Alex Warofka

candleflame
dances

licking at air frenzied
defiant desperation
grasping to ignite

danger.

restrained
and again

final embers
extinguished

a whisper of smoke
a smudge of ash
and a puddle

of melted me.

a drop of spring rain
slowly falling
tantalizingly closer and closer

until i reach out to touch

and you vanish
dissolving
a mirage i dared to approach

forever with me
almost.

To some, I am a space traveler. I have visited other galaxies, lived on other planets, side by side with aliens. And I have returned, alive, to share stories of these strange worlds and the mysterious lifeforms that inhabit them.

Of course, in reality, these galaxies are merely continents, the planets simply nations, and the aliens nothing more than the humans who live there. Yet the portrayal of the developing world in popular opinion and the media would lead one to imagine that these places are separated from us not by a few hours in a Boeing 747, but a years-long journey in a rocket ship. These people, we are constantly reminded, are nothing like us. They are uncivilised, unintelligent, even dangerous, and, with few exceptions, doomed to wallow in their dystopian backwardness for all of eternity.

Yet, fundamentally, Jakarta and Delhi are little different than Tokyo or London. Rural Bangladesh is not too far removed from rural America. As citizens of the developed world, we may enjoy better health, better education, and a thousand channels of satellite television, but our struggles, our triumphs, and our dreams are the same, an omnipresent element of the human condition. We are more alike than we are different.

I firmly believe that it is impossible to spend any significant amount of time in the developing world and not reach this same conclusion.

This quick and easy rice dish combines three types of mushroom with carrot, tofu, and the delicate flavours of sake, mirin, and dashi. The recipe below serves two.

Ingredients

• 2 cups washed rice
• 50g bunashimeji mushrooms, cut into 2cm pieces
• 50g enoki mushrooms, cut into 2cm pieces
• 50g maitake mushrooms, cut into small cubes
• 100g carrots, cut into quarters
• 100g soft tofu, cubed
• 1.5tbsp organic Kikkoman soy sauce
• 1tbsp mirin
• 2tbsp sake
• 1tsp dashi powder

Instructions

• Place two cups of washed rice into a standard fuzzy-logic rice cooker.
• Add soy sauce, mirin, sake, and dashi powder and add purified spring water to slightly below the 2 cup mark. Mix thoroughly.
• Combine mushroom pieces, carrot quarters, and tofu cubes, and then add on top of the rice. Spread to evenly distribute, but do not mix.
• Cook using settings for standard white rice. This will generally take about 40-60 minutes.
• Mix thoroughly, allow to rest for approximately 10 minutes, and serve.

Three days, three countries, and four cities. Approximately 31 hours spent in airplanes, airports, and on trains. One black signal rainstorm. A grand total of six hours of sleep.

To many, this experience would be a hellish torture on par with any of the dastardly tactics devised by the interrogators at Guantánamo Bay. Yet, for me, the whirlwind journey I made from London to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Shenzhen and back to Tokyo was strangely empowering. I’ve always found that there’s a sort of freedom and clarity that comes from not being attached to anyplace, from knowing that, six hours from now, I’ll be in another city in another country speaking another language and the present will be like a distant, faded memory…. When I’m in such a constant state of motion, it’s as though my flight has never landed, and I’m still floating ten thousand meters above the earth, even if my feet are firmly planted on the ground.

At one point, with a few hours to spare before my return flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, I found the time to head to Ocean Park, a local HK version of Sea World or Disneyland. And it was while riding 越矿飞车 (Yuè kuàng fēi chē), staring out at the beautiful landscape of the South China Sea, that I realised the best way to describe the way I felt: it’s like that brief calm at the crest of the hill on a roller coaster, where everything seems clear for a single, brilliant, dreamlike moment. But you know that it can’t last. In an instant, you’ll be in free-fall, and reality will be rushing up to meet you.

I sit
Floating ten thousand metres above you
Sipping cocktails with the clouds

My memories of us fading quietly
Dissipating like the jet exhaust
With every passing moment:

Freedom. Happiness again.

座る
君より一万メートル上に
雲と一緒にカクテルを飲む

二人の思い出がそっと薄くなる
時が経ちながら
ジェット排気のように消散する：

自由。また幸せ。

China court sentences drunk driver to death. This rather shocking headline graced an AP story posted yesterday to MSNBC.com, implying that the Chinese justice system was now in the habit of executing citizens for what, in the United States, is generally a misdemeanor offense. Many who saw this headline likely read no further: it simply further confirmed what they already had been told countless times by the media about the Chinese government’s widespread abuse of its citizens.

However, the article itself tells a very different story than this sensationalist and misleading headline. It reveals that the 30-year-old man was, in fact, not condemned to death for the simple act of driving while intoxicated:

He was reportedly drunk and speeding in the capital of Sichuan province last year when he struck four other cars. Four people were killed and another person was seriously injured. He was also driving without a license.

Indeed, the man was sentenced to death for what amounts to murdering four other drivers and seriously injuring a fifth, an offense which, under any judicial system, would result in far more than a slap on the wrist. May I suggest a more accurate headline? Drunk driver kills four, is sentenced to death.

Not content with just a misleading headline, however, the article’s author proceeds to give us a lesson in lying with statistics.

China imposes capital punishment more than any other country. Amnesty International says China put at least 1,718 people to death last year. The actual figure is believed to be higher.

This widely quoted figure fails to take into account that China also has the world’s largest population, currently sitting at 1.33 billion — more than four times the number of citizens in the US. A more accurate statistic would be the number of executions per capita, which can also be calculated from the data provided by Amnesty International. NationMaster has done so, providing us with some significantly different results.

When population is taken into account, the country with the most heavy-handed use of the death penalty is not China, but rather the Bahamas, closely followed by Singapore. Indeed, thirteen nations use the death penalty more frequently than China, which places 14th on the list of executions per capita. The United States ranks 20th, sentencing its citizens to death more than 175 other countries. Why does the American media rarely highlight this fact, or condemn the Bahamas and Singapore?

While the PRC government, like any other, certainly has plenty to answer for, this type of deliberately misleading journalism serves as little more than propaganda, reinforcing popular inaccuracies and distorting reality. Americans are incensed when we catch wind of this type of biased reporting taking place in other countries, yet turn a blind eye to blatant offenses occurring in our own press. The next time, before we complain about irresponsible, misleading reporting, we should look in the mirror.

Murasaki Shikibu’s famous Tale of Genji (源氏物語) is unarguably a famous piece of classical literature. It is frequently called “the world’s first novel” (though this is a matter of some debate), and is generally considered to be a literary masterpiece. Thus, it comes as no surprise that there is no shortage of various persons and groups seeking to somehow benefit from Murasaki’s fame.

One of the best-known of these is the Buddhist temple Ishiyama-dera (石山寺), located just outside of Kyoto along the shores of Lake Biwa. According to the temple, Murasaki wrote Genji while spending time at the temple, in the room now known as the “Genji Room” (源氏の間). The monks have been asserting this as fact for hundreds of years. The following excerpt, translated by my classical Japanese professor Jamie Newhard, is from theIshiyamadera Engi (石山寺縁起), originally published in 1327:

Murasaki Shikibu … secluded herself at this temple for seven days. Looking out into the distance over the lake, she cleared her mind, and various scenes floated up in her heart and obstructed her vision. Since she was not prepared with paper, in her heart she asked the Buddha enshrined here for the paper of a copy of the Prajnaparamita Sutra that was placed in the hall, and wrote down the unexpected scenes continuously. … The place where the tale was written is called the Genji Room, and it is said that this place is unchanged.

Today, the temple’s website continues to put forth essentially the same assertions. Recently, for the 1000th anniversary of Murasaki’s tale, the temple installed a cartoonish wooden cutout Genji (seen above) outside its main gates and placed a robotic Murasaki Shikibu inside the Genji Room.

Despite its ancient origins, however, the tale associating Genji with Ishiyama-dera appears to have little basis in fact. Most scholars agree that little of none of the tale was likely written at Ishiyama-dera; the majority of Genjiwas most likely written while Murasaki was at court in Kyoto itself.

When thinking about Ise (伊勢) and Japan’s Shima Peninsula (志摩半島), famous Shinto shrines, married rocks, and Mikimoto Pearls come readily to mind. Miniature SeaWorld-style theme parks do not. Yet, Futami Sea Paradise (二見シーパラダイス) is one of the area’s most interesting attractions.

What makes the park especially unique is the freedom given to both visitors and aquatic life forms: this is SeaWorld without the glass and fences (or the roller coasters). Walruses and seals mingle with humans freely, albeit under the watchful eye of park staff. Dolphins play catch with children from an open pool. As part of a sea lion show, the animals are led directly into and through the crowd.

And the occasional “lucky” visitor will even be kissed by a walrus.

My first thoughts upon visiting the park involved liability, lawyers, and lawsuits. These were wild animals! They could hurt someone! Think of the children! But as I walked around wide-eyed and slack-jawed, witnessing the happy interactions between Japanese families and the park’s resident marine mammals, I quickly became convinced that this was simply one more example of the amazing experiences that Americans were being deprived of because of our society’s paranoid and overly litigious nature.