Word: karuizawa
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Neutral, perhaps, but by no means dispassionate, as one saw, even in distant Karuizawa, a chic summer resort that found itself the host for curling competitions. Not far from the Pension England House Windsor, the town held its very own opening ceremonies, with its own parade of athletes, its own concert of bagpipers and Japanese drums. As the competition got under way, the Kazakoshi Park Arena--not unlike a high school gym--was filled with Japanese primary schoolchildren, old ladies blowing Piccolo Mini Cheer Horns and a crowd of Canadians crying, "Come on, button boy. Stop, baby, stop." Here...
...Lake is often lovely in its diaphanous scenes - a nighttime ritual of catching fireflies, for example. In this translation, at least, it is also sometimes disagreeable and unsettling. One passage in which Gimpei gets a massage in a Karuizawa bathhouse reads eerily like Arthur Bremer's diary, in which he described a visit to a Manhattan massage parlor some time before he started stalking George Wallace. There might be a good doctoral thesis in the psychological relationship between the literary and the political creep in the late 20th century. Kawabata could not offer any further advice for it, however...
...shrewdly exploited his compatriots' fixation on expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi, proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles northwest of Tokyo. There, for 9,900 yen (roughly $38), he serves what must surely be the world's most expensive cup of coffee. Funakoshi readily concedes that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style), as the defiantly exorbitant prices...
...People come to Karuizawa with the expectation of spending money," he says, "so why shouldn't I help them in this endeavor?" Even those who do not sample the $38 cup of coffee-served at a special table by a kimono-clad waitress in a ritual that resembles a tea ceremony-can leave the Akaneya with the feeling of having been overcharged...
...Jonny Nilsson, 19. stubby-legged student engineer from Filipstad, Sweden: three new world records at the world speed skating championships in Karuizawa, Japan. Gliding happily through a blinding blizzard that coated him with snow and slowed down his rivals, the unheralded Nilsson sped 10,000 meters in 15 min. 33 sec., won the 5,000 meters in 7 min. 34.3 sec., and set yet another record by winning the all-events championship with the best score ever...