Pig Flu Becomes Big Pain in the Buta

Let the panic begin. Today Japanese health officials made the decision to quarantine any planes arriving from the Americas. When they land at Narita, guys in hazmat suits board the plane and physically inspect every passenger (I imagine guys with flashlights lurking through a dim and dusty cabin- like a scene out of CSI). When they are allowed to deplane, they walk infront of a camera that can read their body temperature. People who are warm set off an alarm (either because they have a fever, or because they are steaming mad for having to sit on the tarmac for hours):

Read the story about the panic in Japan HERE

Personally I think it is just a ploy to get these policies permanently implemented so that foreigners can be regularly inconvenienced and harassed to the point where no more of their filthy kind come to Japan anymore. Then things can be like they were in Edo period. Happy, blissfully ignorant times those were!

I was made aware of the level of panic when I got an urgent email from the president of Teachers College, Columbia indicating that someone with the flu was touching a computer keyboard in the computer lab. In typical New York fashion, she said that it was too late to do anything about it, so the infected keyboard would not be publicly hanged. She said that disinfecting the areas the student went would be "unnecessarily disruptive to our students during this busy time of the year." So, basically, she is saying: we can't be bothered beyond sending this spam to the entire campus community. But, we want to be part of the panic-spreading fun.

Here is a picture of a Japanese tourist visiting New York. I'm sure if he gets on the E train he will be mugged for his swanky mask:

Read the story about panic in New York HERE

No Special Delivery

All my stuff was finally delivered from New York today and has overtaken my limited living space. It only took 40 days in a shipping container. The choice to use a Japanese company (Nippon Express USA) has proven to be a good one. Three guys showed up today with all 14 boxes, and counted each one as they gingerly placed them on a pad in our living room. They then opened each one to ask us if everything was there. They will even come back after we have unpacked to collect the boxes and packing wrap! Not a single box was crushed, or even dented as far as I can tell.

This is in stark contrast to when I moved to New York from Japan three years ago. I used normal sea mail and the boxes were delivered to us by the US Postal Service. One box was ours, that is, it had our hand writing on it, but inside there was a can of tuna fish with Koran writing, a fake Diesel bag and some books in Korean and Chinese. Some rather important things that started out in that box were nowhere to be found. Calls and a visit to the Post Office in Harlem (not surprisingly) had no effect. Probably the most disturbing thing was when the postal clerk looked at the return address written in Japanese on the box and asked if it was German.

Some Koran guy out there is wondering who those people are on the beach in Hawaii, when all he really wants to do is have a tuna sandwich.