journal features

ikemen and ikumen

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.09.12

"Ikemen" a term in (modern) Japanese term for a handsome, attractive man. "Ikumen" is another word used for husbands who help out around the house.

Fellow Canadian "Red Green" has the advice, "If you can't be handsome, be handy." While folding laundry the other night, I told her about it. In Japanese, I added, "If I can't be an ikemen I can at least be an ikumen." She said, "Oh, some people have said that you're an ikumen."

"Oh really? Well that's—"

"But only until you open your mouth."

"...yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton