Far From the Maddening Crowd, It Is Not

South Korea is a relatively small country filled with tons of beautiful mountains.  No wonder hiking is such a popular weekend activity here, but The Economist says there's something a bit sinister about it all:

"That could be a legacy of military rule. Park Chung-hee, the strongman who ruled South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged conglomerates to push their employees out onto the trails as a community-building activity. He also insisted on military drills not unlike those still practised north of the border. Corporate culture has become a little more relaxed since then, although an ambitious executive may still find it expedient to scale the occasional mountain with the boss.

A culture of long working hours and short holidays encourages efficient hiking. Mountain paths tend to head directly for the summit, and rarely feature the switchback turns seen in other countries. South Korea has a whole infrastructure designed to get stressed leisure-seekers to, up and back down the mountains as speedily as possible. The plan on Ms Kim’s bus, which sounds distinctly ambitious to anyone used to a more leisurely pace, is for the hikers to tackle Seoraksan’s highest peak before it gets dark and return to Seoul well before the last subway train heads for the suburbs."

Hiking is a definite must-do activity here in South Korea but, indeed, coming from doing some fairly rigorous hiking in the area of Bellingham, Washington with my dad, it is pretty shocking to notice that Korean trails go straight-the-hell-up, no switchbacks to be found.  As for "getting away from it all," hiking here is very much a social (noisy?  crowded?) experience and not at all something Thoreau would have appreciated.

"bodies had to be wrapped in sheets"

 The Guardian interviews a deep-south, small town funeral home director:

"The business has been in the Charlet family since their grandfather and his brother opened it in the 1940s. Charlet is one of three funeral directors at the Charlet family funeral home. He grew up 20 miles north of Zachary behind another funeral home that his family owns in Clinton, Louisiana, which was damaged in the historic floods of August 2016.

Because he was raised in a funeral home, Charlet knows how to prepare for the worst. He was taught at a young age to fill up the gas tank on the hearse before the local high school prom, in case there were deaths resulting from drunk-driving accidents.

But even Charlet wasn’t prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. 'The first couple of months, it was really scary because there wasn’t a lot of guidance on what we were supposed to do,' he said. A short supply of body bags meant some bodies had to be wrapped in sheets."

Surprisingly compelling.  Also, true fact -- I was born in Zachary, Louisiana.  My mom was a graduate student at LSU at the time, and apparently the small county hospital here did Lamaze stuff that the larger university hospital wouldn't accommodate.

Ability Without Confidence or Enthusiasm?

There's a long-standing stereotype regarding the hard-working but tired, over-stressed Korean student.  According to a test of elementary school students in the country, it's partly true:

"Yet despite Korean students’ high average scores, their level of confidence and interest in their studies were among the lowest in the world.  

Fourth graders’ confidence level in mathematics and science came in second-to-last place, at 57th out of 58 countries, with Filipino students coming in last.  

Only 15 percent of Korean fourth graders answered that they are 'very' confident in mathematics, compared to the global average of 32 percent. Likewise, they also had a very low level of interest in the subjects, placing 57th out of 58 countries in mathematics and 53rd in science."

There's a lot to unpack here, but my first thought is that separating "ability" and "confidence" is probably easier with more objective subjects like math and science.  In the context of English learning, a student who never speaks up is unlikely to improve.  It's possible of course, and that they could excel on written testing.

At the very least, expressions like "lifelong learning" and "love of learning" are not things I hear too much teaching college-level students in Korea, but which were pretty common back in America.  (And frankly  they were often mere boilerplate / lip-service much of the time.)

Genocide Is Nothing To Celebrate, Even Indirectly

First, the egregiously named "Redskins," now the slightly less egregiously "Cleveland Indians" are making a break with their mascot and its dicey cultural history:

"In July, the team said they were considering changing their name in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, which sparked a widespread debate about racism in America. 'We are committed to making a positive impact in our community and embrace our responsibility to advance social justice and equality. Our organization fully recognizes our team name is among the most visible ways in which we connect with the community,' the team said in a July statement. The team’s manager, Terry Francona, has said he believes it is time to 'move forward' from the name. 

Cleveland were known as the Lake Shores, Bluebirds, Broncos and Naps before settling on their current nickname in 1915."

Let's face it -- if "Indian" had no connection to "Chief Wahoo" this might not have happened.  And I like "Shores" or "Lake Shores" or "Lakers" -- let's make the 2020's the decade of geographical and topographical sports mascots!

"faith in Americans crumbled"

In a "Letter From Korea," Catherine Kim asks if Koreans still look up to America, the "beautiful country."  The answer is mixed, but with a healthy portion of "no, not really":

"Korea’s admiration of the U.S. was always bound to drop somewhat as Korea grew from one of the poorest countries in the world into its 10th-largest economy, says Lee Hyun-song, a professor of interpretation and translation at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies who wrote a 2015 article about Koreans' changing perception of Americans up to the early 2000s. But, he says, Trump’s tenure, and really 2020 in particular, has accelerated that process, especially among younger generations of Koreans, who are expressing more pride for their country and less likely to turn to the U.S. for guidance.

'There was a strong belief that there was a lot to learn from the U.S., but then that faith in Americans crumbled after they voted for Trump,' he says. 'As we’ve watched the U.S. fail to contain Covid-19 and rebel against mask-wearing through the media, we’ve come to realize that the U.S. is no longer a more "developed" country than us.'”

Koreans aren't stupid.  They will, at decisive moments, be forced to choose between the growing might of China and the apparent decline of the U.S.  There is no middle ground available, when China can punish South Korea overnight merely by barring its citizens from visiting Jeju Island.

And they're correct to realize it isn't just Trump, who is a symptom of the cancer in the American body, not a cause.  It's the millions of people -- anti-science, anti-alliance, anti-common sense -- who voted for him.  (Let's be honest -- anti-reality, frankly.)

It's his supporters who are the deep, intractable problem.  They're also loud and clear in their spite -- "America first" means, by definition, long-term allies and alliances get to go "last."

Chicken LabNuggets

Has the future of lab-grown, "no kill" meat finally arrived?  Maybe!

"The cells for Eat Just’s product are grown in a 1,200-litre bioreactor and then combined with plant-based ingredients. Initial availability would be limited, the company said, and the bites would be sold in a restaurant in Singapore. The product would be significantly more expensive than conventional chicken until production was scaled up, but Eat Just said it would ultimately be cheaper.

The cells used to start the process came from a cell bank and did not require the slaughter of a chicken because cells can be taken from biopsies of live animals. The nutrients supplied to the growing cells were all from plants.

The growth medium for the Singapore production line includes foetal bovine serum, which is extracted from foetal blood, but this is largely removed before consumption. A plant-based serum would be used in the next production line, the company said, but was not available when the Singapore approval process began two years ago."

I'd be happy to try it.  I think I've done pretty well with upping my veggie and fruit intake recently, but I still struggle to avoid meat.  Then again, I do live in Korea. 

Shots Fired!

It's a bit opaque, but apparently the Chinese agriculture ministry is making a play to "claim" kimchi, Korea's beloved national dish, as having a Chinese origin.  The Korean reaction has been, at the very least, expected:

"'Its total nonsense, what a thief stealing our culture!' a South Korean netizen wrote on Naver, a widely popular web portal.

Seoul resident Kim Seol-ha said: 'I read a media story that China now says kimchi is theirs, and that they are making international standard for it. It’s absurd.'

Some South Korean media said China’s brazen coveting of kimchi was akin to a 'bid for world domination.'

The kimchi contretemps is the latest online spat between social media users in China and South Korea. In October, the leader of the K-pop phenomenon BTS faced a barrage of criticism in China after he cited his country’s solidarity with the US stemming from the Korean war – a conflict in which China fought alongside North Korea."

These kinds of "soft power" disputes can be bullshit, but are also endlessly fascinating to me.  As China seems to be setting itself up as the world's lone remaining superpower, it's interesting to see to what extent the dictatorship in Beijing cares about something as nominally unimportant as cultural hegemony.

At the very least, somebody in the Chinese agriculture ministry is having a big laugh for "pwning the Koreans."

"we will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations"

It's hard to see beyond COVID, but with Cheeto Hitler finally on his way out and clearing up some of the air for things of actual importance, it's a good time to remind ourselves that Thailand has a really shitty military dictatorship and the people are fighting to dismantle it:

"'We will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations in this country,' the protest organisers explained. 'We will talk about all the topics that the dinosaurs don’t want to hear.' Inflatable dinosaurs wobbled in the afternoon heat, representing the Thai government. The symbols are playful, but the message is clear: teenagers want change.

A student-led protest movement has shaken Thailand over the past five months. Young people have taken to the streets to call for a true democracy, and have risked jail to shatter a taboo that has long prevented frank, public discussion of the monarchy. Their protests, attended by tens of thousands, present one of the boldest challenges that the Thai royal family has faced in living memory.

Demonstrators say they are not calling for the monarchy to be abolished, but for it to be reformed, accountable to the people and not above the law. They have also called for the prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army general who came to power in a 2014 coup, to stand down, and for changes to the constitution to make the political system more democratic."

Let's not pretend that a new Biden administration magically washes away the past four years of dictatorship-humping done by Mike Pompeo.  But at the very least it's a turn towards a time when we at least paid lip-service to the idea of promoting democracy.

Soft Power, Softer Service?

I've posted before about the ongoing debate over mandatory military service in South Korea (about two years, only for men) and whether or not "national treasures" like excellent athletes or performers or scientists should get special treatment.  With K-pop boy-band sensations BTS at the top of the Billboard charts, the arguments for and against continue apace:

"Current laws allow men to postpone their military service until the age of 28 for academic reasons such as studying abroad, or enrollment in graduate school or in the the Judicial Research and Training Institute after passing the bar exam. Additional exceptions are made for men enrolled in Ph.D. programs abroad, who can postpone their service until age 30. 

Current laws also allow athletes or artists of classical or traditional arts such as gugak (traditional Korean music) to substitute military service with volunteer work approved by the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism.  

Only athletes and artists who have won awards in international and national competitions designated by the Military Manpower Administration, such as the Olympic Games or the Asian Games, are allowed to apply for the substitution for their military service.  

Examples include famed footballer Son Heung-min, who gained an exemption after Korea's national football team won gold at the Asian Games in 2018, and pianist Cho Seong-jin, who won the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2009 and the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015."

It's complicated, obviously.  When K-pop groups "make money" for the Korean economy (as claimed by pro-exemption folks) just how much of it is going to public projects, and how much is lining the pockets of the managers and producers?  We all know Soft Power is An Important Thing, but how do you put an objective price on it?  And is 20 months really all that much to ask for performers who haven't reached 30 yet?  (I think the arguments for athletes are actually much stronger, in terms of "lost time.")

For what it's worth among my very small sample size of Korean students, the males definitely tend to oppose any and all exemptions, while the female students are more open to the idea.

The Moon and Antarctica

Life aboard the International Space Station ain't easy, but how about wintering at a science station at the South Pole for a sunless six months?  Challenge accepted:

"From April to September, the station plunges into total darkness, and temperatures regularly hover around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn’t stop White, who has been at the station since January, from getting out for his daily walk or run, always solo. In almost three years on the job, he’s never passed a day without venturing outside. White records every session, and so far has logged more than four thousand miles on the ice. 'I go in any kind of weather,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how bad it is.'

Before he heads out the door, he signs a dry-erase board (which features the handy notation 'If no return, look for frozen pile when sun returns in September') to let his crew know he’s out exercising. When getting dressed to go out, he chooses from utilitarian gear used by the military in extreme cold, a heavy canvas anorak like the one explorer Roald Amundsen wore when he was at the South Pole in 1911, or, on the most miserable days, an Inuit jacket made of Siberian wolf fur. He knows how to read the wind, stars, and snow to find his way back, even in utter darkness or whiteout conditions. 'One of the worst things you face here is the wind,' White says. 'The wind works its way in, and you get frostbite on your nose and face.'”

I think I could last about a week without sunlight and, even worse, no internet. 

To The Stars!

Life aboard the International Space Station must be a futuristic dream!  Actually, no -- it's noisy, stinky, and kind of gross, but vital nonetheless --

"The ISS is smelly, noisy, messy, and awash in shed skin cells and crumbs. It’s like a terrible share house, except you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no one gets a good night’s sleep.

There are some perks, however. The Cupola module offers perhaps the best view available to humans anywhere: a 180-degree panorama of Earth passing by below."

Sure, but still beats Earth ca. 2020. 

"sudden death due to heart failure or a stroke as a result of extreme hard work"

The life of a delivery driver is never easy, especially in COVID-era South Korea:

"The fates of the 14 drivers can not be directly linked to overwork, but their families described the causes of death as 'kwarosa' - a Korean term used for sudden death due to heart failure or a stroke as a result of extreme hard work. Drivers in South Korea are struggling to cope with the sheer volume of online orders during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the packages have piled up, so has the pressure.

One of the drivers who died was 27-year-old Jang Deok-jin, a former Taekwondo enthusiast who had lost 15kg (33lbs) after doing 18 months of night shifts, according to his family. Deok-jin came home from a night shift earlier this month at around six in the morning and headed for a shower. His father found him dead face down in the bathtub an hour later.

'We loved that boy. When he said it was such hard work we told him it was ok to stop working, but he used to tell me that he had plans for his future,' his father said. 'I am to blame for not discouraging him from working so hard and exploiting himself.'"

It's almost as if Capitalism, by design, is a system that alienates us from our labor, our families, and ourselves.

"Lockdown was the trigger"

The Guardian with a surprisingly positive review of how folks are keeping up with their physical and mental health while under lockdown:

"Ludford spoke to a GP about his anxiety, who recommended exercise and referred him for counselling. So, he started walking: '2km became 5km became 10km,' he says. And he exercised to videos he found on YouTube. At first, he could not manage a single burpee, but after a few months, he was flinging himself on and off the floor with ease. 'The exercise was the only thing that really helped me to get a handle on my anxiety,' he says. 'Exercise kept the wheels on the bus.' Seven months on, Ludford has lost 34kg (5st 5lb) and is no longer severely obese. But the weight loss is secondary to his mental wellbeing – he feels like himself again. 'Everything came together at the same time,' he says. 'Lockdown was the trigger.'

While lockdown was a period of indulgence for many of us – who can blame anyone for looking at a world in freefall, with political leaders squabbling like children, and reaching for the biscuit tin? – the enforced stillness of 2020 gave some people the time and headspace to embrace a more active lifestyle. Freed from the shackles of the commute and the lure of late-night pub sessions, an overhaul was in reach. Fiona Gillison, a chartered psychologist and behaviour-change expert at the University of Bath, says: 'The pandemic reduced the barriers that many people have to leading healthier lifestyles – by giving them more time at home or dedicated time to exercise.'”

Of course, the interviews are with folks on decent furlough (80% salary is my understanding) and retired folks with pensions.  It's hard to imagine a full-time nurse or part-time clerk enjoying this sort of "indulgence" right now.

Still, if there's any silver-lining to COVID it's that we really should change our relationships to work, health, and family if we ever manage to beat this thing.

"tucks them in with a duvet"

How is England handling the pandemic?  By growing huge vegetables!  To wit:

"But giant-vegetable-growing is about more than machismo; it requires the disciplined devotion of a medieval monk. 'There’s something therapeutic about it,' says Carre. 'You’re trying to keep the vegetable growing, and push it further, and wondering if you’ve done everything right. It’s like how I imagine nurturing a baby, almost.' Short spends two hours a day with his pumpkins, visiting them in the morning and again at night, when he tucks them in with a duvet, to alleviate any sudden temperature changes that might cause them to split."

I mean, why not?  ("I mean, why not?" has pretty much been my mantra since November 2016.)

Also news to me that summer county fairs along with plant- and livestock-contests are just not a thing in South Korea, according to my adult students.

Prosecute The Scooter Looter Freebooters

Last month  I was complaining about waves of rental scooters showing up and basically choking the street corners of Daegu.  Turns out I'm not alone in my distaste for these things:

"The number of complaints relating to the use of electric scooters this year reached 1,951 as of end of July, according to data from the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission. For full-year 2019, the number was 1,927, and in 2018, it was 511.

'We receive at least 10 complaints a day about electric scooters parked on sidewalks or at subway station exits where lots of people pass by,' an employee from Gangdong District Office’s transportation policy department said. 'When we actually visit the location, the electric scooter is no longer there as it has already been taken by another user. It’s really difficult for us to regulate them.'

Operators of scooter-sharing services are making efforts to tackle the backlash. Olulo, operator of Kickgoing, and PUMP, operator of Xing xing, established 24-hour-a-day hotlines for local district offices so that company employees can clear their scooters within two hours of a complaint.  

 Some critics argue that foreign companies have recklessly increased the number of scooters in pursuit of revenue, to the point that it has become nearly impossible for them to respond to problems."

If they are left on public streets or sidewalks, they are literally pieces of trash.  Treat them as such.

"We're rich."

Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) was two weeks ago, but I still enjoyed this essay by Nina Yun on what it means to celebrate abundance in a time of the coronavirus in America:

"On Chuseok, as my mother and I cooked happily and divided all the food into containers (and then Ziploc bags when we ran out of containers), we’d make the same joke. 'We’re rich,' my mother said every time she poured more oil into the pan. 'We’re rich,' I said when I cracked more eggs. 'We’re rich,' we said in unison as we looked at all the food we packed to give away. After months of pandemic living, we still find it hard to enjoy our meals without feeling guilty, especially when faced with an excess of our own making. But this felt like relief, like a long exhale for a breath we didn’t know we were holding. It felt right. Chuseok, too, is a kind of new year for my mother and her emigration from Korea. I think for many Korean Americans, the tenor of Chuseok’s guide to remembrance expands to their or their family’s immigrant experiences. To account for the struggles it takes to make a life here, to account for what it means to survive here, is to remember a kind of body.

Before I left to deliver the food — face mask on the entire time — my mother poured us each a small serving of sujeonggwa [cinnamon fruit punch]. We toasted. After I drank mine, I studied the emptiness of my teacup and felt grateful."

This is, frankly, a horrible time to be alive.  Splurging on food for yourself, family, and your friends seems perfectly logical to me.

"genuinely afraid of where this could lead"

With a new, non-surgical, treatment for dwarfism advancing rapidly, who's to say whether or not it's a "disease" in the first place?  The Guardian takes a look at the medical, ethical, and social issues involved:

"There are, says Gillian Martin, a tutor and chair of the Restricted Growth Association, the British charity that supports people with dwarfism, 'people who are genuinely afraid of where this could lead'. Because about 80% of children with achondroplasia are born to parents without it, some 'adults with dwarfism in the community feel that average-height parents are being an advocate for a disability that doesn’t directly affect them. There is a fear – irrational in my view – that this research is leading the way to eradicate dwarfism.'

This view tends to be stronger in the US, where there is, says Joe Stramondo, a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University and a disability rights activist, 'a more robust dwarf culture and identity. With that kind of cultural context, you’re going to get a very different response to something like this than other areas of the world where people with dwarfism don’t associate with each other as often. We recognise our situation as being one of oppression, and of being subjected to stigma as being the main source of our difficulty in the world. When you have that community, that sounding board, you’re going to have more pushback to a drug like this.' But it’s far from the only view, he says. 'We have people who are very much against the use of the drug, and you have folks who are enthusiastic about it, and say: "Maybe it’s stigma, but it still makes my life harder. I don’t want that for my children." You have a lot of people who are somewhere in between, who are saying: "Let’s wait and see what the drug actually does. Let’s see if it has the capability of dealing with some of these co-morbidities such as sleep apnoea, or spinal stenosis." I think if it were shown to do some of that, there would be lots of people who would be pretty enthusiastic about it.'”

As medical science advances, it's interesting to think about "diseases" that really don't need to be cured.  (Autism as a sign of potential genius rather than an inability to function socially, for example.)  And of course, more conservative societies might even mandate these types of treatment rather than allowing parents and their children to decide if they want to be "fixed."

The future, if we make it past Trump, is going to be complicated as hell.

I'm Not Rooting For The Apocalypse, I'm Just Plague-Curious

Professor Kate Soper writes in The Guardian about how COVID-19 might teach us (the hard way) about better possible futures once (if) the pandemic dies down:

"Covid-19 may have caused us to re-examine this status quo. According to the ONS [Office for National Statistics], household spending decreased by a fifth during lockdown. For decades, economic liberalism has affirmed the idea of the self-interested consumer as an almost natural human state. But during the pandemic, a more public-oriented spirit seemed to emerge. People signed up to volunteer for the NHS in droves and mutual aid groups flourished. As commuting dropped off, people had more time to spend at home and in their communities.

Lockdown momentarily benefited our physical environments, too. Cities became less air-polluted and congested, and seasoned walkers and cyclists enjoyed the utopian experience of moving unmolested on roads usually dense with cars, while others took up cycling for the first time. For a brief period, wildlife reclaimed some of its former territory and roadkill fell dramatically. Many reported hearing more birdsong. Those living under flightpaths savoured the experience of plane-free silent skies. As people flocked to parks, it became clearer than ever why we need to defend our green public spaces."

I'm all for it, but we also can't take our eyes off of the folks who have no industry, or hollowed out ones at best, to return to -- restaurants, hotels, airlines, etc.

But by all means, let's stop pretending that anyone but the most fevered of capitalists enjoys living a life of stress and greed and mindless consumption of bullshit things and services.

"truth must be spoken of as it is"

South Korea has a reputation for being a sexually conservative society, but it's also one where secret cameras in women's bathrooms are a rampant social problem, and the drugging and gang-raping of women in a nightclub leads to very little consequence for the (famous, wealthy) perpetrators.  So it's a shame that small steps towards balanced, comprehensive sex education have once again been shot down by the government:

"Contrary to parents’ belief that sex education will lead to their children having more sex, earlier, a survey on the aftereffects that CSE [comprehensive sexuality education] demonstrated on sexual behaviors revealed that 37 percent of 87 countries that were surveyed said its students had delayed initiation of sex after education, 31 percent said the frequency of sex was reduced and the use of condoms increased in 40 percent of the countries. 

 

Rather than lingering on the ministry’s already-made decision, Nam Yoon-jeong, the president of Think Sing Together who led the Nadaum project, hoped that this incident could be turned into an opportunity to talk about sex education and how sex is dealt with in Korea.

 

'Korea had been lacking proper sex education and any discussion on sex or human rights has been shut down whenever it began,' said Nam. 'We are exposed to sexual consumption and imagery everyday and everywhere, but an ironic stoic sentiment forbids us from talking about it publicly or officially. The ambivalent culture leads to children wondering about something they are exposed to, but getting twisted ideas of it because they’re not taught properly about what it is exactly. The truth must be spoken of as it is.'”

Nothing good can come of a hyper-sexualized society that can't talk openly and plainly about sex, contraception, homosexuality, sexual violence, and gender equality.  And if you click through for pictures, you'll notice that these so called "controversial" books are about as tame as can be.

Moving Seoul?

Seoul is a lovely capital city, as far as these things go, but there is a growing push to move it -- or at least its most important government functions -- 75 miles south:

"In a National Assembly speech on Monday, Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon, floor leader of the DP, proposed that the National Assembly, Blue House and key ministries in Seoul move to Sejong. He said the relocation would decentralize Seoul and nearby areas and curb skyrocketing housing prices in the overcrowded capital region.

According to a DP source, Kim floated the idea based on a survey conducted by the party last week. The DP conducted a poll on July 17 and 18, the source told the Joongang Ilbo.  

 'In our poll, 62 percent supported the idea, while 33 percent opposed. Five percent did not answer,' the source said. 'We concluded that public sentiment is different from 16 years ago.'  

 After he was briefed about the poll on Sunday morning, Kim decided to include the proposal in his National Assembly speech Monday.  

Building an administrative capital city in the Chungcheong region was a presidential campaign pledge by Roh Moo-hyun in 2002. He took office in 2003."

There's a lot of inside baseball going on here but the gist is this -- about half the population of the entire country is packed in and around Seoul and the surrounding area.  Residents in smaller cities, especially young folks, feel pressure to move to the capital in order to find the best jobs and educational opportunities.  Those smaller cities in turn feel abandoned, and complain they don't receive adequate development resources from the central government.

What the article doesn't mention is that Seoul remains within missile / artillery distance of North Korea, thereby ensuring it will never be the Asian finance hub that Hong Kong was and Singapore and Tokyo remain.