Shawn, (click me).

Taking a page from Larry King I've decided to write this column with viewpoints on news and other events in Japan. I hope you enjoy it. This column will be updated every week. For the week of September 21st, 2000.

Well, the atmosphere here in Japan is olympics, olympics and more olympics. The Japanese are so interested in the olympics it that attention has actually been taken away from the Giants winning the pennant (it should happen sometime this week). For this I am grateful. Without the olympics everyone on TV would be "giants this, giants that", "aren't they the greatest team ever", "isn't Nagashima funny", and so on. It's been a very long season for an anti-giants baseball fan like me.

My dream has finally come true. I have made the Los Angeles Kings. As you can see by the picture above (click for the whole picture). Okay, actually I faked the picture on my computer but I still love to look at it and dream.

There is not much news in Japan these days aside from the olympics. Of course there is the occassional case of a 14-15 year try to kill someone so they could "standout" but unfortunately that is becoming less and less shocking.

Maybe Japanese don't understand what a big deal yesterdays win against the US in softball was. It not only was the first time Japan had beaten the US in 30 years it also ended the US's 112 game winning streak. Thank goodness it wasn't in the medal round.

In my bi-monthly column in the local paper here in Japan I ran out of ideas for fluff-pieces so I actually criticized several things in Japan including the police. Knowing that I criticized them for not enforcing the traffic laws (for one thing) I should be careful and not run any red lights from now on.