January 2001

• Dot-Coms Punt in Super Bowl
• Honoring the Dearly Dot-Departed
• E-Trade's Toned-Down Message
• Trashy divas and sexless boy toys
  There's really nothing new about the aesthetics of teen pop

Watching closely:
What were the Danish flags doing on the mantlepiece at Laura's family home? Have a look at the background of female lead Iben Hjejle.

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(27 January 2001)

• Java: Slow, ugly and irrelevant
• Java fans fight back

I think C++ is sufficiently different from Java to require taking a dedicated course, so this term I have enrolled in OGI 505: Programming in C++ at the Oregon Graduate Institute in Hillsdale OR, a western suburb of Portland. I am simply doing what future OHSU students will be able to do routinely, since OHSU and OGI intend to merge, becoming Oregon Health and Science University.

• OHSU-OGI merger discussions
• Senate panel OKs bill to allow merger of OHSU and OGI
• OHSU finding it harder to move up funding ladder

For the OHSU Division of Medical Informatics, the synergies of such an arrangement are obvious -- OGI has a dedicated Computer Science department, and offers instruction in areas not presently covered by the OHSU curriculum: C++, Visual Basic (another programming language), and human-computer interaction.

The makeup of my class reflects the fact that many of the people involved in programming today are Chinese or South Asian (East Indian). It seems English is everyone else's second language. The fact that I am a native English speaker doesn't help me understand what is being said in class, however!

• The Hindu Online: Inglish as she is spoke
• INDOlink: Humor: Bihar Inglish
• Inglish, Tinglish, Tamlish, Hinglish... What, man?

• Bright Lights: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Signals Wind From The East
• Flight School
  The secrets behind the soaring stunts in Crouching Tiget, Hidden Dragon
• When will Asian-American music get its turn?

Just over there
Was our old community.
Echoes! Echoes! Echoes!
-- Poem from the JA Historical Plaza

The exhibit consisted of photographs and a few artifacts of Nihonmachi or Japantown, the pre-War hub of the Japanese community. This was a 12-square-block area of downtown Portland that is now called Old Town. At the time, it was a bustling commercial center, with Japanese grocery stores, hotels, bath houses, laundries, theaters, gambling and social clubs, doctors' and dentists' offices, barber shops, beauty salons, tailor shops, garages and restaurants. The prices of goods seem unbelievable: a new suit was $12.50! But wages were also lower back then.

A few copies of the Japanese-language newspaper, Oshu Nippo* were on display. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on 07 December 1941, its printing press was seized by United States federal authorities, who then used it to print propaganda leaflets that were dropped on Japan. The press was never returned.

There were photos of floats the Japanese community used to enter in the annual Rose Festival parade before the Internment. This was like The Winning Float mural in Chemainus BC and the Strawberry Festival parade scene in Snow Falling On Cedars, where Ishmael sees Hatsue atop a float as Strawberry Queen.

School of course was important for Nikkei children. Class photos show Atkinson School at NW 11th Avenue and Davis had almost all Japanese students -- quite the reverse of my own experience in Edmonton AB. Most of the older children went to Lincoln High School, a building that is now called Lincoln Hall and used by Portland State University for its music program. (Local Asian American drumming group Portland Taiko presented their annual home concert there until last year, when they moved it to a larger venue to accommodate their growing popularity.) In addition to mainstream education, Nikkei children went to Nihongo gakko (Japanese language school). One of the school books on display was open to a Japanese dialogue, printed in katakana and simple kanji, with the student's romaji phonetic notes jotted alongside in pencil.

Sports were shown to be a big part of life in Nihonmachi, both Japanese -- karate and sumo (!) -- and American -- baseball, basketball, golf, football. Maybe something the self-image of Nikkei athletes can be inferred from the names they chose for their teams: Reserves, Midgets, Giants. The team jacket of Jack Yoshihara, a Nikkei player on the 1941 Oregon State University Beavers football team was on display. His team went to the Rose Bowl that year, but he was unable to join them because the game was (as it is today) in Pasadena CA, within the wartime Exclusion Zone. This story was especially poignant, given that the Beavers were finally again in a bowl game this year, victorious 41-9 over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day.

The last picture in the exhibit was taken after the Evacuation Sale of one of the Japantown stores, the window displays empty except for a Christmas backdrop. Portland’s nearly 1,900 residents of Japanese ancestry were rounded up at the Multnomah County expo center then sent on to the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho.

After the Internment, JAs dispersed and resettled within mainstream society, and Nihonmachi never regained its vitality. Today's Old Town is a bit rundown, although gentrification has started, with many new condominium loft developments at the edges. There are only a few Japan- or Japanese American-related storefronts, including the ONLC.

Ultimately, the exhibit is a bit depressing. It could have shown how JAs today get together, despite their dispersal, through churches and clubs where common interests are pursued.

The Nihonmachi exhibit closes next week on 13 January 2001. The next exhibit, Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After opens in February.

* The early Nikkei-jin called their American states "O-shu" (Oregon), "Wa-shu" (Washington) and "Ka-shu" (California).

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, 117 N.W. 2nd Ave., Portland OR, 503-224-1458

• Japantown: A community shattered by war remembered in pictures
  WWII's internment transforms area once bustling with traditions into section now devoid of Japanese culture
• Japanese American Historical Plaza
  Memorial to Nikkei internees, just across the Naito Expressway from the site of Portland's pre-war Japantown
• Portland Cultural Tours: Japanese American
  Download directions for a walking tour of sites of JA historic significance in Portland
• Ties Talk: Old J-towns
  Archived messages from the Ties Talk Japanese American listserv
• Beavers hope Fiesta Bowl win is a legacy

• NHL: Minnesota Wild: Jim Dowd
  Any relation to Nancy Dowd?
• Back on the Ice
  Twenty-four years after Slap Shot, those cult goons the Hanson Brothers hope to score with a sequel

Dorami-chan worked hard during the past week to make osechi ryouri, Japanese New Year food, that we will be eating for the next few days. This was Dorami-chan's first attempt, so as a hedge and comparison we also ordered a prepared osechi meal from the deli department of Uwajimaya, a local Asian food store. She needn't have worried -- her dishes were delicious.

• Osechi ryouri - New Year food
  Description and recipies

For New Year's Eve, we touched up the apartment cleaning job (osouji) we had done in preparation for my parents' visit last week, then went downtown for a late supper. The bus was free, Tri-Met's way of discouraging DUIs. We went to Koji Osakaya Japanese Restaurant for toshi-koshi soba (year-crossing buckwheat noodle soup). It turned out many of the other customers were Japanese, including a group of snowboarder ryugakusei who left their table in such a state of disarray that we wondered where manners have gone among young people in Japan these days. Noodles cross between years, but not the generation gap!

• Toshi-koshi soba
  Why is it such a popular New Year's Eve dish in Japan?
• New adults outrage mayor
  Congratulatory speech at a Coming-of-Age Day ceremony ends when young people display bad manners
• Unruly new adults disrupt ceremonies
  Bad manners of participants blight some Coming-of-Age Day festivities

Our after-dinner options were limited to exorbitantly priced parties at restaurants, bars and clubs. The local Buddhist temple had its ritual new year bell ringing at 6 p.m. instead of the traditional time at midnight (maybe so people could go to those parties?), too early for us. So we went to the Willamette River for a walk, and passed by Pioneer Courthouse Square, where many youths had gathered, seemingly unaware that there would be no fireworks and no public, all-ages First Night event this year (maybe the city blew the budget on the Y2K celebration?).

We got home safely in time for an American tradition: watching Dick Clark's (tape-delayed for the Pacific time zone) ringing in of the new year in New York's Times Square.

• The Oregonian: Crowd turns wild; 9 arrested
  It seems the youths got upset that the city didn't provide New Year's entertainment
• Portland IndyMedia: Youth Riot in Downtown PDX
  Downtown Portland ransacked; fireworks promised for next year