I am now using this method to make my way through the presidential election coverage. The masochistic part of me wants to know everything Karl Rove and Chris Matthews are saying, wants to read and reread and then dissect for good measure every Five Thirty Eight column in The New York Times plus all the comments, wants to counter any asinine posting made by people I agreed to be friends with on Facebook because they said we’re from the same high school, but based on the logic and grammar in their postings I wonder if we’re even from the same planet.

But my better self knows that this will stir my stomach acid, lead to rants that will scare my children—particularly when they take place in a car going 65 m.p.h.—and cause me to start twirling my hair in angst, and I don’t pay good money for haircuts to have my locks sacrificed at the foot of the electoral college. My better self understands that the dips and swivels in the polls and the one-two punches and feints used by the Boys of October Spin don’t matter, that only November 6^th matters. My better self knows I have work to do, dinners to make, sleep to sleep.

So, at the beginning of October I vowed to avoid press on politics until Election Day—when I’ll allow myself to flail and wail freely if my guy doesn’t win. But do you have any idea how hard it is to do this willful non-looking during an election?

I had to start at the most basic level.  Ever since The New York Times has had a digital edition, it has been the homepage on my computer. But a few days after the first Presidential debate, I changed to the site for athletics at my alma mater–the University of South Carolina. In an incredible stroke of luck, the Gamecocks’ rise in football to a never-before-reached number-three national ranking (though alas, they’ve recently taken a drop in the polls like a candidate caught snogging a phone bank worker) came at just the right time, allowing me to easily replace one obsession with the other.

Now a few times a day—when I’m on my way to other safe sites like Travelocity or Amazon—I get to see photos of Marcus Lattimore gloriously breaking a tackle or Coach Steve Spurrier urging his guys on or Cocky, the mascot, on the sidelines looking goofily happy (as he always does) even though I know the guy inside that shag-rug-suit in the Carolina heat is sweating like Obama’s debate coach during the first meeting. Whoops. Must. Stay. Away. From. Politics.

Fortunately, I don’t have TV in the house, but there are TVs everywhere I go—in restaurants, in the gym. I saw one last week in the dressing room of a local department store, for those who want to be distracted from jean shopping—and who doesn’t?  And because I live in Texas way too many of them are tuned to Fox News, and when fringe followers watch Fox (or MSNBC on the other end), that’s  like feeding testosterone brownies to a psychopath. So, this means I can’t work out on the treadmills at my gym. But I can swim at the pool. As far as I’m concerned there’s no better place for your head during an election than buried in watery silence.

I used to like listening to NPR when taking my boys to swim practice or guitar lessons. My 15 year old picked up the NPR love and for the past couple of years, our two votes determined where the dial was set, much to the outrage of my younger son. Now, I’m voting with the little guy for the tunes, any tunes—classic rock, hip hop, bubble gum, it doesn’t matter. Katy Perry for God’s sake. I’ve discovered that obliviously rocking out to “Moves Like Jagger”—even for the 53^rd time—is good for my soul. (Bonus: I got to avoid the local NPR station’s recent fund drive.)

Because of this media cleanse, I have had to alter my pre-sleep habit of surfing through news and gossip sites. Now, I’m doing crossword puzzles. But the problem is that to print out a New York Times crossword from my computer, I have to land briefly on the homepage. I quickly cover the screen with my left hand and slide the cursor to the crossword link. It’s a silly game of techno-Twister but it works. I haven’t even seen a serif on an“ R” in a Romney or Ryan headline.

And when I’m not doing crosswords, I’m on my new homepage analyzing rushing and passing statistics for the Gamecock’s next opponent or I’m on SECtalk.com posting comments about our offensive line and countering asinine comments about our weak early schedule. And then I start twirling my hair in angst. Uh-oh.

Me with my umbrella and map–my two essential accessories in Tokyo. Aren’t you glad I didn’t post any photos of bathrooms!!

When I walked into the bathroom stall at the Osaka airport, I almost keeled over at what I saw. A miracle of hygiene, surely the anti-thesis of toilet technology in China.

And over the course of our nine days in Japan, I decided that the toilets were only one of the most obvious differences between Japan and China.

When I told Tebai, Gus’ dear Chinese teacher, that we were combining China and Japan in one trip, she was very interested to know how the two compared. Of course, China and Japan are traditional enemies. During the lead up to World War II, Japan committed all kinds of atrocities against the Chinese–ever heard of the Rape of Nanjing? Massacre of Nanjing is probably more precise.

Actually when we were studying recent history in the area before our trip, Jeb declared that he didn’t even want to go to Japan because they had been so awful to the Chinese.

I think it was highly instructive to look at these two countries side by side. They are both major powers in the region, but it seems they’ve traded roles in recent years. When I first went to Japan in the early 90s, Japan was clearly dominant–with a surging economy and a standard of living that equaled or surpassed the U.S.

But now, after years of stagnant growth in Japan, it is China that is ascendant and a rising China, with its huge population and potential and a grudge against Japan, casts an intimidating shadow. (Indeed, in Tokyo we saw a demonstration encouraging the Japanese government not to back down in its claims of islands off its coast that China claims as well.)

But I drift far from the subject of bathrooms–which is way more interesting, admit it.

In China, I experienced bathroom design and sanitation I hadn’t seen since I was trekking in Nepal with Robb 21 years ago. That means, if we were lucky, a clean porcelain bowl in the floor with two treads on either side for your feet. If we weren’t lucky it was just a hole dug in the ground or a hole drilled in a wood floor with a long drop to some primitive septic down below.

I did see something entirely new and efficient for multiple users (which is a consideration Chinese bathroom designers have to make, I suppose). In a big tiled room, you step up on to a platform and straddle a tiled trench. There are several different stalls up on the platform. The trench runs below all the stalls at a slight angle and there’s a trickle of water that keeps running through the trench to flush away anything users leave there. The trick is to go to the stall at the top of the incline so nothing you don’t want to see gets flushed underneath you while you’re going. This may be more information than you ever wanted to know.

On the walk from our apartment in Tokyo to the train station. I lost my big floppy sun hat in Kyoto, so I decided to go native–taking up the practice of carrying an umbrella at all times to protect from the intense sun.

Robb and the boys had a 1 – 10 rating system for bathrooms they encountered. Gus says he saw three 9.5 bathrooms–including one at the Kunming train station and one at a gas station between Dali and Saxshi. Each time I consoled him with that old stand-by: That what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

My worst bathroom experience was at the bus station in Shangri-la, which in no way lived up to its location name. All I’ll say is that in teh women’s room there were two holes in the floor, no stalls for privacy and one of the holes was already in use. Uggh!

So imagine my delight when I found the bathrooms in the Osaka airport tricked out like this: stalls with full length doors and sensors you just waved your hand in front of to lock; a throne-like commode with a remote control device to one side, where you could control the temperature of the seat warmer, the start and stop of the bidet spray, the amount of air freshener to emit after use and–I kid you not–the noise level of the flushing sound. There was also a dispenser for disposable seat-cleaning wipes.

I was ecstatic. I was back in the land of careful personal hygiene.

But careful personal hygiene only goes so far. In the same way that very neat people–as a gross generalization–tend to be less fun than their messy counterparts, Japan was less exciting than China. Japan felt almost sterile coming on the heels of messy, crazy, in-flux China.

There were similarities between the two countries, such as the writing (Gus said a few of the characters were exactly alike) and the way that women carried umbrellas to protect their skin from the sun. But in almost every other way, China was more dynamic, exotic, exhilarating. Even down to the food. Though everyone in our family adores sushi, Japanese food is in general without any of the spiciness or daring of Chinese food.

There is less to look at on the streets of Japan–everyone has a similar middle-class and up appearance. There’s no tension between the old and new as you felt all over China. There’s no gaucheness the way you saw in China with men walking around with their shirts rolled up to reveal bare bellies or people spitting or pushing their way to the front of the line. Everyone in Japan is incredibly well-mannered, often bowing in greeting or good-bye, always pleasant and presentable. I mean, the cab drivers in Japan wear uniforms and some even wear white gloves. Robb and I wondered if all this exceptional civility is a compensation for the terrible aggression and atrocities of the war years.

It’s not that we didn’t have fun in Japan or didn’t find it fascinating in its own way–we loved the shinto shrines, the sumo, the sleek bullet trains, the anime, the shopping, the SUSHI. It’s just that after non-stop China we were all a little underwhelmed, which is maybe just what we needed. That and some sparkling, bottom-warming bathrooms.

At the temple to the rice god, outside of Kyoto. Everything looks so pretty and perfect in Japan.

This Buddhist shrine in Kyoto was sparkling; it didn’t look like it was actually used that much.

A koi fish–so Japanese.

You don’t see a lot of emotions on display in Japan–except on the statuary.

One thing Japan is well known for: its really fast, really sleek trains. Here, the train we will take from Kyoto to Tokyo is arriving.

On the metro train in Kyoto. Our apartment was luckily near a really big train station, which helped us get around easily.

This is a very famous intersection in the Shibuya area of Tokyo. When the light goes green for pedestrians, they fill up the intersection, going across, diagonal, every which way. It makes Times Square seem tame.

Japan is known for simple, peaceful gardens. I guess after dealing with crazy, crowded intersections you need a little peace.

Watching Gus climb a wall at a park in downtown Tokyo while I’m busy with sunburn protection.

Robb had me pose next to this sign because, as he said, I was the travel boss. I didn’t correct his spelling since you forget things when you’ve been away from English for so long.

This is a painting of a famous sumo wrestler at a train station in Tokyo. We had just been to a sumo museums. Sumo wrestlers are very big, but it’s the sumo way.

One thing that was cool about Japan was it was much cleaner than China. You could see blue skies, and the streets aren’t so dusty. The writing looked the same as in China. The food was different so I was relieved to eat something besides dumplings.

When we were in Kyoto, we rode our bikes all over the place. The bikes came with the apartment that we rented. There were also badminton rackets, so sometimes we played until I knocked it over a wall and we couldn’t get it back. The neighbor didn’t speak English and we didn’t know how to explain to her what happened.

At the train station there was a parking garage for bikes, which was funny. There was also a sushi restaurant, where the sushi went around on a conveyer belt and you grabbed the one you want. At the end they would count your plates and times it by the amount each plate cost. In some restaurants, the plates were different color because the plates were different in the prices.

We went to a big temple dedicated to the rice god. We went to a very Japanese restaurant and ordered some random things, because we couldn’t read the menu. We sat on the floor and we were laughing because we didn’t know what was coming.

In Tokyo, we went to a giant toy store, in which we drove race cars on a track and Gus won every time. Then we went to the one of the biggest fish markets in the world; it was kind of dirty and it smelled bad. We also went to a massive three-story arcade called Joypolis. Everything was virtual this, virtual that. There was skydiving, bobsledding, actual-size car racing, and a lot of other thing. My favorite was the bobsledding; it was two people together so Gus and I were on a team.

In many ways Japan is more like Europe or the US than China, but it was still very fun.

We were riding bikes in Kyoto. It was really fun because it was peaceful and easy.

There was a special garage at the Kyoto train station where you actually parked your bikes. It was fun. You would put your bikes on special racks.

Conveyor belt sushi restaurants are really fun because you get to pick your sushi right off the belt going in front of you. We went to three different conveyor belt sushi places, which are called “kaiten” sushi.

Here I am at a temple outside of Kyoto. Each one of these arches symbolizes a prayer someone made.

Some women in kimonos are looking at a whole board full of tablets where you write down a prayer. My mom and I each wrote down a prayer.

Gus drinking water at a temple. It was supposedly sacred water. I did not do it because my dad was somewhere else and I had to take the picture.

Here we are racing remote controlled cars at a race track at a big toy store in Tokyo. My dad is trying to block Gus from winning again.

This was a ride that was supposed to be like half-pipe skateboarding at an arcade called Joypolis. It was fun but kind of short compared to how long we had to wait in line.

Gus rock climbing in downtown Tokyo.

Dad getting to the top of the rock climbing wall.

A Japanese boy at the museum in Hiroshima in front of the mushroom cloud that exploded over Hiroshima 67 years ago this month.

The atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II are famous events in United States history. What is less known to most students are the targets and the horrific effects inflicted upon them. To many Japanese and Americans the atomic bombs will forever live in infamy. I got to visit Hiroshima, one of the cities that was bombed, and went to a museum there and these are my thoughts.

Although many people might disagree, I believe the atomic bombs were necessary to end World War II. The Japanese almost never surrendered willingly, and would often commit suicide to try to kill a few more Americans. The marines who fought them had a saying, “You could surround 1,000 German soldiers and they would surrender; you could surround one Japanese soldier and he would keep fighting.”

By making Japan surrender the United States and its allies did not have to invade Japan, which could have cost millions of lives. At the time the invasion would have taken place, Japan had nearly five million soldiers left. They were also training women and children to fight with bamboo spears. The consequences of an invasion of Japan could have been around one million dead Americans, and up to ten million dead Japanese, of which many would have been women and children. These numbers do not include wounded, homeless, and sick. Thus the atomic bombs saved more lives than they harmed, 220,000 (the number killed in Hiroshima and Nagasake) is better than 11 million.

Although this first part of my blog might make it sound like I don’t care about the people who did die, the truth is quite the opposite, especially after being in Hiroshima. I sincerely wish there had been some other way to make Japan surrender without causing so many casualties. At best I would hope peace could have been secured without violence in the end, and that at worst we would only need to drop one atomic bomb. But it is too late for that now.

Wishful thinking won’t bring the dead back to life, so I try to think more about any positive aspects of the bombs. No wars are good and I will always feel bad about what happened.

This building was one of the very few left standing at the epicenter of the blast. It’s been left just as it was that day–crumbling and with just the metal parts of the dome.

One of the displays at the museum. This watch stopped at exactly 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945–the moment the A-bomb exploded.

A document that lists all the names of people killed in the blast is stored under this memorial.

A local woman walking by one of the many memorials here.

Another memorial; there are many memorials devoted to peace.

A memorial with flowers that someone left there.

I’ve seen a lot of dashboard doo-dads: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Buddhist Prayer Wheels, Albert Einstein bobbleheads. But this one in our car in Yangshuo was confounding. It’s like asking the grim reaper to protect you!

What is it with Mao?

When we studied modern China, none of us could believe the bad decisions he made for his people. The Great Leap Forward that wasn’t anything of the sort–starving 30 million people. The Cultural Revolution that was essentially the Cultural Ruination, where an estimated 20 million people perished.

OK, maybe some of those figures were exaggerated as part of anti-China propaganda at the time. But still–even if only one-tenth of those figures are true, it is still enormous.  (I’m not saying he was evil along the lines of Hitler-Stalin, though that case could probably be made I suppose; my sense was that he was just woefully inept as a leader.)

Despite all this horror, his image is everywhere in modern China. Everywhere. On almost all the yuan bills. Big, heroic statues in almost every city. His likeness on a whole array of knickknacks–and not necessarily in an ironic way (which is how I think of Mao images on products seen in the U.S.).

China has made all kinds of strides forward in recent years–distancing itself from its communistic past and embracing capitalism, which Mao would have hated. Still, Mao casts his long shadow.

I decided to document some of the Mao scene–starting with the funniest dashboard figure I’ve seen and ending (scroll to the bottom) with a hilarious Mao reference that ties into current affairs and will delight all my Republican friends and family members. (Got to give you guys something to laugh about these days.)

Mao T-shirt in Dali.

A Mao wood cut in Lijiang. The store owner fussed at me for taking this photo–as if an image of Mao was intellectual property or something.

An old man in Baisha who still loves his Mao.

Mao and Chou Enlai button in Dali.

Mao lording over the city of Lijiang.

In Dali, you can buy a Mao suit and a Mao tapestry. Yeehah!

Mao statues and sky cranes–two ubiquitous objects in China. These are in Chengdu. Photo by Robb K.

A poster of the Big Man having tea, found in an antique shop in Dali.

Mao even appears in Chinese puddles! Amazing! (Nice photo effect by a lovely photographer I know.)

Even though I love Obama, I had to buy this. Such an incredible cultural artifact. I know some friends and family members will be clamoring for this, but I won’t be able to give it up. Sorry!