Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu to all of my readers! Yoku
Shitteiru is thrilled to be writing for you on-line, where I no longer have to worry about kibishii editors and space limits, only about keeping your easily distracted attention.
Let’s kick off the new year with…a public service announcement? Elections are upon us! No, not the Democrat and Republican primaries. The JETAA NY elections, which are happening in the spring. So if you want to help make JETAA NY even better by assuming a position in which you could potentially exert some influence on Yoku Shitteiru, then read about the positions and/or talk to the current officers to find out more. (Or just go on Leno and declare your candidacy there.)
Meanwhile, in the spirit of
JETAANY 2.0, Yoku Shitteiru is now on Facebook. Come and find me on the JETAANY Group on Facebook so you can share celebrity JET alum tidbits Super Yoku Poke me.
JAPAN ABOUT TOWN: So you just got back from Japan, you’re walking around the East Village and, like, you really need to go to the bathroom, but you want to do it in style and comfort. What’s a full-bladdered gaijin to do? You’ll be relieved to know that the Cha-An Teahouse (9th St. between 2nd & 3rd Ave.) now sports a Toto Washlet in the loo where you can partake in your own private “pee” ceremony. Hey, don’t laugh. This
could be the beginning of a new movement…… Or, if a warm seat is not your priority, but quality time on the throne with the latest copy of Weekend Shonen Jump is what you seek, now you can pop into the new Kinokuniya (6th Ave. and 42nd St.) and take advantage of their (non-Toto Washlet) facilities as well as the Cafe Zaiya on the second floor with its nice views overlooking the skating rink in Bryant Park. Take that, Barnes&NobleStarbucksUSA Industrial Complex!….. Of course, if you really want to know where to go in New York to “get your Japan on,” you can always just check out ChopsticksNY.com, the omoshiroi publication that’s not only a great resource, but also told us they think “the Newsletter is always so funny and insightful.” (Yoku Shitteiru knows,
of course that by Newsletter, they meant Yoku Shitteiru.) Speaking of which, if you think you got some design skilz, Chopsticks is holding a cover design contest with cash prizes. See details on JETAANY’s main page.
JET ALUMS DOMINATE ESSAY CONTEST: Yoku Shitteiru is proud that the 15 winners of the Kintetsu JET Alumni Essay Contest (out of 76 total submissions) were all JET alums! Announced at the end of November, they included New Yorkers Earth Bennett (Ping Pong Diplomacy), Brendan Victorson (Otori) and current Minnesota resident but New Yorker in her heart Alexei Esikoff (Karaoke: The Great Unifier). Also making the jaunt was Tennessean David Flynn, who was a JET from 1987-88, now has a daughter on JET and returned to Japan for the first time since 1988. Go here to see the full list of winners and read their essays. (They’re in the form of one big 73-page PDF, so Yoku Shitteiru recommends printing the whole thing out at work and taking it with
you on the train or into the Cha-An Teahouse bathroom.) For those of you thinking about entering next year (1 out of 5 odds is pretty good), you’ll be incentivized to know that the victory package included free roundtrip airfare to Japan, a Japan Rail Pass, and assistance from AJET and CLAIR in planning a trip to the winners’ respective “hometowns,” with stops in LA on December 8 for the Departure Reception and in Tokyo on December 11 for the Welcome Reception. Not too shabby. Yoku Shitteiru also knows well that special thanks go to Country Reps Shannan Spisak and Shannon Quinn as well as to Clara Solomon, Jenn Olayon and Liz Sharpe for all their hard work in making this contest a big time success. Stay tuned for the published version of the essays with some extra bells and whistles.
THE SOCIAL CIRCUIT: Now time to move on to some of the tanoshimi from the last three months. We start off with the Career Forum and Welcome Back Reception, both at the Nippon Club on October 27. (Yes, of course 2007. I can’t even believe you’re making me clarify that…) A hearty crowd of younger JET alums gathered to garner pearls of wisdom from a highly regarded panel of established JET alums in a session moderated expertly by webmaster (and perhaps future daytime TV talk show host) Lee-Sean Huang. Clara Solomon ran the practical and helpful resume workshop. JET alums were also treated to the engaging and entertaining perspectives of keynote speaker Ann Koller (Fukuoka-ken, 2002-04), the International Recruiting Coordinator for Google at the time and now the Recruiting and Programs Coordinator for DoubleClick…… The Career Forum was followed, as is the custom, by the Welcome Back Reception where nearly 100 JET alums got to party down with Ambassador Motoatsu Sakurai and JLGC Executive Director Hiroshi Sasaki and welcome back the newly minted JET alums. The crowd also included some heavy duty shacho power, notably CEOs Mr. Yasunori Yokote of Mitsui USA and Mr. Ryoichi Ueda of Mitsubishi. Special thanks to the Japan National Tourist Organization for providing luggage tags to all the JET alums. (Just a quick reminder to use those luggage tags for good, and not for evil.)…… Following the Welcome Back Reception, as has become the tradition, the nijikai then moved to Faces and Names (W. 54th Street) where the new JET alums were welcomed in the traditional way…… Lastly, the only downside to the whole day were some party crashers who weren’t so, shall we say, pa-so-na-ble…… JET alums, of course, like to party during the week as well, and so November 16 it was off to Galway Hooker (E. 36th Street) where over 50 JET alums gathered in a private nook in the back for an excellent mid-week happy hour organized by the lovely and gregarious JETAANY Social Chair Monica Yuki. Plenty of new faces were in attendance, coming from as far away as Gramercy Park, the Upper West Side and even New Jersey, along with a full compliment of veteran JET alums….. Then on
Halloween, a gaggle of JET alums were spotted at Forbidden City (Avenue A & 13th St.) for an energetic show by HappyFunSmile, which was fresh off a performance at the Anime Festival at the Javits Center the previous Saturday. Costumed in various manga kitsch, including shamisen player Kossan in a custom-made cosplay black-and-white-with-blue-hair outfit that would have fit right in at a Harajuku gathering, HappyFunSmile rocked the joint with their usual assortment of peppy chin-don tunes sung by Brian Nishii, Akiko “Kewpie” Hiroshima and Kaori Ibuki contrasted with the smooth enkas sung by Japanese-Brazilian hearthrob Rodrigo Morimoto. It was in this festive Halloween atmosphere that Professor Cindy coined the term “slutty dot-dot-dot” as the snowclone to describe every female Halloween costume, and that the JET alum crew observed a propensity for young Japanese women in the Upper East Village to dress as Marie Antoinette…… The HappyFunSmile party continued on December 12, as JET alums once again gathered at Forbidden City for an Official JET Alum Happy Hour, including special cameos by former Secretary Yuki Shimyo and international dance star from Seattle Ichiho Hayashi. HFS put on an even kick-assier show, leading the crowd in a bon-odori parade around the bar (“Hotte, hotte! Kagutsuide!”) and closing with Shima Uta. As it turned out, HappyFunSmile was as glad to see a big Japan-friendly crowd as the JET alum crew was to dance to the bouncy Okinawan tunes (described by bandleader Wynn Yamami as a cross between Japanese and klezmer.) Baritone sax player Rob Perle e-mailed the next day to say, “The JET crew was awesome last night. Thanks for coming out in force to the HappyFunSmile gig.”…… And just before the new year, Nancy I. managed to get the JLGC’s Tanaka, Bando and newbie Inoue-samas, along with a few JETRO folks, to actually leave the office and join a yakitori chow-down at Yakitori Totto, which experts report is sooo much better than its sis Torys. Stay tuned for future yakitori chow-downs.
IRREVERENCY: Just a quick aside to share two compelling and irreverent websites. The first is the over-the-top and crude entry on No Gaijins Allowed in the Uncyclopedia. The second is an on-line, fairly adoruto manga with a large cult following called Sexy Losers, written and drawn by a Canadian who lived in Japan from 2001-04…… Hey, did you know that fortune cookies originally come from Japan? Yoku Shitteiru does, of course. And China may find this claim to be irreverent, but this recent New York Times article on fortune cookies bucks conventional wisdom to say it’s so…… And this New York Times article on modernized onsens in Japan helps keep my editor happy by tying things back to the technology or digital chlamydia or whatever lame ‘n vague theme he came up with this time. In any event, not actually worth reading the article, which is an exercise of travel writing cliches and hyperbolic mundanity and was clearly produced in exchange for free stays in each of the fancy-schmancy onsens……. On a different kind of irreverent note, Japan Society will host an NPR Brian Lehrer interview with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte at lunchtime on January 31. The event is sold out, and there is no truth to the rumor that Negroponte will demonstrate the human rights and torture techniques he condoned in Honduras, the money laundering techniques he learned in funding the Contras, and God knows what he’s been involved in Iraq. Still, it’s way cool that Japan Society has set this up on their premises, and Brian Lehrer is a great interviewer, so make sure to listen at work or at home.
NANI SHITTEIRU YO? November saw Monica Yuki run the NYC Marathon, Bryan Sherman move to Tokyo with his wife Miyuki to start his new International HR gig at Uniqlo, Rosie DeFremery fly off to a fabulous trip in Japan, where she tapped into the shodo subculture in Tokyo, and Clara Solomon jetting off to Singapore on behalf of NYU Law School in its efforts at world law school domination…… Nancy Ikehara was spotted hanging out with Duran Duran following their Broadway concert and reports, “All band members are pushing 50, believe it or not. Simon was sporting a rather nasty potbelly. Nick, as usual, had globs of mascara on. John’s once glorious long locks have thinned out considerably. And Roger is starting to look a lot like Austin Powers yet without the charm.”……. In December, Secretary Carol Elk and “Dr.” Neel Ray were sited at Macy’s getting into the spirit with Santa-sama, and Brian Hersey was spotted rock climbing in the Cayman Islands…… Meanwhile, Laura Epstein, of WaltzingMatildasNYC fame, says the part-time business she runs out of her studio apartment is picking up, going beyond friends of
friends. So get your pavlova orders in now before it’s too late!……Ganbatte to Nelson Wan who has taken over as the temporary JET Coordinator at the Japanese Consulate while Noriko prepares for the miracle of birth in February…. and Omedetou to Treasurer C.J. Hoppel who accepted a summer associate position at Morrison & Foerster, (a law firm that playfully refers to itself as MoFo) and will be splitting his summer between the New York and Tokyo offices. Gokuro sama, C.J.!….. From the other side of the world, Drew “Andrew” Barnes spent New Year’s hopping around Asia with wife Rika, starting in Osaka and then heading to Singapore (too late to run into Clara) and Malaysia. Drew fans will be pleased to learn that he’ll be gracing the States with a visit in the spring…… Also from the other side of the world, George Rose, 
former JETAANY Prez and interpreter for Hideki Irabu, has spent the past 4 months with his wife and 2-year old son settling into life in Tokyo with his new job as Director of Pacific Rim Business for the New York Yankees (or is that, Yan-ki-zu?)…… Meanwhile, Friend-of-JET (FOJ) Sakura Suzuki, daughter of the owners of Shabu Shabu 70, has left her job at NTT and moved her heart to San Francisco where she will serve as Development Manager for the Japanese Community Youth Council…… Artist/illustrator Manya Tessler, who was one of the featured JET alum artists at JETAA NY’s 2006 Cultural Meishi Exchange, is publishing her first book, Yuki’s Ride Home. 
Don’t know if Kinokuniya is carrying it, but go and request a copy anyway so they know it’s in demand. Her illustrations are cho-beri oishii…… Moving on to January, we find NYC Marathon runner Monica Yuki in a boot cast after she tore some tendons slipping on her grandma’s kitchen floor—er, spiking the volleyball on a deserving opponent—Carol taking photos of JET alums at Bar 13 to add to the JETAANY Facebook collection, and drunken discussions of a new line of JETAANY t-shirts to read, “Single, Bilingual, and Ready to Mingle!” Place your orders now!
GRAMMAR POINT: Our President knows he’s being pedantic, but wants to point out that “it’s not shinenkai, it’s shinnenkai (note the extra “n”). Without the extra “n,” it sort of sounds like an association to ask if someone is dying in Osaka dialect. Or something like that. Anyway. This exercise in pedantry has been brought to you in association with Presidents for Pedantry, Inc.” Muchos arigatos por la kyoiku, El Presidente!
That’s all for this issue, my digitally enhanced readers. Stay tuned for the Spring issue
and get ready for hanami!
Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!
