I was on train and lost in Gilles Kepel's book "Jihad The Trial of Political Islam" when all of a sudden I heard someone say my name. In front of me I could see a group of 4 young women and one middle aged woman."Chuck" said another person. "Chuucck" said a third women. "Chuck!"......."Chuck!"......said the middle aged women. After that I heard the voice of a very young girl who I could not see because she was hidden by the group of standing women. "Chuu" the brat began in a hesitant voice. "Chuucckku" she said after a long pause. "Kashikoi desu ne"............"Very clever!" said a young woman emphatically. A moment after that I understood that ..alas...the woman was not talking about me. The train had stopped at a station and an elderly man had gotten up from behind the crowd of women and I could clearly see the previously hidden little girl. She had a look of intense pride on her face and in her extended hand she was grasping a zipper with determination. The Japanese word for zipper is "chuck"............Needless to say my name in Japan is Charles .......never Chuck.....However, having the name Charles here has one big drawback. Charles like many english first names is a dog's name in Japan. I am sure someday I will be in a park in Tokyo and will here someone calling my name and of course quickly come to the realization that the person was calling his poodle. For some reason "John" is a particularly popular dog's name here. Maybe this custom dates back to the 9 year period when Japan was an occupied nation. (I many even more so than it is now!) This business of giving your dog an english first name was a sort of passive resistance........ Actually I think it is a good custom. If I had two dogs, one a particularly ugly dog and the other a hunting dog I would without a moment's hesitation name the first one George and the second one Dick.........

Daiei, the giant Japanese company, just opened a new combination supermarket and convenience store and is calling it "Foodium". The word is a combination of two english words: "food" and "stadium". I have a good new name for Daiei's Tokyo headquarters building. Foolium.

In my neighborhood they removed this gigantic pedestrian bridge.The thing was just huge going completely around an intersection .There were only two problems with it. It was god awful ugly and no one, or almost no one used it. In the year I have been living here I have passed by it at least 10 times each week, and during that time I have only seen 4 people use it. It must have cost a pretty penny to put it up about 6 years ago and I am sure it cost a lot to take it down. I wonder if the same politician received both of the bribes for the two jobs from the same construction company.