Shack in Japan

Sarah Palin's Email Accounts Hacked

Looks like an anonymous hacker guessed the passwords to Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email account, and posted their full content to wikileaks. I have no pity for the governer because:

1) It's not that hard to create a good, strong password these days. I'm not saying those in the spotlight need to be tech experts, but they should be comfortable with using email.

2) It looks like Palin was using her personal email accounts to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws, the ones designed to let the public get at government information and communication when we need to. Trespasses like Palin's shield shady dealings from the public eye.

From Wikileaks:

The internet activist group 'anonymous', famed for its exposure of unethical behavior by the Scientology cult, has now gone after the Alaskan govenor and republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

At around midnight last night some members affiliated with the group gained access to governor Palin's email account "gov.palin@yahoo.com" and handed over the contents to the government sunshine site Wikileaks.org. 

Governor Palin has come under media criticism in the past week for using private email accounts to avoid Alaskan freedom of information laws. The contents of the mailbox show this to be true and also hold clues of at least one other Yahoo based mail account held by Palin, "gov.sarah@yahoo.com".

The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin's inbox, two example emails, address book and a couple of family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name tends to re-enforce the earlier criticism of Palin's email use.

The list of emails include an exchange with Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress. Another screenshot shows Palin's inbox and an e-mail from Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor's Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that "I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose."

According to Kim Zetter of Wired Magazine, McCorkell confirmed that she did send the e-mail to Palin.

Subsequently tests by Wikileaks reveal that both Palin's "gov.palin@yahoo.com" and her unrelated "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" account have now been deleted, almost certainly by Palin herself.

According to the Guardian, who has looked at the Wikileaks data, among the emails in Palin's account were several from addresses belonging to her aides, including a draft letter to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and several bearing "DPS", the acronym for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

DPS supervises the Alaska state troopers. Could the e-mails in question be relevant to the brewing ethics storm over Palin's push to sack her former brother-in-law from the force?

The contact list included also holds accounts for other official representative's private email accounts, including those of Alaska's Kris Perry and Sharon Leighow.

Contents of the mailbox here, and the Wikileaks blog post is here. Thanks, Slashdot!

If A Woman On A Train Tells You Not To Touch Her, Run!

The Waseda International Club put together an excellent presentation for new students, followed (of course) by a party in the cafeteria. Most of the content was pretty interesting, but my favorite was the section on sexual harassment. The topic at hand really wasn't funny at all, but the way it was presented made it hilarious.

I didn't think to photograph the slides, so you'll have to imagine this.

Setting: our protagonist ボッブ(bob), who has just visited Harajuku and Shinjuku, is on his way home on the train.
-[Sketch: a elementary sketch of a woman on a train. A speech bubble reads, "DON'T TOUCH ME!"]

Next slide: "Why did the woman say 'Don't Touch Me?"
(The presentation has been in the form of a quiz so far, so the question doesn't seem that out of the ordinary)

Next slide: answer choices
"Choice 1: Bob touched the woman."
"Choice 2: The woman pretended Bob touched her so she could get the money."
(I don't think the students ran their translations by an English speaker)

Here we pause, as a student explains to us that women sometimes accuse men of sexual harassment in order to extract money from them. Sexual harassment charges are difficult and expensive to fight, so men are often left with no choice.

Next Slide:
-"What should we do to avoid this situation?"
-"Choice 1: Attach your hands to a strap so everyone can see them" (presumably, the handholds on the train)
"Choice 2: Don't stand near women"

There was no "Choice 3: Champion education for both genders, stressing that while sexual harassment is a serious problem in Japanese society, frivolous claims do nothing but cheapen real assertions of harassment, hurting women in the long run." Hmm. They weren't too clear on which choice was the better one; the presenters seemed to think that either was a pretty good idea.

Next Slide:
"What should we do if a woman says "Don't Touch Me!" ?

Next Slide:
-"Choice 1: Settle out of court (ie give her the money demanded)"
-"Choice 2: Run!"

I expected to hear that the right choice would be to ask witnesses for help, to immediately go to the nearest police officer to explain the situation, so note the time and place to retrieve security camera footage, or something along those lines. Nope. According to the presenters, and apparently according to a general consenses of Japanse civil attorneys, the best course of action is to run away as fast as you possibly can. The presentation ended here, which was really the best part. I don't think I've ever seen a presentation on sexual harassment that matter-of-factly concluded that women will try to extort money from you by claiming you groped them, that there's no way to reasonably avoid or diffuse the situation, and that if it happens, you should probably run.

It was followed by a short presentation on the various turn-ons of Japanse guys and girls. If you're trying to pick one up, try the following:

Guy:
-Pulling his sleeve as he walks away
-Calling him "Baka (idiot)" or "Usotsuki (liar)"
-Asking him what he's reading
-Feeding him

Girls:
-Rolling up your sleeves
-Smoking
-Loosening your tie
-Backing up the car by turning your head to look through the rear window, turning the wheel with one hand, and bracing your other against the back of the passenger seat. I can confirm this one; the first time I drove a past Japanese girlfriend downtown, I started parking like I usually do, with two hands on the wheel, using my mirrors. She let me know that I was missing a major turn-on opportunity, and explained the exact method they showed in the presentation. I thought she just had some sort of odd fetish for particular methods of backing cars up, but I guess it's a universal thing across Japanese women.

 

Narita, Obachan, and Frog Sushi

Tuesday, we took a trip out to the rural town of Narita, to visit お祖母ちゃん (obachan, or "grandmother." I could call her my host mother's mother, but that rolls off the tongue awkwardly). It was a long drive, and we eventually ended up at Narita-san, the mountain in the middle of the town, and the site of the Narita temple. It ended up being far bigger than I imagined- to me, a temple is a single building, with an occasional pagoda, information stand, or incense burner nearby. This took up the entire mountain, with newly-constructed buildings alongside those that had endured for thousands of years.

Have you ever had those little seaweed-wrapped rice crackers you can buy in Asian grocery stores? Those are approximations of senbei, roasted, seaweed-dipped rice cakes. This is real senbei- after a quick roast in the fire, it's dipped in soy sauce, wrapped in nori, and passed off to the customer. Warm, salty, and delicious.

Obachan lives by herself, in a cute little house in outer Narita. The front rooms are wafuu, or Japanese-style; the floors are tatami mats, and occupants sit on the floor at low tables. The kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom are western-style, as is common in Japanese houses these days. Obachan was very sweet, and shocked that I could speak Japanese (as many older Japanese are). She brought out some nashi (asian pears- they're a summer fruit, kind of like the Japanese equivalent to watermelon) and grapes as refreshments for the muggy weather. A note on grapes here: seedless ones are rare, nobody eats the seeds, and most people peel the grapes before they eat them. Weird.

My host mother's brother and his wife came to visit, and we all went to obachan's husband's grave together. Now, I had been carrying a camera for most of the day, and felt no shame in photographing the beautiful structures on Mt. Narita, but in the culture in which I was brought up, a visit to a grave is a private, family matter, and I was honored they considered me family enough to bring along; I had no intention of making it part of my photo collection or blog.

As I was leaving obachan's house, though, my house mother asked me, 「カメラもっていくの」, "Aren't you going to bring the camera?" I told her that seemed rude, and she said it wasn't a problem. I figured I'd bring it and play it by ear, but it was soon evident that this really wasn't like a western grave visit, and they encouraged me to take all the photos I wanted.

The graveyard is aesthetically different from a western one: the ground is gravel and concrete rather than grass, and the graves are more shrines than headstones, each with a small open space in front of it. Most are granite or marble, and have wooden sticks protruding from the back, with the dead's posthumously given buddhist name inscribed on them, along with well-wishing for the soul as it journeys into the afterlife.

As with most things in Japan, there is a logical, set process to be followed when visiting an ancestor's grave. First, you clean it up. Pull up plants pushing through the gravel, clear out the ashes of incense burned on the last visit, douse the stones and plaques with water, and place fresh flowers in the vases.

 

 

Next, you ask the powers that be to see the dead well in the afterlife. Light a little incense, place it on the shrine, a quick pressing of the hands and bowing of the head, and it's done. Despite the large role this man played in the family's lives, and their attachment to him, there was no feeling of mourning at our visit; the sentiment was more of honoring the dead than anything else. I was invited to participate in the same way as each of the family members; my host mother made a comment along the lines of "gramps will be pleasantly surprised that an extra person prayed for him today."

Next, you eat sushi. This may not necessarily be part of the official Japanese grave-visiting doctrine, but I get the feeling it's a family tradition. We went to Kappa (frog) sushi, which relievingly didn't actually feature frog in its rolls. It was a sushi-train joint; plates of nigiri, maki, and sides moved around the tables on a conveyer belt, customers pick out what they want, and then are billed according to the plates on the table. Most American metropolises have them, as far as I know.

 

What made this place special, though, was the "express train." The track snaking around the tables had two levels: the bottom was a conveyer belt, identical to those at American sushi-train places, but the top was bare. I couldn't quite figure out what it was for, until I saw my host-uncle playing with the touch screen above the table. He wanted salmon nigiri, and none had passed recently, so he ordered it from the touch screen. A minute later, a motorized tram came zooming along the upper track, laden with the sushi he had ordered, and stopped right in front of our table. We took the plates, and it zoomed back into the kitchen. Amazing.

 

 

A Quality Good Time

Some friends from Waseda (where I'm studying) that came to my college last year took me out to a club last night (or this morning, rather- we met up at midnight at Shibuya station). We got in at a discount because someone knew someone, and from the way it was described to me, it sounded interesting- hip-hop and cruising for girls- but not exactly my cup of tea.

The club atmosphere fit my expectations for an hour or two- people were drunk and on the prowl- but the club was putting on a "Cinderella Night," which as far as I can tell involved spotlighting up-and-coming japanese singers and hip-hop artists. The songs were on the cliched, poppy side, and none of the lyrics (English or Japanese) particularly moved me, but the singers were great, had a ton of energy, and the crowd loved them; like most live music, if the performers and audience are into it, it's a good time no matter what the content.

Anyway, as the night went on and the interludes between performances got longer, stuff got interesting. At first, the dj spun hip-hop, but as more people moved onto the dance floor (especially us silly americans), stuff got house-y, and the place started hopping. Between dancing with my friends, watching the artists, and marveling at the spectacle of a Japanese hip-hop joint, it was pretty amazing.

What blew my mind, though, was the last hour- I'm not sure where this dj dug this stuff up, but he spun "No Scrubs," early Daft Punk, Notorious BIG, about 10 minutes of Village People-sounding pop-funk, and other retro hits I never would have expected to be known in Japan, let alone a rap-focused club. We ended up cruising out at about 5:15 am, having danced for about 4 hours straight.

I'm not sure whether the magic was my friends, the crowd, the particular club, or the particular event, so I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions on where to go to have a good time in Tokyo, but I get the feeling that this place is a pretty well-reputed hip-hop club, if you're ever in Japan and looking for that. The name, I believe, is "dramaqueen."

I figured it wouldn't be the best plan to bring my big camera into the club, so unfortunately, this single cell phone shot is all I have. It really doesn't capture the event at all.

To apologize, here's the view from my room, a beautiful sun breaking through the clouds at 6:42 AM. I'm going to bed.

Never should have left....

First time abroad, and America goes fascist. Has anyone read section 8 of Paulson's proposed bailout package?

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Really, guys? When have secret, non-reviewable decisions done this country much good. The shocking thing isn't the unconstitutional language so much as the lack of mention the section got in the papers' initial reports on the proposal (via Huffington Post).

Other good people covering a bad situation:

Terry Gross talking with Gretchen Morgensen about shady doings in the valuing of firms' assets.

Gawker reports on Americans Scrambling To Offer Bundles Of 'Shit' For Sale To Government

New York Times on What $700 Billion Can Actually Buy.

A commenter at the Consumerist has a great, simple answer to "How does the bailout affect me? (the "me" in question is a young american with very few investments." The answer's succinct and high-quality, so I'll repost:

"Basically, you will not be directly affected by these most recent developments because you have no investments. What you will feel is the slump on the economy...

This bailout will force the federal government to borrow and print money, which will erode away that nest egg you have through inflation. Basically if your savings account pays you 2% and inflation is 3.5%, you are losing 1.5% each year by keeping your money in a relatively safe place. Using treasury bills as an example, with the recent 'flight to safety', yields will likely continue to fall and inflation will likely continue to rise.

If all of that wasn't enough, the recent problems will likely cause the economy to spin its wheels in the short term, making it tougher for you to switch jobs or negotiate a raise because your employer is feeling the squeeze of having to raise prices in an economy where people's real wages are falling.

Additionally, if you want to start a business, or buy a home, it will be difficult to qualify for a loan unless you have sterling credit.

My advice is, if you can stand it, do what you are doing now and hang on. Things will shake out, and the problems always look the worst at the bottom of a cycle."

Hang in there, America; my absentee ballot is sure to win this election for the forces of good. Coming up soon: Narita, a visit to grandma's house, frog sushi, a haircut, and a zany fashion alley.