Root beer is not popular in Japan, which makes things tough for me as both Japan watcher and root beer lover. During my stays in the country, the high prices at the import stores – formerly the only place that sells the stuff before the rise of discount stores – forced me to regard my beloved root beer as a rare treat to be enjoyed alone or in the company of other foreigners.

Attempts have been made to add the drink to the usual lineup of carbonated drink products, but the Japanese consumers are apparently having none of it. Why?

Japanese friends have told me it tastes like medicine. Wikipedia tells me that the specific reason root beer fails to gain popularity outside Okinawa (a legacy of extended US occupation) and US military bases (see previous paretheses) is because drinking it makes you smell like you’re wearing a compress. I have always found the comparison somewhat insulting. I mean, root beer used to be a folk medicine – it’s supposed to taste that way!

Thankfully, the Thais have absolutely no problem with stinky food (take dorians – please!). It was with great pleasure that I have found root beer to be plentiful here. Not only can one find A&W cans on the shelves of the ubiquitous 7-11s, right next to Coke and some unsettlingly hypersweet Lipton Iced Tea, but the A&W fast food chain is alive and well throughout Bangkok. You might be unfamiliar with A&W restaurants as they have a limited presence in many US states, but they but are, rest assured, a nationwide chain (and big in Canada!). They serve a lot of fried food and are known for having good curly fries (true) and chili dogs (not as true). Here I am hugging a statue of their beloved mascot the Great Root Bear (who knew they had a mascot?!) before enjoying their signature root beer in a frosty mug:

Unlike the A&W cans, which for some reason taste almost like Dr. Pepper (blech), the root beer at the restaurant is authentic and delicious. We also had curly fries, which were good as ever, and some fried chicken that was OK but doesn’t hold a candle to some of the awesome fried chicken you get at street vendors around Bangkok. One interesting feature of the menu is that waffles a la mode are offered along with the rest of the value meals, served with curly fries and apparently intended to be eaten as a full-fledged meal. Sounds good to me!

PESEK

...[P]olitical events [like the recent Thai coup] create havoc not only for economic growth and interest rates, but also for big business deals.

The risk is less about financial contagion in Asia than a less tangible political funk that hovers over markets and discourages investors. Reading an economy is hard enough; having one’s finger on the pulse of every political zig and zag a world away is an entirely different thing.

...

...[G]eopolitics are a big risk to a region that is still figuring out how to compete with a booming China, which itself may be subject to political upheaval one day.

Voters and military leaders may have valid reasons to want to oust elected leaders. Doing so undemocratically can set economies back even more than questionable politicians can. It unnerves the same international investors that companies and governments are trying to impress.

You might remember that I railed on Google’s products for being hard to use in Japan.

Well, two of my four beefs seem to be resolved. Tokyo weather is mostly accurate nowadays, and Google Calendar now sends properly-encoded notifications to Japanese mobile phones.

Now we just need stock quotes and mobile browser support, and I can almost consolidate my web services! (Except, of course, for del.icio.us and rememberthemilk.com and my bank accounts and…)

It’s ridden with clichés and won’t tell you anything that you wouldn’t have already known from reading this blog, but this obituary to Koizumi’s political career, written by the Northeast Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post, was at least kind enough to call the outgoing prime minister a “Jedi Knight.”

Needless to say, I’m assuming that the author ripped this idea from me and Curzon.

So are we reaching the end of Episode III now? Is Mori going to pull Koizumi out of the volcano, slap body armor on him and turn him into a Sith Lord? “Darth Kakuei,” maybe?

UPDATE – Curzon went straight to work on a Fireworks graphic. I also just recalled that Kim Jong Il was supposed to be the Emperor analog, so… hmm. Darth Bulgogi? I got nothin’...

Soldiers stand guard with unclipped rifles across from Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, built after a 1932 coup brought constitutional monarchy to Thailand, then known as Siam. That was the first of more than 20 that have occurred since that time, though the last coup in 1992 was supposed to be the last since the popular demand for democracy had grown so strong since an uprising in 1973 made them impossible to ignore.

The soldiers gladly allowed us to photograph them. In fact, they’ve been ordered to “keep smiling” and stay friendly as part of the effort to put a positive face on this bloodless coup, which has astonishingly enough been carried out in the name of democracy (a concession that speaks to the high expectations among the public to maintain the democratic institution that has built up over the last 15 years). Still, after four days of ingratiating themselves to the public, including scores of foreign tourists such as myself, the soldiers have started to look a little less than eager to enlighten us on the democratizing power of military force:

Now, don’t get me wrong – the dynamics of this coup d’etat are not as simple as elected government good, military coup bad, as writers for the Washington Post might have you believe. But for me, as someone whose idea of democracy is primarily a) Democrats vs. Republicans, and secondarily b) Mori Faction vs. ex-Tanaka Faction battling to please their bureaucrat overlords, the very likely explanation that Thaksin was planning a coup of his own and that the military’s commitment to democracy far exceeds that of the corrupt Thaksin’s (as indicated by Mango Sauce) is confusing. But what I do know that the political stability since the early 90s was a humongous boon for Thailand, and getting things back on track will be key if Thailand wants to maintain its status as the most developed major nation in SE Asia.

In the meantime, ironic scenes such as the one in the first picture will no doubt abound as long as this junta lasts. At least the Bangkok Post hasn’t lost its loopy sense of humor:

Two kinds of power
Armoured tanks can both destroy buildings and enchant children

People crowd the Royal Plaza to catch a glimpse of the tanks stationed there to keep the peace on orders of the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy.

A vendor is about to hand a balloon to a young buyer at the Royal Plaza yesterday.

It’s hard to talk like a pirate in Japanese, but the best alternative is to talk like a samurai. Here are five phrases to get you started. Main point: Say “gozaru” a lot.

ZAKZAK, never a letdown, has run an article that quotes political/financial fortuneteller known as the “Onmyoji of Nagatacho” (whose sessions start at 30,000 yen) Shoken Fujitani’s predictions for who should go in Abe cabinet. While I don’t understand his system (it’s based on the fact that Abe was born aligned with Mercury in the year of the Horse [1954]), I’ll note his results here so we can come back on Tuesday to see how close he was:

People who are compatible with Abe:

Foreign Minister Taro Aso

Previous Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura (Has good “overseas luck”)

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Shoichi Nakagawa

Lower House Member Sanae Takaichi (connection to culture i.e. Education Ministry)

Fumio Kyuma, chairman of LDP’s General Council

Lower House member Yasuhiro Shiozaki (pictured below dining with old people for Respect for the Aged Day):

Lower House member (one of the “female assassin” candidates from last year’s election) Satsuki Katayama

Lower House member Yuko Obuchi (daughter of former PM the late Keizo Obuchi)

People who aren’t compatible with Abe:

LDP Policy Council Chairman Hidenao Nakagawa (who made some enemies as a diehard pusher of Koizumi reforms)

METI Minister Toshihiro Nikai. Here he is giving Koizumi and companions the classic fakeout (What the hell is that? – Huh? – ... See ya!):

Ex-PM Yoshiro Mori (but then again no one’s compatible with Mori)

Lower House member Yukari Sato (another “female assassin” candidate that was less well-received than Katayama)

Financial Services Minister Yosano Kaoru

and finally… Koizumi himself!

I have no clue how much stock people actually put in these predictions, but Japan tends to be much more superstitious than the US and they certainly hold enough value to be featured in a trashy tabloid. In politics as well as every day life inauspicious days are usually avoided for major events and traditional superstitions (such as blood type personality distinctions) are usually respected if not wholeheartedly accepted. In one famous episode (as described in Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons), bankers gathered in large numbers to an Osaka fortune teller’s home so they could touch her ceramic toad and hear her stock picks. Japan certainly isn’t anywhere near as bad as Burma, where the ruling junta moved the whole capital on the advice of feng sui experts, but nevertheless a man like Fujitani has been able to make a good living with his essentially baseless political predictions. His list of “accurate predictions” includes warning former PM Keizo Obuchi not to make the incompatible Hiromu Nonaka in his Chief Cabinet Secretary or else he would “risk his life” (he later died of a stroke while in office).

These assessments seem less like astrology and more of a “who’s hot and who’s not” of Japanese politics. Pretty safe choices. We’ll come back on Tuesday to see how he did.

Japan has a large population of aesthetically pleasing women. However, when they start babbling like this, that appeal wears off pretty quickly.

This is by no means meant to be a generalization. There are plenty of women here who are interesting and fun conversationalists. There are plenty who don’t look all that hot. But the cute and mindless type seem to end up with young urban Tokyoite guys pretty frequently. To quote my boss, “you have to take them out to really nice restaurants, so the quality of the food will keep you from falling asleep.”