journal features

March 31 is the cruelest day in Japan

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.03.31

In Japan, companies tend to shuffle their employees around for the new fiscal year, which starts on April 1. This makes March 31 a day of goodbyes.

For Kenny it meant that he's losing three of his teachers—two of whom are moving to other schools. Mari suggested that we make a point of descending to the day care together to say goodbye, so we met with the one fellow who was one of Kenny's most direct caregivers. It was obviously really tough on him, as he was tearing over saying goodbye to other kids before we even got to him.

In happy times when the two had just met.

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