I just had a truly international experience in the Yahoo "Japan" chatroom. A Japanese man in Japan, a Japanese woman in Australia and yours truly in Canada were chatting (typing, not voice) in Japanese (with a bit of English) while listening to a live Japanese radio broadcast about the war in Iraq. The man in Japan used his computer microphone to let us hear it. Most of the news broadcast was too difficult for me to understand--because it was fast and in Japanese, not because I couldn't grasp the concepts--but there were some snippets from interviews in English in it, and I could understand most of the comments that the two Japanese people typed about it. They also seemed to understand my limited Japanese. The wonders of technology in this wired world!

It was very moving when the Japanese man used his microphone so everyone in the chatroom (in many different countries) could listen to him play a recording of John Lennon's "Imagine". There was an international "moment of silence" during this. Just before I left the chatroom, I typed, "Heiwa o kangaete kudasai, minasan.", which means, "Please think about peace, everyone."

Thinking about the war that now seems inevitable, I immediately remembered the traditional Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times!"

P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day. (Green beer seems a bit trivial this year, doesn't it?)