Greetings from Kumamoto, Japan

Hi, kids. I am in Kumamoto, Japan where today I participated in a symposium on alternative dispute resolution. It is my first trip to Japan, though my third to Asia. In 2005 and 2006, I traveled to South Korea. The Koreans flew me to Seoul in business class, which made 13 hours on a plane easy. This time, I flew economy: Indy to Detroit, Detroit to Osaka, and Osaka to Fukuoka, then a 2-hour van ride to Kumamoto. All told, the voyage took 24 hours on the road and awake. The NWA flight to Osaka was 14 hours long. I thought I would be okay because I was in an exit row, but it was right next to the galley and the toilets, and had the only open space on the plane. There were two different tour groups of 20-30 young teen Japanese girls on their way home; they tended to gather on the floor space by my feet and giggle until the flight attendants shooed them away. I didn't sleep, but I had some good conversations about labor conditions at Northwest; the flight attendants took a 40% cut in pay during the reorganization and they refused to sell out the less senior staff by adopting a two-tier system like the pilots did. Meanwhile, Northwest's CEO took no cut at all.

Kumamoto is a medium-sized city on the southernmost island of Japan. The city feels like home except for the fact you can't read the signs. I went shopping in the fancy department store across the street, which is huge, and I had to go up to the fifth floor before I could find anything but western designer clothes. It has a wonderful medieval castle, surreal Japanese gardens, and tomorrow we go visit an active volcano. The Japanese are like the Brits in that they drive on the other side of the street. It is disorienting to make a right turn that is like a left turn in the way it crosses oncoming traffic.

In some ways, I am an old hand at this. The breakfast buffet has western food that looks like it should be familiar but tastes different. It is served room temperature to cold. The eggs are sunnyside up, with the yolks still dark yellow and barely congealed (hey, they are still eggs...). The sausages are a cross between miniature hot dogs and bangers. There is also one of those coffee machines where you press a button for a cappuccino or a latte or whatever. There is Japanese food, but I never seem to want rice for breakfast; I did eat various kinds of fish.

On the other hand, this evening at the banquet, they asked me if I was willing to eat raw horse meat. I declined. Later, when they asked me why, I tried to explain that in America little girls all go crazy over horses from ages 8-12. They read horse books, buy little horse dolls, want to ride horses....They said, "Oh, you mean it is like a pet." I decided not to explain the part about sexual sublimation in the prepubescent female and simply agreed, "Yes, like a pet."

This is a "men first" culture. When I first encountered this in business class on Korean Air, I thought perhaps I was imagining things. I was sitting in the third row or so in the middle on one of those huge, fat jets, and the flight attendants started to serve dinner. They served every single male seated in business class before they would serve me. There was one other woman traveling with her husband; she got served with him. They served men behind me before they came back up to the third row. It happened again here with the hotel and handling luggage, and a female professor explained the "men first" thing. It also happened tonight at dinner. It is odd, because on the one hand, I am a guest in the seat of honor near the dean. On the other, I am irrevocably female from the perspective of the wait staff.

One thing I enjoy is the gift culture. There is much ritual giving of gifts in Asia. Receiving the gifts I have gotten down to a science. The giving part is a complex and subtle thing, so I have not mastered it yet. A gift must go to the highest ranking male in the organization, and it should not be something personal, but rather something symbolic and professional. Also, books and reprints are always appropriate. I brought crystal globes with little stands engraved with the name of the school and university. I have a growing collection of crystal objects adorning various surfaces in my living room: small clocks, paperweights, business card stands with names like Yonsei University and Ewha University.

I actually cried at Ewha. It is the largest women's university in the world: 20,000 women with full graduate programs (law, medicine, doctoral programs) and it dates back to the 1880s. Smith times ten. It is among the top 4 universities in Korea. They kept themselves open throughout WWII and the Japanese occupation; pretty amazing.

Well, I don't want to be a blog hog. Homeward bound Tuesday. Love, Lisa