Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

Ron,

Although I was at the Navy Exchange a million times I can't tell you the exact location except that it was east of the Zebra Club if you know where that was, about a mile or so away as I vaguely recall. It was on a main drag that ran east-west. The Zebra Club was a couple of blocks north of Chinatown and was on a street that paralleled the water.

Incidently, as a HS military dependent I played against that bunch from YoHi when I went to both Narimasu HS in Tokyo and Johnson HS at Johnson AFB.

That brings back fond memories. I went to the Red Shoes Bar maybe once every two months, and to the Italian Gardens too. Seems like every time I went to the Red Shoes there was a fight; even one night when I went there with a party from Kishine Barracks, that included doctors and their wives, and one of the doctors got into a fight with a Marine--probably you, Tampa!

Man--go to the Zebra Cub, then to the Peanut Club, get drunk, dance with all the chicks, go to the Red Shoes, get beat up, throw up in the canal in front of Peter's place, and sleep it off in a benjo ditch--good times!

I can't move around in that Rubberface site, I don't have the right kind of Java.

Tampa..you ATE at the peanuts bar??..and lived to tell about it !! You brave man..
Is there some kind of medal for that ? I didn't even know they had a kitchen..ooohh..maybe they didn't. I wasn't crazy about using there glasses..but whiskey
co-cos don't come in bottles.
Wally..sorry..you might get an update..try Staples there doing stuff like that now anyone else try it ?

Has anybody posted recently? I notice there are a whole lot of new restrictions which I haven't noticed before.

For those of you who remember John Dower's 1999 book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize) -- John Dower was recently named a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award for non-fiction. His new book is entitled Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq. I highly recommend John Dower's Embracing Defeat to contributors of this forum.

Also, Australian author Shirley Hazzard, who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her 1981 novel Transit of Venus, after a long hiatus from fiction, has recently published The Great Fire: A Novel, set in 1947 when a 32-year-old war veteran visits Hiroshima.

Anyone interested can visit amazon.com to read the many reviews of these books.

Best wishes and good reading to all . . .

Will look them up - they sound great.

I have a couple of other suggestions - books I've just finished reading.

"Pulitzer", by James McGrath Morris - a recently written biography of this amazing man who invented the concept of mass media, and whose legal battles with T Roosevelt resulted in strengthening freedom of the press.

"Lone Voyager" by John Garland, about a man called Howard Blackburn who was a fingerless fisherman from Gloucester Mass who sailed solo across the Atlantic in 1899.

"The Imperial Cruise" - pretty shocking revelations about US westward-bound imperialism, written by James Bradley, who had written "Flags of our Fathers" - terrific highly recommended book.

Am currently enjoying "The Kitchen God's Wife", a 1992 book by Amy Tan. Takes place mostly in Japanese-occupied China during WW2.

You can get many updates, often free, off the internet. Google Java update.

I have had many chances to update my Java from Google, but have resisted, because every time I get something free from Google there are so many cookies associated with it that it bogs my computer down. I don't trust Google, I think they are monitoring my computer. Have you experienced any such problems?

I have heard that if you have an email account through google - g-mail - it is completely open, and the information is not private. So maybe they can also look around and monitor your computer.

Yes Peter, not only did I eat at the Peanuts but I did it several times and, yes, the lack of cleanliness was very evident but when you're 20 YO and drunk you fear nothing, LOL. Help me to remember, didn't the Peanuts have about 3 levels, I remember it was bigger than most places.

Wally, you are correct about fights being common in the Red Shoes, I suppose because most everybody went there around midnight when the girl bars closed and were pretty s***faced. Had a good buddy who was pretty much a genuine bada** but got into it with the wrong guy one night at the RS, a sailor off a carrier parked at Yokosuka. When it was all over the 3 of us then spent the next couple of hours drinking together.

Another Red Shoes war story, walked into the place one night after midnight with a buddy (same guy who got into the fight there). We're standing at the bar sucking down beers, I am definitely at the reeling, slurred speech stage. My buddy tells me some J chick is checking me out from across the floor even though she is with some guy. I look her way and see that she is arguing with her boyfriend who gets up and leaves. I walk over and ask her to dance. We get up, dance for about 1 minute and she grabs my hand and says, let's go home. I wave at my buddy as I leave.

Got to her one room place and immediately passed out. Woke up the next morning next to her, raise my head to check her out and see that she is just wearing black bikini panties and, furthermore, she is not nearly as attractive as she was at 1 AM. I start to slowly get out of the bed intending to make my break but she wakes up and smiles so, of course, I did the right thing and stayed for another hour.

When I next see my buddy back at the base, his first words were, GD man, you didn't really go home with her, did you ? She wasn't really that bad I say. He laughs and says, the hell she wasn't but don't worry, I'm your buddy and I won't spread it around. My buddy lives in the Tampa area and we see each other from time to time and he still ribs me about that.

I have "Embracing Defeat and "War Without Mercy,"in my library. Both are excellent post WW II books focused on Japan.
Both are worth a re-read given the shoving match that has developed between Japan and China over some very small islands that may have oil and gas reserves nearby.
The Japanese government has agreed with the people of Okinawa who want the Marines off their property and the Marines are leaving shortly for Guam.
Will Japan return to its militarist past to preserve the sea lanes and its honor ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17japan.html?_r=2&partner...

Thanks, Joe G. for the link to this interesting article. The article is apparently the first in a series with more to come. Kaoru, because you are living in Japan, your response to this article would be interesting to read. A new word to add to our dictionaries: ''microhouse.'' Does anyone remember the book ''Small Is Beautiful'' 35 years ago?

A belated thank you for your book recommendations -- much here to read and consider:

"Pulitzer", by James McGrath Morris - a recently written biography of this amazing man who invented the concept of mass media, and whose legal battles with T Roosevelt resulted in strengthening freedom of the press.

"Lone Voyager" by John Garland, about a man called Howard Blackburn who was a fingerless fisherman from Gloucester Mass who sailed solo across the Atlantic in 1899.

"The Imperial Cruise" - pretty shocking revelations about US westward-bound imperialism, written by James Bradley, who had written "Flags of our Fathers" - terrific highly recommended book.

Am currently enjoying "The Kitchen God's Wife", a 1992 book by Amy Tan. Takes place mostly in Japanese-occupied China during WW2.

Author Sarah Susanka, formerly of Mulfinger & Susanka Architechs in Minneapolis, has turned out a series of "Not So Big House" books over the past decade. We devoured her books (and others) when we were planning our Lake of the Ozarks house, built in '04.
When she left the firm to write more books, it was renamed SALA Architects and continues to design high style, smaller homes.

Yup - the "Voyager"and "Imperial Cruise" and "Pulitzer" recommendations were mine - I made a mistake inserting my name. I am currently between books and am trying to locate Barbara's books - and, of course, Eric will also have read them! (Since we're on our way to Tarpon Springs, Florida for a visit to relatives, I need something that doesn't weight a ton, like a paperback.) I was a fiction reader most of my life, and slowly eased over to non-fiction via historical fiction, and biographies - but now find that truth really is stranger and often more interesting than anything. The "Kitchen-God" book by Tan is historically placed, and gives a good picture of Japan's reputation in the east and elsewhere - which is interesting for me, since I grew up in Japan with totally different experiences.

Steffi, our mystery contributor :), thank you for your book recommendations. Now, with yours and Eric's suggestions I have a good list to take with me to the library. Thank you to Eric too -- our library has nine of Sarah Susanka's "small is beautiful" books. I am especially interested in looking at these because I'm greatly offended by the showy McMansions that scream "Look at me!" and are replacing many of the charming smaller homes in our neighborhood.

Another book that might interest some of you if you can find it is "Taken in Hong Kong" by Carol Briggs Waite. I haven't read it myself because it's not in our library but would like to read it because it's written by the sister of my friend with whom I attended high school in Yokohama. Carol writes about her father, who went to Japan in 1929 as a businessman with a large oil company. He was in Hong Kong in 1941 when it was occupied by the Japanese, and spent time in Stanley Prison. He and other Americans were returned on the first crossing of the Gripsholm, a Swedish ship that exchanged American diplomats and businessmen for Japanese diplomats and businessmen caught in the USA. The British expatriates were not as lucky and spent the whole 4 years in Stanley Prison.

So good to communicate with fellow book lovers - thank you Barbara and Eric for your interesting recommendations. The following is a description of Francine Prose's " Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife":

Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a deliberate work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.

Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.

How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspire? Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

Joe G thanks for the article, but articles like this only deal with the economic, not the social aspects of a society. Japan is going through an economic correction, but thirty years from now Japan will still be one of the most economically sound countries in the world, and Japan will still be Japan, because to the Japanese culture trumps economics. The big orange sun will still be rising over a beautiful country of like minded people and culture, whereas the United States will be an overcrowded country coming apart at the seams, because of illegal immigration and multiculturalism.