Demo, mou daijoubu desu yo.

There is still plenty of great classic manga that has yet to be translated into English, not to mention other languages.  For example, they are still translating all of 火の鳥 (Phoenix) by Osamu Tezuka, though it seems his will be done this year.

One that would be great to translate into English is  おーい竜馬！(Hey, Ryoma!) by Takeda Tetsuya, which tells the story of 坂本龍馬 (Sakamoto Ryoma), revered by the Japanese a sort of combination Paul Revere/Benjamin Franklin during the turbulent period 150 years ago when U.S. warships forced Japan to open itself to the modern world and to reform itself and catch up fast, or risk subjugation or even colonization by the more powerful Western countries.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Yes, potshot at AeroFlot.  Sorry, perhaps undeserved: I have no idea what their accident and/or delay and/or maintenance record is.  I base the taunt on my one and only experience flying that airline back in 1988, from Moscow to Leningrad.  I think it may have been the first time I contemplated my own death as an immediate likelihood.  (The second time was when I was stuck near the top of Mt. Fuji in such a freezing cold that we all thought we were going to die of hypothermia before Japanese patrols started telling everybody to go back down the mountain because it was too dangerous.  Never made it back up again, unfortunately.)

I admire your commitment to not flying for ecological reasons.  I have been contemplating a diary about the "eco-ethical calcululs".  The topic has been bothering me a lot, eversince I realized -- by reading ET -- that flying is such an extreme contributor of carbon emissions.  I fly at least once a year cross-continentally to visit my family, and often more than that for tourism.  I have never met an exception to the rule The end doesn't justify the means that I liked, but I wonder if eco-ethics and flying may be one place where sometimes the ends do actually justify the means.  For example, I assume Jerome flew from France to the U.S. for YearlyKos last summer.  One of the main purposes for his trip was to lead the discussion on Energize America, i.e. ultimately in large part to help reduce pollution and destruction of the ecosystem through carbon emissions.  From what he and a siegel have written recently, it seems that Energize America might be getting some serious traction, and could be translated into actual legislative bills this year.  I bet that might in large part be due to Jerome's presence in Las Vegas (was it?) at YearlyKos, and maybe (especially?) meeting Bill Richardson and other influential individuals in person.  So, that particular use of air travel by Jerome, though contributing yes in the vast worldwide system of carbon emissions from airplanes, could in the end turn out to be a justifiable sacrifice that reaps far larger environmenttal benefits for the planet as a whole (I can imagine this especially if Richardson sincerely took Energize America to heart and eventually became president of the U.S. and took significant strides to implementing it.)  In such scenario, can we say that the ends justified the means?

As for China, if all goes as plannned, I will start studying Chinese in Hangzhou, just two hours southeast of Shanghai, starting early May, for 6-12 months.  If you make it out here while I am still in the area, definitely let me know and if I have enough space wherever I am, you could even crash at my place.  Keep me posted.  Remember: Beijing 2008!

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.