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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Hot Pot Cooking Goes Haute

<i>Shabu-shabu</i> is served with Ohmi beef at Masa Takayama's new Shaboo restaurant in Las Vegas.

Shabu-shabu is served with Ohmi beef at Masa Takayama's new Shaboo restaurant in Las Vegas. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

January 27, 2010

By Betty Hallock

When the popular Asian dish of meat and vegetables dipped in hot broth is reenvisioned as a $500 meal in Las Vegas, it may be time to try it at home.

What's the most expensive dinner in America? An omakase meal of pristine, perfectly sliced sushi, the fish flown in from Tsukiji market in Tokyo and prepared for you personally by a Yoda-equivalent sushi master? Or maybe a 12-course tasting menu from a Michelin three-star French chef, each plate a culmination of several components made by an army of kitchen staff? Not exactly. It's most likely $500-per-person Japanese hot pot -- yes, hot pot.

A popular style of Asian home cooking, hot pot comes from a nearly 1,000-year-old culinary tradition of dipping sliced meat or seafood and vegetables into bubbling broth, supposedly à la Genghis Khan. A communal dish cooked and shared at the dining table, it's soul food, great for cold weather and for feeding an intimate group (emphasis on the intimate -- you are, after all, eating from the same pot).


Lately, though, the humble hot pot doesn't seem so humble. Masayoshi Takayama, the sushi chef whose New York restaurant Masa might be the epitome of rarefied Japanese dining in the U.S., has taken it to Las Vegas. At Shaboo, the restaurant he just opened there, his version of shabu-shabu -- traditionally paper-thin slices of beef quickly poached with vegetables in a water-based broth -- will cost you more than the recent price of an All Nippon Airways round-trip flight to Tokyo.


American chefs are putting shabu-shabu on their menus too, using Wagyu beef or sashimi-grade fish or foie gras.


But hot pots are by nature informal, cozy affairs, with everybody leaning over a big pot in the middle of the table, taking from it whatever they want. That's the appeal of so many Sichuan, northern Chinese and Taiwanese hot pot restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley and casual shabu-shabu joints on the Westside or in Little Tokyo. And they are easy enough to make at home that they can be impromptu meals.


A new book by chef Tadashi Ono and food journalist Harris Salat titled "Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals" has enthusiastic home cooks pulling out their enameled Dutch ovens and konbu (kelp) to make Hakata chicken or pork belly and greens hot pot. It's "the quintessential Japanese comfort food," Salat writes.


But what about five-hundred-dollar hot pot? Takayama unveiled Shaboo, his shabu-shabu restaurant, on Christmas Day in Las Vegas' $8.5-billion CityCenter. There are custom-molded individual cooking vessels; high-tech induction burners set into the tables; and ingredients such as wild bluefin tuna belly wrapped around julienned Japanese leeks, taraba crab legs from Hokkaido, sliced abalone, winter yellowtail, and beef from the Ohmi region of Japan.

A supplemental dessert of white truffle ice cream costs $95. The restaurant's name is a slightly infelicitous play on the words "shabu" and "taboo." Will the "Viva Elvis" crowd go for it?
The Japanese consider shabu-shabu the highest expression of hot pot, in accordance with the culinary principle of using the freshest food, lightly cooked, beautifully presented. The closer it is to its natural state, the better to draw the most pleasure from a single thin sheet of beef.


Takayama describes the cooking method by waving his hand back and forth in the air, mimicking the motion of the meat as it is swept through the poaching liquid. "You slowly dip, cook, then dip it in sauce" -- cooking it yourself is part of the enjoyment. (Shabu-shabu means "swish-swish," referring to the way in which ingredients are cooked in the hot pot.) Traditionally this is accomplished with chopsticks, but at Shaboo with special tongs in the shape of crab claws.

The golden bowl

"I wanted solid gold pots, but the heating technology isn't available here," he says. "Maybe in two or three years. When I agreed to open this place I said I was going to buy gold bowls . . . 60 for $80,000 each."


$80,000?


"$80,000."


Now I daydream about eating hot pot from a gold bowl. But Japanese cooks traditionally use a donabe, a clay vessel with a slightly rounded bottom and domed lid. And really all you need is a cast-iron Dutch oven to make hot pot at home. (Cast iron distributes and retains heat well.)


And though shabu-shabu may be the most highly regarded, there are simpler types of hot pots, called collectively nabemono -- one-pot meals that are more substantial than soup but not as thick as stew.


There are two ways to cook hot pots: at the table -- using a tabletop burner -- setting out a platter of ingredients to be cooked by guests (shabu-shabu style). Or on the stove, with the finished dish brought to the center of the table, from which the contents are ladled into small bowls, or diners can help themselves. It's de rigueur to pick up your own food from the pot with your own chopsticks.


Whatever the type, the foundation of the hot pot is the broth, which often includes dashi, a stock of konbu and dried bonito flakes. For his seafood shabu, Takayama uses a golden broth of dashi made with konbu and niboshi, or dried anchovies. The stock for his beef shabu is prepared in an eight-hour process making a consommé from konbu, niboshi, seared Ohmi beef tendon, carrots, onions, garlic, beef and chicken bones, and bay leaf.


Into the pot you can put a wide variety of meat or vegetables: slices of rib-eye, whole shrimp, salmon, chicken, lamb, mushrooms, spinach, dumplings. A friend of mine used to make a scallop sausage for hot pot from scallop mousseline with chives that was so good I'm still thinking about it years later. Greens such as mizuna, a mustard, and shungiku, the leaves of chrysanthemums, are easy to find at Asian stores and farmers markets.


A rich broth


Chef Michael Mina, who has been serving shabu-shabu of sliced abalone, shiitake mushrooms, scallions and Kobe beef rolled with spicy radishes at his latest restaurant, American Fish (also in Las Vegas' CityCenter), starts with a dashi of konbu, bonito and ginger. "Beef with dashi is really delicious," he says. "And foie gras. What that does is really fortifies the broth, leaves a lot of richness behind. When thinking about ingredients, you have to think about both how it's going to cook in the broth and what it does to the broth."


Take pork belly, for example. In a hot pot recipe from the "Japanese Hot Pots" cookbook, thin slices of pork belly are dipped into a simmering broth of dashi, mirin and soy sauce, imbuing the liquid with the rich flavor of pork. A duck gyoza nabe is made with chicken stock, mirin and konbu, enhanced by vegetables such as cabbage, negi (Japanese leeks) and shiitake and enoki mushrooms -- the chicken stock complementing the duck filling in the dumplings.


It's served with a dipping sauce of chile oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar and scallions. Other condiments for shabu-shabu include gomadare (sesame sauce) and ponzu. At Shaboo, hottate scallops come with a dipping sauce of lobster bisque.


When it came to nabe cooking, my mom, a born-and-bred Tokyoite, mostly made sukiyaki. In Kanto (Tokyo area) fashion, the ingredients -- sliced beef, tofu, nappa cabbage, itokonnyaku noodles, onions, chrysanthemum leaves -- are simmered in a shallow pot of broth made with a little caramelized sugar, soy sauce and sake. (Sautéing the beef before adding the other ingredients and the broth would be Osaka-style.)


Arrange ingredients as you might a composed salad, in neat bunches. The vegetables are just cooked through and the beef added last so that it's as tender as possible. You could even cook the sliced beef shabu-shabu style at the table.

It is beefy, just slightly sweet, and warming. And it costs less than $10 per person to make, no gold bowls necessary.

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

N. KOREA: US man 'detained' in North Korea

Locator map

North Korea says it has detained a US citizen for illegally entering its territory across the border from China.

Page last updated at 07:27 GMT, Thursday, 28 January 2010

The official news agency KCNA said the man, who has not been identified, had been arrested on Monday and was now being questioned.

North Korea is currently holding another US citizen, Robert Park.

Mr Park crossed a frozen border river from China on 25 December, to make a protest against repression in the hard-line Communist North.

The US has been seeking access to Mr Park through the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which represents American interests in North Korea.

Last year two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were also arrested on the border with China.

They were sentenced to 12 years' hard labour but freed after four months in captivity, as part of a diplomatic mission spearheaded by former US President Bill Clinton in August.

View Article on BBC News

CHINA: Vanishing act

Gao Zhisheng ( file photo)

The police say lawyer Gao Zhisheng has gone missing

Page last updated at 00:03 GMT, Friday, 29 January 2010The

Mystery of missing Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng

By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing

Concern is mounting for a Chinese lawyer who is believed to be in detention but has not been seen for nearly a year.

Foreign governments have urged Chinese officials to reveal the whereabouts of well-known activist Gao Zhisheng.

Human rights groups say it is unusual that there has been no formal word on why Mr Gao was taken and what condition he is in.

Officials have so far given only cryptic hints as to where he is. A foreign ministry spokesman said he was "where he should be".

The lawyer has long been targeted by the government, which has previously stopped him working, put him on trial and kept him under surveillance.

'Simply evaporated'

Mr Gao disappeared some time in January last year, leading to immediate concern from human rights groups.

He appeared briefly at his family's home in Shaanxi province the following month but was accompanied by people believed to be security officials.

Mr Gao stayed only a short time before leaving and has not been seen since.

The lawyer did manage to telephone his elder brother, Gao Zhiyi, last summer to say he was all right but he added that he was not free and did not say where he was.

Since then, nothing has been heard of him.

I asked the police where my brother was. They said they didn't know.

Gao Zhisheng's brother

"We don't have any clue about where he is. He's simply evaporated. As his friends, we are very worried about him," said fellow Beijing lawyer, Li Fangping.

Gao Zhisheng, a self-taught lawyer, has not always been at odds with the people who run China. He was once a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2001 he was acclaimed as one of the 10 best lawyers in the country by a publication run by the Ministry of Justice.

But he ran into trouble when he started to defend some of China's most disadvantaged groups, such as supporters of the banned spiritual movement, Falun Gong.

Mr Gao's law practice was closed down in 2005. The government said one problem was that the lawyer had failed to tell officials of a change of address.

The following year he was given a suspended prison sentence for "inciting subversion".

Family escapes

After that, Mr Gao and his family - he is married with two children - were subjected to constant surveillance by the authorities. He was even detained again in September 2007.

He said he was tortured while in detention.

It is impossible for someone to be missing under the tight control of the police

Teng Biao

His captors beat him with electric batons, held lit cigarettes close to his eyes and subjected him to psychological abuse over more than 50 days, he said.

"Many horrendous evils were committed that were too shameful to be written down in the chronicles of the governments of the world," he said in an account of the event that emerged after his latest detention.

Mr Gao's wife and children escaped China last year and now live in the United States but the relatives still in China have made efforts to find out where he is.

His brother travelled to Beijing in December and tracked down a policeman who had been involved in the case.

"I asked the police where my brother was. They said they didn't know. They claimed he has been lost and missing since September," Gao Zhiyi told the BBC.

This comment has worried the family and friends of the missing man.

"It is impossible for someone to be missing under the tight control of the police," said Teng Biao, another friend of Gao Zhisheng.

"I imagine that either he is still under police control or something else may have happened."

Human rights criticism

Foreign governments have also kept up the pressure on China to reveal the whereabouts of a man who has become well-known abroad.

"The United States is deeply concerned about Gao Zhisheng's safety and well-being and we have raised our concerns repeatedly in Washington and Beijing," said a spokeswoman for the US embassy in the Chinese capital.

Journalists have raised the issue at the regular press briefings held by the foreign ministry - although the answers given to queries have failed to shed much light on the issue.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu initially said Mr Gao was where he should be. On Tuesday he said he did not know where he was.

All this is irregular, even in a country that often faces criticism for its human rights record.

Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said families or work units should be notified if someone is detained.

He said those held by the Chinese state also had the right to receive letters and see a lawyer. But this had not happened in Mr Gao's case.

He added: "Generally when you have this kind of international exposure, the authorities tend to give the appearance of due process. But here that's not the case - there's something amiss."

View Article on BBC News

RUSSIA: Russia offers to help NATO, but not for free

Friday, January 29, 2010; 12:00 PM

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
The Associated Press

MOSCOW -- Russia is willing to help NATO in Afghanistan, but not for free, the Russian envoy to the alliance said Friday.

Dmitry Rogozin also slammed NATO for failing to do more to fight the drug trade in Afghanistan, saying Russia has suffered because of that failure. And he expressed skepticism about a plan to pay Taliban fighters to abandon violence and join the mainstream of Afghan society.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Russia last month to provide helicopters and training for the Afghan air force and to train more local police.

Rogozin said Russia was looking at the request, but wants to understand who will pay for it. He added that some NATO countries could help share the costs.

"We aren't going to supply NATO with anything free of charge," he said in a video hookup from Brussels. "They can afford to pay for that."

He didn't rule out providing free supplies to the Afghan government, but said that would require a political decision by the Kremlin.

Moscow has repeatedly expressed its willingness to help the war effort in Afghanistan, due to fears that a return to power by Taliban extremists would destabilize Central Asia and endanger Russia's security.

But the country's support for NATO- and US-led operations so far has been limited to offering transit for railway shipments of non-lethal supplies and air corridors for weapons supplies, as supply routes through Pakistan have come under increased Taliban attack.

Rogozin said shipments have been slow to start because NATO has dragged its feet on negotiating transit agreements with Central Asian nations. He also said technical problems regarding U.S. air transit need to be solved, but he refused to elaborate.

He criticized NATO harshly for failing to make stronger efforts to fight drug production.

"NATO doesn't want to do more to fight drugs in Afghanistan, because it fears it would inflict more losses to its forces," he said. "They prefer to turn a blind eye to that. They think it's not their problem, because Afghan heroin mostly goes to Central Asia and Russia."

Rogozin was also openly skeptical of a NATO plan to persuade Taliban fighters to disarm in exchange for jobs and homes, saying that the world community must focus on rebuilding the nation's battered infrastructure. He argued that Russian companies should be awarded contracts for rebuilding factories, power plants and other facilities built by the Soviet Union.

View Article in The Washington Post

JAPAN: Man tried for Akihabara stabbing spree pleads guilty, apologies

Jan 27 10:46 PM US/Eastern

AP

TOKYO, Jan. 28 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The man charged with the June 2008 fatal stabbing rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district that killed seven and wounded 10 pleaded guilty Thursday and apologized to the victims of the crime.

Tomohiro Kato, 27, said in the first hearing of the case at the Tokyo District Court that he is "certainly the one who committed the crime" although he cannot remember some parts of what happened on the day of the Sunday afternoon attack.

"I'm sorry for the people who died and got injured," said Kato, who was clad in a white shirt and a black suit, bowing his head.

The prosecution argued in its opening statement that Kato "did not receive decent treatment" at the office where he was employed as a temporary worker and "felt that what he wrote about in a cell-phone website was ignored."

"So he hit on the idea of getting other people to acknowledge his existence by erupting in anger and setting off a major crime."

Kato allegedly warned in advance of his crime on the website along with a number of posts in which he vented his frustration with his workplace.

The prosecution also said Kato was inspired by a fatal indiscriminate stabbing spree that occurred in March 2008 in Ibaraki Prefecture as well as an April 2005 incident in which three people were killed after a truck crashed into a shopping arcade in Sendai.

"It is apparent that he kept those incidents in mind and decided to kill people at random in Akihabara, where he had been a number of times before," according to the prosecution.

The focus of the trial is expected to be on a psychiatric examination that found him mentally competent at the time of the crime.

The prosecution indicted Kato on charges of murder and attempted murder based on the mental evaluation result.

On Thursday, the defense team questioned the exam result, suggesting Kato was mentally incompetent during the spree.

Kato is charged with running down five pedestrians, three of whom died, with a truck in a vehicle-free shopping area on June 8, 2008, and fatally stabbing four passersby with a dagger after getting out of the vehicle.  Eight others were injured in the stabbings, while one policeman was attacked but unharmed, according to the indictment.

The incident in the Tokyo electronics area, a popular district that attracts Japanese and foreign comic and animation fans, drew attention to the fragile situation facing temporary workers.

No citizen judges are taking part in the trial because he was indicted in October 2008, before the law on the lay judge system took effect.

View Article on Breitbart

RUSSIA: U.S. and Russia close to arms-control deal

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev during a State Council session on January 22, 2010.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev during a State Council session on January 22, 2010.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Negotiations on a new arms-control treaty are nearly complete, White House said
  • Talks on the New START treaty are expected to resume next week in Geneva
  • The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired on December 5
  • The old treaty capped the number of warheads and launch vehicles held by both countries

RELATED TOPICS

Washington (CNN) -- A new arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia is nearly complete, the White House said.

Progress on a pact was detailed in a brief statement Wednesday.

"President Obama spoke with President Medvedev of Russia to thank him for his hard work and leadership on the New START treaty negotiations, as the two sides have made steady progress in recent weeks," the White House said.

"The presidents agreed that negotiations are nearly complete, and pledged to continue the constructive contacts that have advanced U.S.-Russian relations over the last year."

Talks are expected to resume next week in Geneva, Switzerland.

Obama hailed the developments during Wednesday's State of the Union address.

"The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms-control treaty in nearly two decades," he said.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, commonly known as START, expired on December 5, but the leaders agreed to honor its spirit until a new treaty could be negotiated to replace it.

Obama and Medvedev, who met in mid-December in Copenhagen, Denmark, had hoped to sign an agreement by the end of 2009, but fell short of reaching a deal.

At the time, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley cited a few hurdles to an agreement, including the complexity of the weapons systems, agreement on the numbers of warhead reductions, and verification, but held out hope for a deal in early 2010.

"Clearly ... we have made dramatic progress," Crowley said. "There are still issues that we continue to work through, so there's still more work to be done. But I think we remain confident that, given good faith and the ongoing efforts of both sides, that this will get done."

The Russian Foreign Ministry's Web site also expressed optimism.

"Preparation of the new treaty is practically complete," but "a few problems have to be overcome in order to finalize the treaty and submit it to [the] presidents of Russia and the United States," it said in late December. "This will be done very soon."

In July, the leaders signed a joint understanding committing the United States and Russia to reduce their strategic warheads to a range of 1,500 to 1,675, and strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500 to 1,100.

Under the old treaty, the maximum number of warheads was 2,200 and the maximum number of launch vehicles was 1,600.

View Article on CNN

CHINA: If China Reigns Supreme

Thought-provoking “flash forward” of East Asia with China as the dominant world power instead of the US.  -HHC

Globalist:  Exit America

Published: January 28, 2010

By ROGER COHEN

NEW YORK — I see that Gore Vidal, in an interview with the British daily The Independent, has been predicting America’s demise with scurrilous relish, awaiting the day when it takes its place “somewhere between Brazil and Argentina, where it belongs” and China reigns supreme.

The United States, he suggests, can then bow from the stage, war-drained, broken by “madhouse” politics, to become “the Yellow Man’s burden.”

I think Vidal’s lost it, as the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens points out in a recent Vanity Fair piece entitled “Vidal Loco,” but I have to say the words of the grand old man of letters echoed in my head during a recent visit to China, especially as I watched footage of the coffins of eight Chinese peacekeepers killed in Haiti being returned to Beijing.

This was a big event in China to which national television devoted many hours. The flag-draped coffins of the Chinese United Nations personnel, greeted at Beijing airport by sobbing family members and solemn Politburo members, put me in mind of numberless flag-draped American coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base from far-flung wars.

President Obama wants out of those wars. Indeed, to judge by the nine paltry minutes devoted to international affairs in a State of the Union address of more than one hour, he’s weary of America policing the globe.

When Israel-Palestine merits not a word from a president, you know the United States is turning inward.

The coffins have weighed on all Americans, however deeply repressed the pain. A fractured, draft-free America no longer has a Main Street. But somewhere out there the feeling has coalesced that some of the billions spent in Kabul could be used to create jobs at home.

China, in its “peaceful rise,” has had no such distractions. Commentators on Chinese TV made much of how the Haiti sacrifice of the eight “heroes” was part of being “good global citizens.”

But I found my mind wandering, fast-forwarding to 2040. I tried to imagine a time when such images would be frequent, when China could no longer freeload on a declining America and was obliged to step up to great power status with the attendant cost and sacrifice.

(I believe the rise of China is unstoppable. As Obama noted, Beijing is not “playing for second place.”

After my last column about bulldozing Chinese development, a reader wrote describing how a new semiconductor plant in Albany, New York, only got the go-ahead after “almost two years and two million dollars to prepare the environmental impact statements” to present to “more than 100 local public meetings.” Extrapolate from that to grasp how diktat outraces democracy.)

So, jump ahead to 2040. The United States has long since withdrawn its troops from Okinawa — “If the Japanese don’t want us, we can no longer justify staying” said Democratic President Mary Martinez in 2032 — and Japan has predictably gone nuclear in the absence of a U.S. security guarantee.

Now tensions between nuclear-armed China and nuclear-armed Japan have flared in an Asia where the United States no longer serves as the offsetting power. A naval clash over disputed, gas-rich islands in the East China Sea has revived century-old World War II grievances.

Asked about the escalating conflict, a State Department spokesman in Washington says: “We believe in good global citizenship, but frankly we don’t have a dog in that fight. You’ll have to ask Beijing.”

But Beijing is busy. U.S. troops have also long since withdrawn from South Korea — “the 38th parallel will just have to take care of itself,” a departing U.S. general was heard to mutter in 2034 — and China finds itself having to deploy its own troops to restrain the increasingly wayward North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from his threats to reduce Seoul “to an ashtray.” A drunk-driving incident involving a Chinese general in Pyongyang and the death of three schoolchildren has prompted Kim to accuse China of acting “with imperial disdain.”

“Beijing seeks the wellbeing of all people on the Korean peninsula, regrets the Pyongyang incident, and calls for dialogue,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman says. The U.S. State Department has no comment but officials privately confess to a certain “schadenfreude” at Chinese difficulties.

These difficulties are not confined to Asia. A shadowy terrorist group called ARFAP (African Resources for African People) has just claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 12 Chinese executives attending a Lusaka conference on copper extraction. Video has gone global showing the execution of two executives and threatening the murder of two more if China does not withdraw “from all predatory exploitation on the African continent.”

The United Nations Security Council (now down to four permanent veto-bearing members since the United States chose in 2037 to resign a position serving only for “sterile institutional haggling over faraway nations that do not need our counsel”) has been locked in discussion of the African crisis, but China is complaining of “paralysis.”

A State Department spokesman says, “We hope China finds a way to negotiate with ARFAP. War is never a good option. We also hope the Chinese brokered Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire in Gaza, which is unraveling, can be saved by Beijing.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 29, 2010, in The International Herald Tribune.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: A soba adventure in Tokyo

Two kinds of soba at Nemurian. Fukushima on the left, and Tochigi on the right.

Two kinds of soba at Nemurian. Fukushima on the left, and Tochigi on the right.

January 28, 2010

(Mainichi Japan)

"The soba comes from Yamagata," the woman said as she placed a box of thick, chewy soba noodles in front of me. Her name was Mori, and her family sold soba noodles in Yamagata.

Her husband trained there for a year before they opened their own soba restaurant in Tokyo. I was in Tokyo to celebrate the new year with my wife's family. Because soba is a traditional meal, we decided to make the most of it.

One of the things I like about Japanese culture is the near obsession that Japanese have with food ingredients. In New York, you can find a broader variety of food than in Tokyo, but in Tokyo you can travel deep into each type of Japanese dish.

The Mori's at their restaurant, Genshiro.

The Mori's at their restaurant, Genshiro.

Our soba journey is a perfect example. At Genshiro, they grind their own soba flour on the premises, and make their noodles by hand. We discussed the thick, chewy soba. It reminded me of the chewy soba in Gujo that's called mochi mochi soba because of it's al dente texture. Genshiro serves the noodles with their special pheasant broth. It was a delicious combination.

The next day, we traveled to Akihabara to a hidden soba restaurant in a prewar building. The neighborhood is filled with stores and cafes that cater to various obsessions. There are anime shops, maid cafes, cosplay stores and electronics boutiques everywhere. True to the spirit of the nerd, Nemurian is for serious soba otaku.

The restaurant is run by an interesting man. He grinds the soba in his tiny shop each morning. But he selects soba from wherever he thinks is best for the season. Soba lovers are served two different kinds of soba noodles. Each plate is soba from a different part of Japan.

On the day we went, we ate soba from Tochigi and Fukushima. When they came to our table, set side by side, we noticed the Tochigi soba had a slight green color. The Fukushima soba had a rich soba flavor and a more delicate texture. The Tochigi soba was chewier and more subtle. It was really fun to taste two different kinds of soba side by side, and they both went well with the handmade tofu that was as rich as butter.

While we ate, we listened to jazz on the tube amplifier that the owner built himself. I felt like I was in the presence of a soba artist, enjoying his meal in his personal studio. Maybe that's because he sleeps upstairs.

Our last stop was the famous Yoshida restaurant in Ginza. I first ate there several years ago when my wife's dance teacher took us there. Yoshida has a classic Japanese feel, and it always seems to be busy. Their specialty is tenseiro, a cluster of deep fried vegetables and shrimp dropped into a bowl of salty broth with delicate soba noodles on the side.

Watching the crowd of well-dressed Ginza shoppers is almost as much fun as slurping up the extra long noodles. All three restaurants were wonderful, and it was a great way to celebrate the coming of the new year. (By Sean Sakamoto)

Sean Sakamoto traded the fast times in New York City for the slow life in Japan's countryside. He lives with his wife and son by a river in Gifu Prefecture. He's learning Japanese and wants everyone who's studying English to know that he feels your pain.

View Article in The Mainichi Daily News

TRAVEL: The repositioning cruise fare game

Norwegian Pearl

A weeklong trip aboard NCL's Norwegian Pearl departs April 24 from Los Angeles and travels to Vancouver, Canada, for $329 (Carmen Jaspersen / EPA)

Websites can help steer you to a voyage at an attractive price, but traditional travel agents may be able to match them -- and with service.

January 24, 2010

By Jay Jones

Without too much effort, even a novice can snare a great fare on a one-way repositioning cruise.


Such cruises have become increasingly popular in recent times, especially among cruisers who enjoy time at sea rather than at many ports.


For the do-it-yourselfer, websites can provide a wealth of information, so much so that the info sometimes can be overwhelming. Both the cruise lines and online sellers of travel have websites offering various pricing options. A search engine such as Google or Yahoo can help locate such sites. Try entering different combinations of words, such as "repositioning," "cruise," "transatlantic" and "discount."

I recently searched for and found several bargains for 2010. Among them: a 14-night sailing aboard NCL's Norwegian Gem from New York to Venice, Italy, for $549 (departing April 10) and a 14-night voyage on Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas from Barcelona, Spain, to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for $499 (departing Nov. 28). Closer to home, a weeklong trip aboard NCL's Norwegian Pearl departs April 24 from Los Angeles and travels to Vancouver, Canada, for $329. (These may no longer be available.)


Often, traditional travel agents will match the prices available on the Web. And, as Tom Baker, president of the CruiseCenter in Houston ([800] 497-8799, www.cruisecenter.com) points out, working with a person can be advantageous, especially if the price drops after a ticket has been purchased.


"There are some [online vendors] who could care less. It's not about customer service, it's about volume," Baker says. "They don't have the service level . . . to really take care of the guest, knowing that, in some cases, price adjustments happen four or five times on a booking."


Regardless of how they made the reservation, Baker cautions customers to book only after getting a price protection guarantee in writing.


"Celebrity and Royal Caribbean have a great policy," he says of price drops. "They'll protect you with the difference in an onboard credit. . . . It helps take care of your onboard gratuities, your bar bill, your spa visit, whatever.


"My rule of engagement is that the customer should tell their travel agent that they want to know whether there's some level of protection," he continues. "If it's a cruise line that does not protect, they need to understand that upfront."


As Colin Markland discovered in March, the lowest prices are often offered in the weeks just before sailing. Markland snagged a $219 fare (per person, based on double occupancy) about a month before an 11-night transatlantic crossing on the Norwegian Jewel. I booked the same cruise in February and paid $389 -- still a bargain but not as good as Markland's fare.


Also last year, Baker snagged a last-minute deal for some of his clients: a 13-night trip from Rome to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., aboard the brand-new Celebrity Solstice for $469 per person.


"I will tell you emphatically that virtually any transatlantic crossing is going to have . . . space in the fall of 2010," Baker said. "Those who wait will get a better deal, I promise you."

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

JAPAN: A Break for Detroit

Published: January 28, 2010

By ROBERT CYRAN and ANTONY CURRIE

Reuters Breakingviews

Detroit’s Big Three must be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Toyota recently sped past General Motors to become the largest seller of vehicles in the United States.

But the Japanese carmaker, which cherishes its reputation for quality, has been forced to stop selling eight of its top models while it tries to fix a problem involving accelerator pedals that stick. This defect has caused 275 crashes and 18 deaths since 1999. Toyota is also recalling 2.3 million vehicles and halting production for a week.

American automakers, however, should not get too giddy.

First, it is not yet clear how much Toyota’s sales will be hurt. The news is likely to put off some current owners and prospective buyers. And Ford probably stands to benefit the most among domestic manufacturers, largely because it enjoys a better reputation and a more comprehensive lineup of competing vehicles than G.M. or Chrysler. But if Toyota can devise an effective fix quickly, that could prevent mass defections.

The opening provided by Toyota also comes with a lesson: the company’s woes have been exacerbated by its mass use of sharing platforms and parts across different vehicles and different geographies. Cars in Europe also suffered from sticky accelerators. In general, the measure is a smart one that can shave as much as 60 percent off engineering costs on similar vehicles, according to Barclays Capital.

Indeed, it’s one of the ways Toyota managed to overtake American rivals in their own backyard. Ford, G.M. and Chrysler have been playing catch-up for years. Ford, in particular, is making a big push to share platforms as it cranks up global production of the popular Focus.

But as the Japanese automaker is now finding out, the approach can prove incredibly expensive when something goes awry. That should serve as a timely reminder to Detroit that investing in quality control can be at least as important as cutting costs.

For more independent financial commentary and analysis, visit www.breakingviews.com.

S. KOREA: Woes deepening over shortage of crematoriums

2010.01.29

By Lee Ji-yoon

Following a long Confucian tradition, Koreans usually carry out funeral services for three days. However, recently some people are forced to hold a four-day funeral, even though even numbers are avoided here when it comes to family events.

As more Koreans are choosing cremation over burial, the lack of cremation facilities has become a nationwide problem these days. And the shortage in the capital area is most serious.

Bereaved families find it difficult to make reservations for crematoriums. Some are turning to cremation centers in other distant regions or opting for four-day funerals.

"I have long warned central and local governments of such a situation. However, no meaningful efforts have been made," said Park Tae-ho, director of the Korean Association for Funeral Culture Reform.

Established in 1998, the group has led a national campaign promoting cremation over burial.

"Now I rather feel sorry to have contributed to the surge in the cremation rate."

According to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, the nation's cremation rate for 2008 marked 61.9 percent, up from 27.5 percent 10 years ago.

The rates in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province are hovering above the average with 72.2 percent and 69.2 percent, respectively.

While half the population is residing there, only four crematoriums - out of the total 50 across the nation - are covering the areas.

The Byeokjae Cremation Center, located in Gyeonggi Province, is the nation's largest crematorium run by the Seoul city government. Even though the center cremates an average 87 bodies per day throughout the year, its services are always fully booked.

According to the Seoul Facilities Management Corporation, the proportion of families who held four-day funerals at the crematorium increased to 15.5 percent last year, up from 9.6 percent in 2008.

In April last year, the Gyeonggi police booked two part-time workers and two senior officials at a local funeral agency on charges of interfering with business operations at the Byeokjae crematorium.

By abusing the system that allows anyone with a citizen registration number to make a reservation, they allegedly repeated making and canceling fake reservations. They also asked for premiums to sell a secured cremation time, the police said.

"As the demands in the capital areas are moving toward other neighboring areas, complaints are also growing among the residents there. Because extra costs are added to use a crematorium in other regions, people's suffering is worsened," Park said.

In order to ease the complaints, a new crematorium is to be completed in southern Seoul by 2012. Even though the construction site was determined back in 2001, the groundbreaking work couldn't start until last December due to fierce opposition from the residents.

Along with the construction, the Health Ministry also plans to launch an online reservation system for gravesites and crematoriums within the first half of this year. The system would offer detailed information on distance, costs and facilities, as well as preventing some agencies from sweeping reservations.

View Article in The Korea Herald

CHINA: Domestic Consumer Demand To Drive Growth

01.28.10, 10:20 AM EST

Associated Press

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Vice Premier Li Keqiang says the China will seek to boost domestic consumer demand to drive forward its booming economy, acknowledging that export growth alone was unsustainable for development.

Li, considered a potential premier, said China would look to increase employment and the income level of its poorer citizens, hoping to unleash the huge potential of the Chinese consumer.

He also said China would break monopolies and encourage competition, while integrating more deeply into the global economy.

China recently surpassed Germany as the world's top exporter, but Li noted that economic strategies have been "excessively reliant on investment and export."

Li spoke Thursday at the World Economic Forum.

View Article on Forbes

HONG KONG: As Hong Kong’s Politics Stalls, So Does Its Democracy Movement

Protesters scuffled with police officers during a protest outside Hong Kong’s Legislative Council on Jan. 16, 2010. Vincent Yu/Associated Press

January 28, 2010

As Hong Kong’s Political System Stalls, So Does Its Democracy Movement

By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — The political system in Hong Kong is increasingly paralyzed, and street protests are growing more confrontational as public dissatisfaction on economic issues and a lack of democracy is rising. At the same time, the pro-democracy movement here has splintered, weakening its ability to press for changes.

Protesters, many of them young people proclaiming their interest in democracy, have opposed building an expensive high-speed rail link to Shenzhen and Guangzhou in mainland China. They are also upset that Hong Kong’s mostly unelected legislators approved the measure.

The demonstrations also reflect frustration on the part of the pro-democratic parties in the former British colony that accuse China of having delayed or backtracked on commitments it made in the 1990s to allow people to directly elect a majority of lawmakers in the territory’s Legislative Council.

Donald Tsang, the Beijing-backed chief executive of Hong Kong, has suffered a significant decline in his approval ratings in recent polls in recent months as he has grappled with rising local discontent.

Until recently, Hong Kong had a tradition of orderly political protests that were uncommonly polite by international standards. When 500,000 people took to the streets in 2003 to oppose successfully the introduction of stringent internal security regulations, the police did not make a single arrest.

Protests in the last few weeks, however, have been coarser. Youths have shouted obscene curses at police officers. Scuffles with officers have resulted in a series of arrests.

“We’re just sick of going to rallies that political parties organize, and we hold our banners and don’t accomplish anything,” said Christina Chan, a 22-year-old graduate student in philosophy who was arrested at her home this month on suspicion of assaulting police officers at two rallies. Released on bail of 500 Hong Kong dollars, or $65, she has not yet been formally charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Under the terms of its transfer to Beijing’s rule, Hong Kong retains broad civil liberties but also a political system that gives much greater weight to the votes of the economic and social elite. Analysts say there is limited opportunity for youths to vent their unhappiness with dwindling social mobility, high unemployment, sharply rising university tuition and an urban planning process dominated by real estate developers.

Young people have borne the brunt of competition from low-salaried employees in mainland China. They face rising competition for jobs in Hong Kong itself as banks and other high-paying employers increasingly hire mainland college graduates with family connections in Beijing.

“This has been building for months, and I think we’re heading for even greater frustration,” said Michael DeGolyer, the director of the Hong Kong Transition Project, a coalition of academics who have traced the territory’s political evolution for 22 years.

But the five pro-democracy political parties in the political opposition in Hong Kong have split deeply over tactics this winter, including a move by two of the parties this week to bring about by-elections.

Five lawmakers from two pro-democracy parties submitted letters of resignation on Tuesday that are to take effect at midnight on Thursday. Unless withdrawn before then, the resignations would prompt by-elections that the five hope to turn into an informal referendum on introducing greater democracy before the next elections in 2012, instead of waiting until 2017 or later, as Beijing officials have demanded.

Audrey Eu, the leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party and one of the five resigning, said that she believed that unhappiness with the city’s economic troubles could be effectively channeled into support for democratic reforms. “People are beginning to see it is really tied to our political system,” she said.

But the other three parties — including the Democratic Party, the largest in the pro-democracy movement — have questioned the wisdom of this and have chosen not to have any of their lawmakers resign. Albert Ho, the chairman of the Democratic Party, said that he did not believe that dissatisfaction with the economy would show up in by-elections.

If the resigning lawmakers win their seats again in the by-election, then the Beijing-backed executive branch of the government here will dismiss the results as meaningless, Mr. Ho warned. But if any of the lawmakers loses his or her seat, then the government will seize upon the results as evidence that public support for greater democracy is limited, he said.

“If we embark on this project, we would be in a no-win situation,” Mr. Ho said.

Mr. Tsang, the chief executive, said in a statement on Tuesday night that the government would not recognize the results of the by-elections as a referendum. He cautioned that “Many see it as an abuse of the by-election mechanism and a waste of public resources.”

Beijing’s main representation here, the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, condemned the resignations as only likely to cause more “social conflicts.”

Economic worries here have crystallized around a plan to spend 67 billion Hong Kong dollars, or nearly 10,000 Hong Kong dollars per resident, to build a high-speed rail link across the border to Guangzhou. Backers of the rail line, including the government and the city’s economic elite, see the link as essential to tying the city into the mainland’s rapidly improving rail system and its vibrant economy, growing at 10 percent a year.

Critics of the rail line call it expensive at a time when the government is effectively raising university tuition, looking for ways to limit assistance to all but the poorest senior citizens and still mulling how to introduce a minimum wage.

Half the Legislature is elected by the general public, but the other half is chosen by so-called functional constituencies — groups ranging from Hong Kong banks to the city’s lawyers. Only 800 people in this city of seven million are allowed to vote for the chief executive, although most of the 800 are in turn elected by the same functional constituencies that control half the Legislature.

Ms. Eu said she believed that the by-elections could become an informal referendum on whether to eliminate functional constituencies and introduce the principle of one person one vote.

View Article in The New York Times

S. KOREA: Rule of Thumbs: Koreans Reign in Texting World

Ha Mok-min, right, with her mother, Kim Young-sook, in Seoul, South Korea. Ms. Ha and Bae Yeong-ho won a texting contest.  Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

January 28, 2010

Seoul Journal

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — Ha Mok-min is feeling like a gunslinger these days. At the English-language cram school she attends during the winter break, students jealous of her international bragging rights line up to duel with her.

“They come with their cellphones boasting they can beat me,” said Ms. Ha, 16, her deadpan manner lending her the air of a champion accustomed to — even weary of — fame. “I let them try.”

She and another young South Korean, Bae Yeong-ho, recently conquered the world with their thumbs. Their Team Korea won an international competition held in New York this month to determine who can send text messages the fastest — and most accurately — on a cellphone.

“When others watch me texting, they think I’m not that fast and they can do better,” said Mr. Bae, 17, a high school dropout who dyes his hair a light chestnut color and is studying to be an opera singer. “So far, I’ve never lost a match.”

In the New York competition he typed six characters a second. “If I can think faster I can type faster,” he said.

The inaugural Mobile World Cup, hosted by the South Korean cellphone maker LG Electronics, brought together two-person teams from 13 countries who had clinched their national titles by beating a total of six million contestants. Marching behind their national flags, they gathered in New York on Jan. 14 for what was billed as an international clash of dexterous digits.

To ensure a level playing field, LG handed out identical mobile phones — one with a numeric keypad and the other with a keyboardlike QWERTY pad — weeks in advance for practice. The basic rule of the competition: copy phrases streaming across a monitor correctly, with the required capitalization and punctuation, as quickly as possible. Whichever language players chose, words were selected so that each would type the same number of characters.

Then they went thumb to lightning thumb, in five battles with names like “The Monsters’ Swamp” and “Race of Death.” When it was over, Ms. Ha and Mr. Bae were proclaimed the world’s fastest texters. An American team came in second, an Argentine team was third.

Since their return home with $50,000 in prize money each, Ms. Ha and Mr. Bae have become something approaching heroes to what Koreans call the “thumb tribe” — youngsters who feel more comfortable texting than talking.

Until his recent immersion in music studies, Mr. Bae texted 200 to 300 messages a day. Ms. Ha averages 150 to 200.

“That’s average among my friends,” she said defensively, glancing at her mother sitting nearby. “Some send as many as 500 a day.”

In 2009, Ms. Ha won the South Korean national title against 2.8 million competitors by thumbing 7.25 characters a second. (The best score among participants in their 40s was 2.2 characters a second.) Mr. Bae, who was the 2008 national champion and has typed as many as 8 characters a second, did not compete last year.

“I text while walking, eating, watching TV,” Ms. Ha said.

During the interview, even though she was not holding her cellphone, she sat with her thumbs facing each other like a crab’s claws, as if ready to alight on an imaginary keypad.

“At school, we look and listen to the teacher while texting on our cellphones under our desks or in our pockets,” she said. “No typos.”

That behavior has gotten Ms. Ha, Mr. Bae and numerous other teenagers around the world into trouble, with angry teachers confiscating their cellphones. But Ms. Ha’s international victory has more than compensated for all that.

Ms. Ha is an almost accidental champion. Last October, she and her friends were walking through the Coex Mall, a youth hub in southern Seoul, when they saw an LG kiosk about the national competition that was under way. She entered, hoping to get free movie tickets and other gift coupons. She ended up with the top prize: $17,000.

Mr. Bae was more calculating. “When I saw the 2008 competition announced on the Internet, I said, This is it,” he said. “It was about time that someone organized something like this. I wanted to make money and buy a car.”

For the international championship, he trained by copying billboards and anything else that came into view. He also transcribed passages from the Bible during his flight to New York. Ms. Ha trained by typing titles on her bookshelf for five minutes every night before going to bed.

“The more you text, the faster you get,” she said. “In the competition, it’s not just about the speed, though. You have to be calm and not make mistakes.”

Ms. Ha began using a cellphone in the fourth grade, and Mr. Bae began in the fifth grade. They are fervent believers in texting. They call it a far more efficient means of communication than a conversation, a telephone call or an e-mail message.

“You would rather text than dial and wait for the other person to answer,” Mr. Bae said. “It’s especially good when you say ‘hi’ to someone you haven’t seen for a while or don’t know well. You avoid the awkwardness you might feel on the phone. Texting is the modern letter, but I admit it’s not the same as talking face to face.”

Ms. Ha added: “When you talk, you often blabber. If you text, you think more coherently because you have to make yourself understood in short but logical sentences.”

Her mother, Kim Young-sook, 46, said she hoped that Ms. Ha’s world title would help her win admission to a college as an engineering major. But she still hates it when Ms. Ha texts while eating or studying.

“You should show some respect for the food you are eating and the person you are dining with,” she said, scolding her daughter. “Kids with cellphones don’t have manners and look so distracted.

“The cellphone is a great gift of civilization but also one of its pollutants,” Ms. Kim added. Shortly afterward, though, she was texting herself.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: Toyota concedes quality took back seat to 'speedy moves' to global growth

Thursday, January 28, 2010; 9:48 AM

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer

TOKYO -- Toyota sacrificed quality for global growth and got burned.

That's the story Japanese automobile analysts offer to explain the faulty gas pedals that led to the automaker's unprecedented decision to shut down five North American assembly plants and suspend sales of eight of its most popular vehicles. Toyota's own top executives do not dispute it. On Thursday, the company said its recall of millions of U.S. vehicles due to issues with faulty gas pedals was being extended to cover vehicles in Europe and China.

"Our president, Akio Toyoda, has said that expansion may have occurred to the extent where it is difficult for us to keep an eye on the ball," said Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Tokyo. "Other executives have said that part of the troubles we are having today have been because of speedy moves in the past."

Toyota's push to become the world's largest carmaker has occurred during an especially risky era for the industry, with sluggish sales, thin profits, mounting competition and relentless pressure to cut costs.

"This is a really tough time to make money," said Koji Endo, managing director of Advanced Research Japan, a corporate research firm in Tokyo. "Toyota has become maybe too successful, with operations spread around the world, and they always have to come up with new ideas to reduce costs."

One of those ideas was to use the same part -- an accelerator pedal mechanism made by a supplier in Elkhart, Ind. -- in the eight different car models whose production was halted this week.

All big car companies use this kind of "platform sharing" to reduce costs, analysts say. But when something goes wrong -- in Toyota's case, the gas pedal sometimes got stuck and caused runaway acceleration -- then "you increase the risk of having a really big problem," Endo said.

Last week, Toyota recalled 2.3 million vehicles (the eight models it stopped making on Tuesday) and late last year it recalled as many as 4.3 million vehicles. Some of the recalls were to fix gas pedals, and some were to replace floor mats that could jam the pedals.

Late Wednesday, Toyota recalled an additional 1.1 million cars and light trucks in the United States. On Thursday, the company announced it will recall vehicles in Europe and China with gas-pedal issues. Toyota has informed Chinese authorities it will start a recall in February for 75,500 RAV4 sport-utility vehicles that were manufactured in China between March 2009 and January 2010, Toyota spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi told the Associated Press. In Europe, the automaker is still investigating what models will be recalled, and how many.

Toyota said this week that its vehicle recalls and its decision to stop making eight car models were "voluntary." But Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood said Wednesday that Toyota made these moves because federal safety officials told the company to do so.

Toyota is facing a possible congressional investigation by a panel from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and at least three major rental car companies have said they were temporarily removing tens of thousands of Toyotas from their fleets.

Investors appear to be rethinking the value of Toyota. On Thursday in Tokyo, the company's stock fell 3.9 percent; it has lost 15 percent over the past five trading days. As Toyota shares sank, the stock of its main Asian rivals -- Honda, Nissan and Hyundai -- all rose.

"If I owned Toyota, I think I would have to sell now," said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research in Tokyo. "I think it is going to take a couple of years for Toyota to overcome this blow to its image. There is a lot of competition from people who are making good cars and who want Toyota's customers."

Toyota, though, has very deep pockets, with tens of billions of dollars of reserves. Analysts also say the company understands the seriousness of its problems.

"I think they are trying to be as earnest as possible," said Masahiro Fukuda, a senior analyst at Fourin, an automobile research company in Nagoya, Japan. "They are stopping the production lines and sales. I think they want to do it right and honestly."

Still, industry insiders have known for some time that Toyota was expanding production in a way that hurt quality, Fukuda said. U.S. consumer ratings of Toyota quality have fallen in recent years.

"There was a feeling that this may happen," said Fukuda. "Production was expanding so fast that there was a lack of trained mechanics to teach the new ones. Those mechanics teaching were doing so with a bit of concern about their expertise."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

View Article in The Washington Post

CHINA: Ford Halts Production Of Vehicle In China

01.28.10, 10:17 AM EST

By DAN STRUMPF, Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Ford Motor Co. has halted production of some full-sized commercial vehicles in China because they contain gas pedals built by the same company behind the accelerators in Toyota Motor Corp.'s recent recall.

Ford spokesman Said Deep said Thursday the diesel version of its Transit Classic built by a Chinese joint venture contains accelerators built by CTS Corp. ( CTS - news - people ), based in Elkhart, Ind. The vehicles began production in December and only about 1,600 have been produced, he said.

In a statement, Ford partner Jiangling Motors Co. said there have been no reported problems with the Transit Classic, but it is conducting a review of pedal assembly part to determine the next step. The diesel Transit Classic is the Ford's only vehicle that contains gas pedal parts made by CTS, Deep said.

Accelerators made by CTS are at the center of a massive recall and production halt by Toyota ( TM - news - people ) over fears that the gas pedals may get stuck and cause unintended acceleration. CTS makes gas pedal systems for various automakers, though Toyota and Ford are the only ones to announce production stoppages.

"That's part of our routine process - when a company has a recall, you conduct a review and determine if you share any of the same vendors, design, parts," Deep said.

Jiangling has been making a version of the Ford Transit commercial van since the late 1990s and markets its own-brand sport utility vehicle, the Landwind, in China and Europe. The Transit is built in Nanchang in southeastern China.

Associated Press Writer Elaine Kurtenbach in Shanghai contributed to this report.

View Article on Forbes

JAPAN: Nintendo profits hit by Wii sales

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo has been forced to cut the price of its Wii console

Page last updated at 07:49 GMT, Thursday, 28 January 2010

Nintendo has reported a near 10% fall in profits between April and December last year after sales of its most popular games consoles slowed.

Net profit came in at 192.6bn yen ($2.1bn; £1.3bn), a fall of 9.4% on the 212.5bn yen the firm made a year ago.

Overall sales fell by 23%, from 1.54tn yen to 1.18tn yen.

Increased competition during the downturn meant that Nintendo cut the price of its Wii console, which adversely affected revenues.

It was forced to make the cuts after rivals Sony and Microsoft reduced the price of their Playstation and Xbox consoles.

View Article on the BBC News

CHINA: China’s Growth, Measured in Feed

A worker loading a bag of cement onto a truck at a plant in Xian, China. Nelson Ching/Bloomberg News

January 28, 2010

By ROBERT CYRAN and ANTONY CURRIE

Reuters

China needs fertilizer more than steel. If its industrialization follows the course of other nations, per capita demand for infrastructure like concrete and steel will peak long before meat consumption does.

This may explain why mergers and acquisitions activity in the agriculture sector has become so hot. For example, Vale, based in Brazil, just agreed to buy Bunge’s Brazilian fertilizer assets for $3.8 billion.

In the typical path of development, demand shoots up for everything, but industrial goods in particular benefit. Highways, power plants and ports are built, and require construction materials. As a result, companies build steel and cement plants to meet demand, and assembling these factories calls for a lot of their own product. China’s per capita production of cement and steel is already at levels higher than those of most industrialized countries.

Yet the revolution of the stomach moves at a slower pace. While steel production per capita in the United States peaked in the 1950s, demand for meat has grown consistently. Americans now eat 276 pounds of meat a year, an increase of 60 percent since the 1950s. Other developed countries show similar patterns.

China is eating more protein, but has far to go to catch up with the developed world. Per capita consumption of meat is less than 100 pounds, and this figure may be inflated. Raising more animals will require copious feed; one full steer requires around 3,000 pounds of feed. Growing this grain will increase demand for fertilizer substantially. China is already the biggest consumer of potash (a quarter of all global production) and the top producer of phosphate — and it imposed restrictive tariffs on exports in 2008.

While these trends appear abstract, they affect corporate behavior. The economic crisis sent commodity prices into a tailspin. While steel insiders cautiously slammed the brakes on merger activity, fertilizer companies went hog wild. Among the deals, brawls broke out among the fertilizer groups CF Industries, Terra Industries and Agrium.

While industry valuations are in line with the market — CF Industries trades at 14 times estimated earnings, for example — they deserve a premium. Phosphate and potash markets, in particular, have high barriers to entry, so it makes sense to buy rivals rather than build new facilities. As long as China’s taste for meat increases, fertilizer companies should continue to eat one another up.

For more independent financial commentary and analysis, visit www.breakingviews.com.

View Article in The New York Times

N. KOREA: N. Korea says American man detained at China border

01.28.10, 01:50 AM EST

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Thursday it has detained an American man for illegally entering the country from China, the second arrest of a U.S. citizen it has reported in the past several weeks.

The man was detained Monday and is under investigation, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch. It did not identify him by name or provide other details.

In Washington, State Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The U.S. embassies in Beijing and Seoul said they had no comment.

North Korea said late last month that it was holding another U.S. citizen for illegally entering through the North Korea-China border.

It did not identify the man, but he is widely believed to be Robert Park, an American missionary who South Korean activists say crossed over a frozen river into North Korea several days earlier to raise the issue of human rights.

U.S. officials are still seeking consular access to that citizen, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday. The U.S. hopes to gain access to him through the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang since Washington does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea. The two countries are technically in a state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang referred inquiries to the State Department in Washington.

A South Korean activist who has been the source of most information about the missionary said Thursday that he has no knowledge of the second American detainee.

Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based group Pax Koreana said he and fellow activists sent about 150,000 leaflets by balloon across the border into North Korea on Wednesday as part of efforts to let North Koreans know about Park.

Jo said the leaflets repeated Park's demand that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il step down and dismantle camps for political prisoners.

Park's detainment came four months after two American journalists arrested at the border were freed and their 12-year sentences for illegal entry and "hostile acts" were commuted after former President Bill Clinton traveled to Pyongyang and met North Korean leader Kim.

South Korea's Unification Ministry and Foreign Ministry also said they had no information about the second detainee.

Associated Press writer Scott McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.

View Article in Forbes

JAPAN: Toyota’s Woes in America Raise Concern in Japan

January 28, 2010

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — As Toyota’s problems mounted in North America with the announcement of a halt to sales and manufacturing of the bulk of its cars, commentators in Japan fretted Wednesday that the automaker’s problems could seriously hurt the reputation of the rest of Japan’s manufacturing sector.

“Toyota’s reputation for safety is in tatters, and it is inevitable that its image among consumers will suffer,” the Sankei Shimbun daily said.

The Japanese feel a certain sense of pride that, despite the nation’s long economic slump, a handful of prominent exporters like Toyota dominate overseas. Toyota has led the way in gas-electric hybrid vehicles and other environmental technology.

“The discrediting of Toyota could even destroy the world’s trust in Japanese manufacturing, which relies on its reputation for high quality,” the Tokyo Shimbun daily warned.

Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. announced Tuesday that it would stop selling and building models that were already the subject of a recall over a problem with accelerator pedals.

The eight models, including the popular Camry and Corolla sedans, accounted for more than a million sales in 2009, 57 percent of Toyota’s American total for the year.

Toyota took similar steps in Canada. Officials said that the company was considering what measures to take in Europe but that it had not made any concrete plans.

Transportation Department officials in the United States on Wednesday said that they were ones who advised the automaker to act quickly to stop production of the vehicles.

“The reason Toyota decided to do the recall and to stop manufacturing is that we asked them to,” Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood said. In an interview with WGN radio in Chicago, Mr. Hood went on, “We were the ones that really met with Toyota, our department, our safety folks, and told them, ‘you’ve got to do the recall.” They decided to stop the manufacturing.”

Mr. LaHood said the department took notice of the company’s problems after an accident in California last year in which three people were killed. Since then, he said the department had discovered other safety issues with the company’s vehicles, and has met with engineers from Japan.

“We told them, ‘we’re going to call you out on this.’ They stepped up and they did the right thing, and we applaud them for doing this,” he said. Mr. LaHood said the department would help the company find a solution. “We’re going to get to the best safety that’s possible. They want to manufacture cars that are the safest for people to drive.”

Mr. LaHood said Toyota had figured out solutions to the problem on some of its vehicles. He recommended that owners immediately take their vehicles to dealers, and said the company would either fix them or find a way to provide other transportation while it found a solution.

Analysts in Japan have raised concerns for some time that Toyota’s rapid growth in recent years was overstretching the company. Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, has himself berated the company for excessive confidence, which he said had set the company up for a painful fall in the global economic crisis. He said last year that Toyota was “grasping for salvation.”

“We have had fears for quite a while now that Toyota lacked the human resources and production capacity for such rapid expansion. By chasing numbers, they were becoming seriously outstretched,” said Masahiro Fukuda, manager of research at Fourin, a global automotive research company based in Nagoya, Japan. “Many of us weren’t surprised over the big recalls; we were more surprised that it took Toyota so long.”

Other analysts faulted Toyota’s zealous pursuit of efficiency and cost-cutting. “The same parts were used here, there and everywhere, on major models,” said Koji Endo, managing director at Japan Advanced Research, a Tokyo-based research organization. “That’s very efficient, but very risky. If the part turns out to be faulty, you suddenly have a problem on your hands involving millions of cars.”

Now, halting its factories could have a “tremendous impact” on Toyota’s bottom line, especially if the interruption drags on, Mr. Endo said. “Toyota will have to change the design of the gas pedal, get relevant approvals, set up production, then exchange parts for millions of cars on the road, cars sitting at dealerships and cars they were assembling at their factories,” he said.

Toyota’s woes are throwing the carmaker’s recovery into flux, analysts say. Toyota this week said it expected group sales to grow 6 percent from the previous year to 8.27 million. The company reports third-quarter results on Feb. 4.

Some in Japan questioned whether Toyota was taking too drastic a step in suspending production.

“Toyota says it has halted sales and production to show it will be thorough in its response, but the move carries the risk of further heightening consumer fears,” the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said. “Even a quick restart of sales might not be enough to ward off a serious shift away from Toyota.”

But Mr. Fukuda said he saw Toyota’s decision to suspend sales as a typical Toyota move. “At a Toyota factory line, when something goes wrong, they stop the whole line.” he said. “Now Toyota is doing the same thing, at the company level. That’s the Toyota way.”

Micheline Maynard contributed reporting from Detroit.

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