

What do you do when you have a dream you want to bring into the world? Do you kill it off? Do you muscle it into reality? Do you wait for it to happen all by itself?

Sweet Potato Time

You can hear it. You can smell it in the air. It's getting cold, and that means the sweet potato truck is back.

The truck has a fire in its belly, so to speak. You can see the glow of burning wood through the side of the truck and smell the wood smoke mixed with the aroma of roasted sweet potato. The driver cruises through the neighborhood, chanting the vendor's trademark song: Yaki-imo! Ishi-yaki-imo!

Years ago, I had no idea what ishi-yaki-imo was. I knew ishi meant stones, and could see the hot stones lining the bed of the wooden pushcarts that were the forerunners of today's sweet potato trucks. I surmised that the peddler's cart belching wood smoke parked outside the train station from mid-November until spring was selling primitive hand warmers: charcoal-heated rocks.

One very cold evening on my way home from work, I lined up with the crowd surrounding the ishi-yaki-imo cart, plunked down a coin, and got a fold of old newspaper with something very hot wrapped inside. I held the package in both hands and walked home, enjoying the warmth of the stones insulated by the newspaper.

Once inside, I left my handwarmer on the counter and forgot about it. When my husband got home some time later, he saw the newspaper and instantly knew what it was.

"Oboy! Yaki-imo!"

I thought his enthusiasm was a little out of synch, since he had already finished the long, cold walk home and didn't need a handwarmer.

"Yep," I replied. "It was so cold I bought a yaki-imo. Do I have to return it now that I'm done with it?"

"Return it!" he said. "You're supposed to eat it!"

That's when I learned the melodious ishi-yaki-imo chant wasn't about the hot stones, it was about the sweet potatoes slowly roasting in a bed of rock heated over charcoal.

Let's Hear It for the Snow Bugs!

It is snowing in Niseko. Just a week ago, the prophetic snow bugs made their appearance.

Got your snow tires on?

Did You See It?

I hope you enjoyed the underwater photograph. These scenes won't be there for our enjoyment forever. The world has already lost 20% of its coral, according to experts, and the next 20% is teetering on the brink.


An underwater landscape such as this--without coral--looks as colorful as the bottom of a scaly, conrete tank. I've seen it's ghostly whiteness with my own eyes.


Coral does more than provide beautiful color and a cozy home for underwater creatures. It is the first line of defense against devastation by wild, out of control, typhoon-generated waves. From an inland hotel window I have seen the leftover waves--the ones that still rage after the typhoon has moved on--crashing against the reef, splashing higher than the tallest buildings on the island.


Without the coral, we might have to go about our daily lives dressed in life jackets and wetsuits, with snorkels pressed between our lips. Yuk.