One of Ours

...Another adventure that [Rebecca] Romijn-Stamos is unlikely to have made as a model was a recent trip she and De Niro made to visit US troops in Iraq.

Staunchly anti-war, Romijn-Stamos said the visit had been a real eye-opener and it seemed to have given her a slightly different perspective on life.

"It was unbelievable and I'll never forget it," she said. "I grew up in Berkeley, California, which is the most liberal, left-leaning place you could ever find and I had zero contact with our military.

"So I had a pre-conceived notion they would all be rednecks who were only there because their daddies had been in the army. But I was wrong and I met the most amazing people over there.

"It was 130 degrees [Fahrenheit] and they were walking around in full fatigues and we'd get there to find out they'd been waiting in that heat for three or four hours. And they had so much perspective on it, they were really deep and smart and had a lot of opinions."...

American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy.

These revelations come not from embedded reporters or congressional committees but from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive Army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare.

The 542-page study, declassified last month, praises commanders and soldiers for displaying resourcefulness and resiliency under trying conditions, and for taking advantage of superior firepower, training and technology.

But the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants.

"No one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the privates at the front to the generals" at the U.S. command center in Kuwait...

An Iraqi official heading an inquiry into alleged corruption in the UN oil-for-food programme was killed by a bomb on Thursday, it has been revealed.

The official, Ihsan Karim, died in hospital after a bomb placed under one of the cars in his convoy exploded.

The board he headed had been given independence from the government as it investigated commissions paid to members of the former regime. In return, the regime allegedly gave billions of dollars worth of contracts.

The General Accounting Office of the US government has said that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his associates raised some $4bn in illegal revenue by imposing oil surcharges and commissions on suppliers of goods to Iraq under the programme.

Mr Karim was appointed by the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, as head of the Finance Ministry audit board in April. The board tasked international accountancy firm Ernst and Young with investigating commissions paid to the former government...

The subject of the Japanese high school uniform is one that often fascinates gaijin, especially Americans, who usually don't experience the concept of school uniforms when attending school. Japan's school uniforms are famous throughout the world, and many Japanophiles have latched onto them as an all-encompassing symbol of Japan -- J-List even sells real uniforms made by Matsukameya, a famous company in Nagoya, and they're very popular with our customers. The sailor uniform first appeared in England in the 1860's as a military uniform. English parents thought it was cute to dress children in miniature sailor suits, and so it became popular as a school uniform for children. When Japan began modernizing after the Meiji Restoration, when power was returned from the last Tokugawa Shogun to the Meiji Emperor, the first girls' schools required students to wear special kimonos called "basha-michi" (which means "a road for a horse and carriage to travel on," meaning that the uniform had to be as proper and straight as a road). As the Meiji era (1868-1912) gave way to the Taisho (1912-1925) period, Japan underwent another wave of modernization and adopting Western fashions, and in 1921, the Fukuoka Girls' School became the first school to adopt the cute English sailor uniform for their students. There are two basic kinds of girls' uniform used in Japan today: the sailor uniform (which consists of a "middy blouse" with grease catcher top and pleated skirt) and the "blazer" (an external vest-like piece over a normal blouse, with skirt). There are two kinds of uniforms for boys, too: the "gakuran" (the traditional Japanese black two-piece uniform with stiff collar and dark pants, and bright gold buttons) and the "blazer" (which basically is a dark suit). Both the traditional sailor uniform and gakuran are in the process of disappearing from Japan, supposedly, replaced in most schools by the more modern blazer type uniforms. Many private schools hire famous designers to create extra-fashionable school uniforms for their students.

There are some interesting school-related customs in Japan, including the custom of "dai-ni button" (lit. "second button"). At graduation, it's customary for a girl to ask a boy she likes to give her the second button from the top of his school uniform, which is tantamount to her confessing that she's in love with him. Often, "kohai" (underclassmen) ask for the second buttons of their "senpai" (senior or upperclassmen) as they graduate. If the boy gives her the second button from his uniform he's affirming that he also has feelings for her, even though they may not see each other again after graduation -- a bittersweet taste of young love that was never to be. If he has some other girl that he wants to give the button to, he has to apologize to the first girl and tell her that he's got someone else he loves. If you want to check out a great story of Japanese-style painful first love, check out Studio Ghibli's wonderful film Ocean Waves, one of my own favorite animated films.