Wow! Busy!

Evidence of hard work:

newsvine.com

What's up lately on the reporting front

Of the stories I've done lately, including those about the Japanese prime minister , big-name automakers and developments in the technology sector, the two stirring up interest:
Hello Kitty products for men
Robot Guitar
Thanks Hello Kitty fans.
Thanks guitar fans.

I am a Journalist 3

Having integrity means that the reporter must watch his/her actions as an individual and not stray from the Path.
Ever since I was a child, I liked to write and read. The characters and stories in the books I read were more real than the real life around me.
I could have possibly chosen another career _ as long as writing was involved _ but what appealed the most about being a reporter was the honesty/integrity/selflessness of the job.
I've always wanted to live life/make a living with the assurance I was doing the Right Thing.
In that sense, journalism provides a logical solution.

I am a Journalist 2

The integrity of the reporter has always been important.
But as our industry enters financial difficulties, the raison d'etre of journalism is inevitably going to be questioned.
We have to answer the question: Why do we need news stories?
What does news offer that's not in video games, social networking, movie downloads, blogs?
Reporting has to be about a lot of things _ delivering information accurately and quickly, making complex faraway stories easy to understand, engaging readers in an entertaining meaningful way, etc.
But the bottom line is: Reporters serve the public good by getting the truth out.
That's why reporters must have integrity.
We can't hope to have any credibility if we are not good people with principles in our everyday lives.
This is where being a Poet/Journalist sees no conflict.
Poets speak the Truth. Poets pursue Goodness. Art is Life.

I am a Journalist

It's been almost a year since I started this blog.
"I am a Poet."
That's what I wrote in one of my early entries.
Today, as we enter a new year (it's about midnight in Tokyo Jan. 1, 2008 turning to Jan. 2, 2008 as I write this)
I want to say this:
I am a Journalist.
What you do everyday is what defines who you are.
This blog made me realize the importance of my writing outside my everyday reporting on the job.
But it also made me realize more than ever how much I believe in reporting.
I want to do my best to contribute what I can, given my background and my talent.
This blog gave me an outlet that was so close at hand yet so public and intimate at the same time, and helped me reconnect with poets and creative writers.
But it helped my job as well: People gave me ideas for stories and feedback for the writing I did on my job.
I am after all the same Person.
And in the end, it is about Writing _ not just the Craft but what's involved as Personal Belief/Conviction/All its Mystery/the Fun of it.
Journalism is changing rapidly, with everything becoming faster, niche and direct.
But I believe that ultimately the person/writer behind the journalism is going to become more important than ever.
Of course, we must deliver on the accuracy, speed and context.
But we must also have _ for the lack of a better word _ character.
And I'm not talking about reporters' reading the news on TV with authoritative voices.
Accountability, credibility, integrity, creativity _ the human side of the writer/journalist is going to count in the end to our readers.
Otherwise, all they would have would be the headlines/press releases/blurbs.
What other than the writer makes one news story different from another story?

Criminals

Usually people make a point of avoiding criminals, but watching criminals up close (relatively up close, that is) is something journalists get to do as part of our jobs.
In movies, criminals are rather special, the anti-hero, or even the hero him/herself, someone to be feared, like a Mafia boss or Hannibal Lecter.
In real life, criminals are simply pathetic.
They are losers.
This was a revelation that came when I covered a murder trial in Detroit.
A man charged with murdering a researcher was asked how the murder happened, and he said _ with a straight face _ that he pushed her and she fell over backwards, hit her head on a sharp corner of furniture and died, as though it was her fault that she died.
We try to understand how a criminal mind works and we sometimes come up with elaborate explanations because we want to understand why something as horrible and tragic as serious crime happens.
This article doesn't address crime.
But I found out rationalizing irrational behavior is called "cognitive dissonance," and it's not that sophisticated because monkeys and toddlers do it.
This is exactly what happens in the criminal mind.
The criminal compartmentalizes, rationalizes, justifies to come up with a weird theory, no matter how filled with laughable self-serving illogical contradictions, to explain how it was the perfectly sound and smart thing to do.
But if cognitive dissonance is about survival, the ability to move on and shrug off complex doubts about the past, then does that mean the criminal is more highly evolved than a person with a developed conscience?
Being able to live with crime isn't a cerebral process.
It's an animal instinct for survival, a level of existence on the basest level.
It's not really about being human at all.

Auto show previews

Reporters in Tokyo are very busy these days going to previews for the auto show coming up later in the month.
The automakers aren't kidding when they call these models "concepts."
That's exactly what they are.
The guy with the sign is leading reporters to the Mazda cars . Nissan showed the playful Pivo today.
Amazingly enough I took photos for both previews.

Letter From North Korea

I've been to North Korea only twice _ in 2002, as part of the press with then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and with the Foreign Ministry delegation that went there ahead of Koizumi's trip.
I don't know what I was expecting. But it was definitely one of the most memorable places I have visited ever.
Things we take for granted simply aren't there.
There aren't that many places you can go in this day and age to have that kind of eye-opening experience.
And it's just as about depravity of mind/soul as materialistic poverty.
We stayed at Pyongyang's top hotel, but the hallways were dark at night because of the energy shortage.
I had to feel my way, touching the walls, to find my way back to my room.
The toothbrushes in the rooms were primitive wooden sticks with barely any bristles at the end.
The bed was a hardened box.
The night streets were also totally dark.
Streetlamps, skyscraper lights, neon signs and car headlights we are used to as providing visibility just aren't there.
And because of this, you can see the stars so clearly it's dazzling.
The mornings start with blaring broadcast speeches and militaristic singsong music tearing through the air.
The TV, which has maybe two channels, only shows those weird propaganda we see on news footage about North Korea.
It is surreal.
It is like being on a movie set where everything that looks real is a cardboard facade, and the people you encounter are actors, all putting on suspiciously cheery faces pretending to love their dictator.
We were given official tour guides to "babysit" us during our entire trip.
But surprisingly we were pretty free off-hours to roam around as much as we liked, although we couldn't go very far, given that we as reporters had to stick around to go to briefings, and there aren't any cabs to hop on or anything.
When a photographer and I went across the street to eat dinner at a barbecue place, we ordered dishes by pantomiming a bird (for chicken) and mooing (for beef).
As I said, I don't know what I was expecting.
But I wasn't expecting everybody to be so nice.
We don't expect friendly human beings with what we are fed about North Korea, day in and day out_ not the restaurant waitress trying to decipher our orders, the "babysitter" guides, everyone far nicer than people on average, say, in New York.
It's more like visiting a forsaken rural area where people aren't used to visitors and see them as guests who need looking out for.
The landscape (before driving into the city through the famous arch) is also pastoral and untainted.
The sloganistic billboards we associate with communist nations are absent outside the city, and because the nation is too poor to have many cars the whole place looks fairytale (so Nihon mukashi banashi) _ winding dirt roads through luscious green and fresh air.
All picturesque, untouched by the modern world.
It reminded me of Show Era Japan.
Naturally, the press group I was with got taken to the obligatory tourist spots during our free time _ controlled and orchestrated.
We went up Juche Tower.
We went to the statue of Kim Il Song.
We went to the reimen restaurant.
Some reporters put in a request, and we also got to go to a department store.
It was more like a drug store or a Daiei by American/Japanese standards, and the strange thing was that the shelves were filled with the same product (eg., plastic alarm clock) over and over (like a miniature shabby version of a Costco).
A small booth inside the store offered foreign exchange services.
Apparently, the department store caters largely to diplomats and other visitors as regular North Koreans can't afford to shop there.
It was obvious throughout our assignment the country was eager to get foreign currency from reporters:
We were charged an exorbitant fee for transmitting our stories.
You often see in Japanese TV how North Koreans guides speak fluent Japanese.
This is true.
One North Korean man, while we were waiting for a briefing, told me he could sing Japanese songs.
He demonstrated his skill by singing in perfect Japanese: "Konnichiwa Akachan."
It was bizarre to be sitting in Pyongyang and watch this North Korean sing "Konnichiwa Akachan."
But besides this brief rendition of "Konnichiwa Akachan," the standard music there was all numbing blaring militaristic songs.
On my flight back to Japan, the jazz wafting through my earphones (music we take for granted but music that speaks so clearly and so fundamentally of a free, democratic, creative society) literally brought tears to my eyes.
Not only because Music is so beautiful.
But because it is so unfair the people of North Korea don't have the freedom to just reach over and listen to that Music.

Auto workers in the U.S./Germany/Japan

In some ways, a farmer has more in common with farmers in other nations than with people of other occupations in the same country.
That can be said of other professions _ boxers, chief executives, carpenters, reporters.
That's because what we do to earn a living is such an all encompassing and fundamental part of our being that what is required to perform that job right comes to define how we think and act, and what we ARE.
Recently my colleagues and I did a project together to look at auto workers in the U.S., Germany and Japan, to see what they had in common, as well as what separated them.
The package together told a story that was more than each story on its own:

The U.S. story
The story from Germany
The story from Japan

I remember talking to farmers in Michigan and farmers in Japan and realizing how much farmers have in common, although they don't speak the same language and they live so far away from each other.
I also remember the point in I believe a book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: We are what we do every day (The way he put it was that we become what we pretend to be and so we must be careful.)
People can justify all they want in their minds to appease their guilt about what they do.
But sometimes matter overtakes mind.
Every little decision/act/word counts.

DS beauty tips/bacteria buzz/church vs. PS3

My article on a new Konami game for the Nintendo DS that gives beauty tips has this blogger response. But I do have to ask: Isn't the idea behind the game a trifle too sexist for people outside Japan? One of the recommended etiquette tips: Don't put on makeup on the commuter train. That's so Tokyo!
Net buzz about my bacteria story.
The scientists aren't saying they can stop mutation. But they've figured out a way to put the message in four places in the bacteria to increase the chances it will survive intact.
An interesting news story this past week is the controversy over a PS3 game called "Resistance: Fall of Man."
Some scenes take place in what looks like Manchester Cathedral, and cathedral officials say they didn't grant permission and they're complaining.
The Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo says the company is talking with cathedral officials.
Overnight in London, our reporter there talked with a cathedral official who denies Sony is talking to them at all.
There was no comment from Sony in that story about the denial although Sony has an office in Europe.
I contacted the spokesman there by email, and he confirms (once again) Sony is in talks with Manchester Cathedral officials.
But there will be no further public comment, he says.
Is a bloody shooting in a cathedral different from other similar violent scenes involving landmark buildings like King Kong and the Empire State Building/Godzilla and the Tokyo Tower?
And aren't such virtual bloodbath games offensive to some people, regardless of where they take place?
This is from some time back but someone found my cultural take on the difference between MySpace and mixi interesting.
And finally:
A great place to keep track of my stories complete with color photos!

Buzz on bacteria story

Some buzz is abuzz on my story about using bacteria as a storage medium on this fascinating exchange among people who are into what's called ID for "intelligent design," and argue living things were designed by a higher intelligence.
They oppose a materialistic approach to science, and are saying, "No," to Darwin.
If Man can encode bacteria, then who encoded bacteria in the first place?
... Datte!

Paper-like Display

My story about Sony's thin display that bends like a piece of paper.
Some technological breakthroughs are more than just a gee-whiz.
If prices are the same, then the switch to ever thinner displays is the way to go.
Another link to my story.
This story shows how business/technology stories often make for the biggest news out of Japan.
I already said this, but we must be vigilant about what Sony (and other Japanese companies) are up to.

Sony proves important, professor reads bacteria

My story on Sony was the most e-mailed technology story on Yahoo! the other day. It was the only Japan news on the Top 10 List (including general news).
It goes to show how crucial it is for us to intelligently pick what intrigues ordinary people (not just investors).
There's more to a story than what drives stock prices.
I also did a story about research on storing information on bacteria.
Hard drives, memory cards and paper get lost/destroyed. But bacteria will be around millions of years from now.
The professor was telling me all this with a straight face, sitting in a cottage-like office on a campus filled with trees and tranquility on the outskirts of Tokyo.
But I had to burst out laughing.
I asked him if it bothered him most people would find this odd, if not outright amusing, maybe ridiculous.
That doesn't phase him at all.
Science is like art _ meant to entertain and fill people with the dream for eternity.
It's someone else's problem to figure out practical applications or implications of Pure Science.
At least he had an answer. But maybe that's why I'm a reporter, not a scientist.

Getting interviewed

I was on the other end of the interviewing table the other day with Mr. Isao Tokuhashi, who has a Web page, and Podcast.
What a learning experience.
"You know..." "Hmmm" "...like..." "Whatever..."
A sophisticated speaker I am not.
Whatever!
I learned it's nerve-wracking to be interviewed.
And I developed a newly found sympathy for those I interview.
But it's also fun to prattle about yourself.
And to hear the sound of your own voice.
Isao Tokuhashi also taught me that interviews are to be enjoyed.
He is a special kind of person who genuinely likes interviews.
I'm not exactly sure what this means.
But we sometimes forget to enjoy the interview process as much as we should because we get caught up with trying to get something for a story out of the interview.
An interview is, after all, about getting to know someone.
It's a pretty fundamental form of human communication.
And that's an important thing to remember.
Mr. Tokuhashi also translated the interview into Japanese and posted photos of the AP office.
I got to know Mr. Tokuhashi after he visited our bureau with a clip of my AP article from the Fresno Bee.

Race and crime _ and reporting on race and crime

When an American racial minority commits a crime, race is an important fact, if not the most significant fact.
When a member of the racial majority commits a crime, race is incidental.
This is something that has to be said, although many people don't like to say it for fears of being perceived as defending the crime or worse yet the criminal.
This is not about putting the blame on racism to defend the crime/criminal.
Obviously there are far more people who have been victims of racism all their lives and DON'T kill.
It is to the credit of all members of racial minorities who have gotten beyond racism and managed not to end up criminals.
But is this being understood?
Not if every time, race becomes the big focus of a crime, and that's being taken for granted as a matter of fact.
And isn't that, after all, the mentality that perpetuates that kind of crime in the first place?
Why isn't that being addressed today?

More than 40 years ago, it has all been said in Alex Haley's interview with Miles Davis.

Statement from the Asian American Journalists Association

Asking the media to avoid mentioning race in a story may be unrealistic.
Asking the media to mention race in the proper way (with the proper perspective) may be just as unrealistic.
But it's not asking too much to ask the media to avoid the assumption that race is somehow an important aspect of the suspect that led to the crime.
The media should also avoid using wording that plays upon such public assumptions.
Some of the language on broadcast news is appalling.
The sad thing is that the people who are speaking don't even get it.
If we all tried to be more sensitive, then this wouldn't even be an issue.
Such standards for sensitivity should be higher for journalists than for the general public.

Horiemon 3

I was one of the reporters rushing around March 16 to tell the world the verdict in the trial of Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie.
Since foreign media are assigned only two seats for some 10 news organizations that wish to get into the courtroom, we have to play a musical chairs version of reporting.
We get armbands from the ninth floor PR office that show to court security that we are indeed reporters. We pass each other the armbands like a relay racer.
The trial is attracting a great deal of attention. TV was an endless stream of Livedoor reporting. TV and still photo cameras aren't allowed in Japanese courtrooms except for the first few minutes before the session starts. And so what we see (is Horie wearing a tie? What color is the tie? Is he hair slicked back? Or spiky?) is important.
When Horie asked the judge to let him leave the courtroom, we all had to rush out to relay that information, although we had no idea what was going on. I thought he had to go throw up.
When Horie came back five minute later, looking pretty much the same as when he had left, we had to all rush out again and relay THAT.
His lawyer told us later that he hadn't been feeling well all day and he probably needed to use the bathroom. Horie, appearing in a TV interview in the evening, said he had diarrhea.
The whole drama is far from over because Horie is appealing.
Besides the question of his innocence, there are others:
Is the same punishment being fairly doled out for a comparable crime? I don't remember cases of executives of major companies ever getting prison terms for this kind of white collar crime.
Does a guilty plea win lenience? I.e., what is Miyauchi's verdict/sentence going to be next week?
How sane is a justice system that convicts 99.9 percent of its defendants?
It is often difficult to hear what the judge is mumbling from where the foreign media must sit _ the very back row.
Fortunately, all the Japanese reporters who get to sit up front are all yelling the news in their version of relay tag:
Guilty, guilty, guilty. Two years six months prison. Two years six months prison. Two years six months prison.

Chips EveryWARE

Adam Greenfield, who has written "Everyware, the Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing," had some harsh words on his blog for my Chips Everywhere article. But there's always a happy ending to Yuri's endeavors: He is willing to be that expert who will be interviewed for comment for my next technology story!