Japanese

L ike a lot of people in the Baltimore area, Robyn Cincinnati grew up eating fish on Friday. But last Friday, as she bought a fresh Alfonsino, a large red fish that a few days before had been swimming in a Japanese sea, she knew her family supper was going to be different. "This is going to be a whole new fish-on-Friday Lent experience," she said, adding that her husband, Greg Moore, would probably flash-fry the far-flung fish. Cincinnati was one of a number of area fish eaters who showed up at a Japanese seafood festival last weekend at the Wegmans grocery store in Hunt Valley.

PABU , the second restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore, is scheduled to open this week. The dinner-only restaurant is the first collaboration between Michael Mina, whose San Francisco-based restaurant group also developed the concept for Wit & Wisdom , the Four Seasons' three-meal restaurant, and Ken Tominaga, owner and chef of Hana Japanese Restaurant in Sonoma County, Calif. PABU is being described as a modern "izakaya," a term that translates, very loosely, as a drinking establishment that serves food.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He's a teenager with a huge following — literally. Wherever Japan's Ryo Ishikawa goes, a media contingent of about 40 follows. "I've played with him in Japan and it's even worse over there," said Rory McIlroy, who watched Ishikawa shoot 70-71 to put himself in contention at the U.S. Open. "He handles it very, very well. That's probably the most impressive thing about him — apart from how he plays golf." Ishikawa, who stands 5 feet 7, 140 pounds and won't turn 19 until September, shot a 12-under 58 last month to win his seventh Japan Tour title.

Japanese cultural exchange student Minami Tajima remembers one of her first visits to an American restaurant. She and about two dozen other students from Japan visited Anne Arundel County last year, and after she befriended Arundel High School student Taylor Niemetz, the two went to a steakhouse in the Waugh Chapel area. "So this is a Japanese restaurant," Niemetz said. "They're Chinese,'" Tajima replied, referring to the cooks. Talk about cultural awareness. Still, Tajima, a student from Sagami Ono High School in a city near Tokyo, said she enjoys American food.

Los Angeles. -- So the Japanese, or at least their equivalent of Tom Foley, think Americans are all lazy and unproductive. I hope they're right.The ''charge,'' if that's what it is, came over the weekend from Yoshio Sakurauchi, speaker of the Japanese house of representatives, chiding us for not being more like the Japanese.His arrogance might make some of us realize what we sound like when we constantly tell people in other cultures to be more like us. But who wants to live like the Japanese?

WASHINGTON -- Two Japanese automakers have asked the Commerce Department to extend reduced duties they pay on imported parts for their American-made cars.The companies want to expand their factories in the United States without paying higher tariffs on the additional parts they will need to import.Since opening U.S. factories in the 1980s, Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co., like Detroit's Big Three automakers, have held an exemption that lets them pay duties of no more than 2.5 percent on parts they import for assembly.

EXOTIC STRAINS of Japanese music filled the air at Longfellow Elementary School last week as Shizumi, a Japanese-born choreographer and dancer, visited the school."

Under any other circumstances, we might admire their striking metallic green and bronze uniforms and their tenacious grip. But Japanese beetles are back this year in astonishing numbers. They're gobbling up linden tree leaves, rose bushes and vegetable gardens, and they're hooking up with each other at a furious rate. Steve Black, who started a tree nursery this year in Adamstown, near Frederick, likens the infestation at his farm to a biblical plague. "I have them clustered six deep on trees they supposedly don't like," he said.

TOKYO -- "Man Marking -- We Support Ocean Spirit," a sign outside a tweedy men's clothing shop in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza shopping district says in English.Inside the shop, a clerk is puzzled that two visitors would ask what the sign means."I don't think it really has a meaning," says the clerk, Toshiko Nakamura, a bit tentatively. "I think it's more like -- a feeling."In this capital of commerce, where English is not so much a language as an industry, Ms. Nakamura has put her finger on what makes one branch of that industry profitable.

TOKYO -- With more than two weeks to go before President George Bush's thrice-delayed state visit here, Japanese commentators are criticizing it as a bizarre blunder."

Myrtle M. Watson, an Army nurse whose indelible memories of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor remained with her for the rest of her life, died Feb. 11 of vascular disease at Oak Crest Village. The Northeast Baltimore resident was 98. Early in the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Mrs. Watson was busy working her first solo weekend assignment in the orthopedic ward at Schofield Hospital near Pearl Harbor, which was short-staffed because it was a weekend. She began pushing bedridden men out to a second-story lanai so they could take in a barefoot inter-regimental football game that was to be played on the hospital lawn.

If the life of furniture maker Robert Ortiz was ever made into a movie, it would be full of adventure and plenty of plot twists. The opening scene would unfold in New York City in the 1960s, with a Hispanic kid from humble roots leaving home at age 14 to enter a religious order that trains monks. The camera would pan to a young man strumming a guitar at coffeehouses, renovating houses, teaching schoolchildren and eventually landing in Baltimore. After leaving the order and trying his hand at many careers, Ortiz finally found his professional calling: designing and crafting fine wood furniture.

The Orioles' new starting pitcher, Tsuyoshi Wada, likely won't make his Camden Yards debut until the first full week of April, and it won't be known for several months how well he'll make the transition from Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball to major league baseball. But the first impression of the 30-year-old, soft-tossing left-hander is that he'll work to assimilate - as evidenced by his opening statement Thursday at his introductory news conference at Camden Yards, which he delivered in English.

The Orioles have agreed to terms with Japanese lefty starter Tsuyoshi Wada, which reopens their pipeline to Japan, according to an industry source. He will sign a two-year, $8.15 million deal with a 2014 option worth $5 million, the source said. It is the Orioles' first foray into the Japanese market since signing Koji Uehara before the 2009 season. Wada may not end up as the only pitcher from Japan's Nippon Baseball League on the roster. The club is also seriously interested in Taiwanese lefty Chen Wei-Yin, who pitched for the Chunichi Dragons.

Thinking backon his efforts as an ambassador of baseball, Cal Ripken Jr. recalled howthe teens he worked with in Nicaragua were so excited it was impossible to corral them into groups, while the kids in China were so reserved it was hard to get them out on their own. But one of the things both sets of young players shared, he said Tuesday, was a love of the game. That's part of the reason why the Hall of Fame shortstop isn't intimidated by his latest diplomatic assignment from the U.S. Department of State: Hosting 16 teenagers from Japan who were profoundly affected by the earthquake and tsunami in March.

A man in black wields an enormous hollow cross packed with phony handguns while checking out Barnes & Noble's graphic-novel racks. A futuristic Marie Antoinette, in a regal gown with bared cleavage and midriff, balances a huge rectangular headpiece with impeccable hauteur while navigating the steaming crowds on Pratt Street. An urban-cowboy assassin in fringed Daisy Dukes, with hippie-like straight hair hitting the small of her back and bandoleros crisscrossing her chest, eyes a burger at Five Guys.

TOKYO -- Japanese justice had its way with the country's leading political kingmaker yesterday.Shin Kanemaru formally admitted that he had accepted $4 million in illegal political contributions from the head of a mobster-connected trucking company. So he was fined almost $2,000.It was a slap on the wrist for the Liberal Democratic Party factional baron, whose support put Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in office.But it smacked of a privileged deal with usually untouchable prosecutors. The fine also instantly set off a wave of public outrage that threatened to overwhelm both Mr. Kanemaru's grip on power and Mr. Miyazawa's already shaky Cabinet.

SALEM, W.Va. -- When the annual apple butter festival opens in this tiny Appalachian town today, revelers will find many familiar standbys: an apple pie bake-off, a quilt show and a contest for the longest squirrel tail.But after the clogging exhibition and just before the greased pig contest, they will encounter two new entries that have nothing to do with the traditions of the community and everything to do with its future: displays of origami and demonstrations of Japanese martial arts.

Otakon isn't the only place in Baltimore where Japanese culture is being celebrated this weekend. Want to take a break from Otakon for a little bit? Here are three events you might want to check out: Sake The Fells Point bar Bad Decisions will be hosting a Sake Weekend on Friday and Saturday. Friday, several different kinds of sake will be available, as well as a menu of shochu and sake cocktails (shochu is Japan's other alcoholic beverage of choice). Saturday will feature a four-course dinner beginning at 6 p.m., with each course accompanied by the appropriate sake.