I don’t blame him for not knowing how to use a computer - I mean, he’s roughly a half century closer to the grave than I. But today, the school principal was acting strangely competent with his computer. Buried under headphones, unmoving behind his monitor, he refused to be interrupted all morning. Watching video. Very uncharacteristic of him indeed. Then replaying said video. Scribbling notes. Through lunch too. Over, and over again.

He finally broke concentration and visited my desk early this afternoon with several well-worn sheets of paper in hand. Quizzical expression painted over his many wrinkles, on one of the sheets he pointed out a several words which had been underlined.

Clearly confused, he said he’d never heard them used like this, and asked what they meant. I quickly scanned over the rest of the document to pick up the context, and realized I’d heard these same words only a few hours before. I smiled and told him the intention, and the respective meanings in such use.

As the words’ pivotal role in the transcript’s collective meaning began to take hold, he stepped back from my desk, eyes locked to the paper in hand. At last he too smiled. I could see his shoulders broaden with the corners of his mouth. He knew.

I knew he knew. I’d felt the same goosebumps, the same relief and welling of pride, only 24 hours before, when those words first took root in my ears, and the untold millions crowded around their televisions.

And that’s when the true brevity of the moment hit me. Not the moment at my desk, but rather this moment in history. This moment when words have not only the power to inspire, and instill a long-awaited sense of reassurance and hope, but also the power to transcend even the cultures and linguistic boundaries that would otherwise restrain them.

As Mr. Suzuki walked away from my desk, he kept repeating it. Savoring it between his tongue. Carefully ruminating in the only broken, Japanenglish tongue he knew.

“...Yes. We Can...”

The latest in the disturbing epidemic takes us to Kanagawa prefecture where, according to reports by the local Fujisawa government managing the case, a 67 year-old woman vomited, before her tongue “went numb” after eating a Nissin brand Cup Noodle soup. The cause for her sickness after a trace back to the noodles, was a chemical called paradichlorobenzene, which is more commonly associated with its application in bug repellent. According to Japanese authorities, how the chemical in question made its way into a cup (or cups) of Japan’s most popular instant noodle, still remains under investigation.
Call off the dogs though, I think I may have the theory they’re looking for: It was already there.

Don’t believe me? Check the ingredients. Sure, they start off innocently enough:

“High protein wheat flour, palm oil, salt.”

But then watch as they start to get complicated:

“Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, dextrose, fish powder.”

And then, just downright apocalyptic:

“Permitted food conditioners (sodium carbonate, sodium polyphosphate, potassium carbonate), and flavor enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate).

Perhaps the bug spray had simply gone casually omitted on the ingredients list all along? I doubt it would have been missed, what, with all those upstaging glutamates and inosinates loitering about.

If I hadn’t been told prior that I was reading the back of an instant noodle cup, I’m sure I would have quickly mistaken the aforementioned for a recipe for homemade roach bombs. And the Japan Times, and the Yomiyuri Daily have the nerve to tell me that someone got sick from ingesting a chemical found in Cup Noodle? What’s next on the news? Water is found to be wet, and full of oxygen? Quite possibly the most natural ingredient in this product would be simply the “salt” that goes into it (if only a single serving of Cup Noodle didn’t already contain an entire week’s worth of recommended salt intake). So it’s nothing short of a miracle that with over 3 billion packs of conveniently “delicious” Cup Noodle eaten in Japan every year, only one person this year has succumbed to the ill effects of having ingested a mouthful of Cup Noodle’s little secret ingredient.

Read on to find out how many votes Iran received against Japan.

* Saturday: Despite desperate efforts to kick-start activity in the stalled markets, and re-instill investor confidence, Japan’s Nikkei continues to bear the blows of the economic crisis–this week, falling to ever new lows, following a 9.6% nosedive.

* Saturday: According to Japan’s financial minister Shoichi Nakagawa, in the face of Tokyo’s own financial market woes, Japan is currently in the proposing stages of a plan under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to create emergency loans to various emerging nations, to assist in their rebuilding efforts in the wake of the crisis. On Friday, Japan’s new Prime Minister Taro Aso said that Japan is prepared to host a meeting of leaders from the Group of Eight major industrial countries and others if necessary, to deal with the widening global financial crisis in Asia.

* Friday: In hopes of acting as a go-between in facilitating inter-bank borrowing, the Bank of Japan moved to inject a record 4.5 trillion yen (roughly 45 billion USD) into the Tokyo market. This injection marked the 18th straight day of emergency operations (beginning on September 16th) by the BOJ.

* Friday: Time-honored Tokyo based insurer Yamato Life Insurance Co. filed for bankruptcy protection, the first Japanese agency of its sort to fail since 2001, and the eighth since the end of WWII. Yamato Life’s profile–nearly 270 billion yen (2.7 billion USD) in debt, was hurt by losses from investing in subprime mortgage-backed bonds and other securities like stocks, whose prices have plunged amid the global financial crisis, officials have said.

* Tuesday: At a national news conference, BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa reported that the economic recovery timeline might be forced into a delay against initial expectations. He blamed the possibility of delay on part of additional time and attention being required for looking into the various downside risks.