A lot of the discussions seem to focus already on the almost inevitable post-election law suits. In several states, electronic voting will be used, and from what I have read, only Nevada generates an audit trail. Should a recount become necessary, and everybody expects that recounts will be certain, those voting machines without audit trail simply repeat the numbers they output the first time. What has been going on inside the box remains a mystery. Can this still be called “recount”?

Interestingly enough, Diebold, the major manufacturer of electronic election systems, states on its website that the “image of each and every ballot cast on the voting station is captured, and can be anonymously reproduced on standard paper should a hard copy of ballots be required for recount purposes.” This is not what commentators and election observers are saying. But perhaps the question of audit trails has been addressed in newer product versions.

To celebrate the possibilities of electronic voting, there are some very funny fake Diebold posters on the Web. Come Wednesday, we probably will not be laughing anymore.

My last visit to the PRC was a trip to Beijing 1978. We flew on PIA from London to Karachi, were stuck there for two days due to mechanical problems, and then on to Beijing. We stayed at the Xinjiao and due to the lack of tourist infrastructure had to rent a taxi for a day to take us to the Great Wall and the Ming tombs. The main traffic in the streets of Beijing at that time was bicycles.

Fast forward to Shanghai in 2004. What a difference: Traffic jams to rival Bangkok, and the newly built-up Pudong side of the river looked like a kind of Über-Tokyo. We were guests of the East China Normal University and stayed on their campus. The university buildings and the surrounding areas were oddly reminiscent of my early Japanese experiences in Saitama, north of Toyko, in the early 70s.

Everybody had told us to go the “The Bund” (外灘), so Saturday night after our arrival we took a taxi (taxis are one of the great bargains in Shanghai) to the only landmark there we had heard of, the Peace Hotel (和平飯店). The Peace Hotel had a distinct soviet feeling about it. It reminded me of so many places I had encountered in Eastern Europe in the past. It fit well into the line up of illuminated facades on the west of the river, contrasted by the modern buildings on the east side.

Looks like Venice

The university had organized a “cultural experience” for us for Sunday, a bus trip to an “old village.” As in Japan, anything remotely of public interest is to be avoided on Sundays and holidays because literally millions of people go and visit. It turned out that the “old village” was Zhouzhuang (周庄), “the no. 1 watertown of China.” A Chinese cross between Venice and Bruges (come to think of it, isn’t Bruges called “the Venice of the North”?), it gives tourists the opportunity to rent a boat for a ride on the canals, to eat and drink, and to buy all sorts of arts and crafts and more or less useless knickknacks. It is also a good place to practice moving in a crowd. Zhouzhuang has U.N. World Heritage status. With years and years of Japanese crowd conditioning under our belt, M. and I did not have much problem with the large number of people all over the place. Many in our group, however, were less tolerant of having their personal space invaded en masse. So it was indeed the “cultural experience” they were promised.

The last few days in Hong Kong have been very busy. We stayed in the Midlevels not too far from the University, and I used the Midlevels Escalator to go down to Central and back up to our hotel. It was pretty hard on my aging knees, especially going downhill.

With the visa squared away, we set off to the airport this morning to catch our Dragon Air flight to Shanghai. Dragon Air has 12 flights a day on that route. Just to remind you where you are, the economy class seats are miniscule and I haven’t seen a small pitch like this since the days of trans-Atlantic charter flights.

Luckily, the flight was only just over two hours long. After take-off, the flight attendents handed out the menus. Food on a two-hour airplane trip? What a concept!

Flew into Hong Kong last night and was greeted this morning with the following headline in the South China Morning Post: $1,500 fine for taking dog for a wok.

I had not been in Hong Kong for over 12 years. Kai Tak used to be my home away from home — I started all international travel in Hong Kong one way or another because I could get discounted business class tickets cheaper there than discounted economy class tickets in Japan. I often got in midday from Tokyo, checked my luggage into storage and took a taxi over to Central where Winnie in her travel agency had tickets waiting for me. After a few drinks and dinner I would go back to Kai Tak to catch the late flight to London, Amsterdam or Sydney.

This time was my introduction to the enormous new Hong Kong International Airport Chek Lap Kok (赤鱲角機場) on Lantau. Gone the thrill of descending in amongst the apartment highrises where one was afraid that the wings of the 747s would rip the laundry off one of the clothlines any minute. Travelers are greeted now by vast halls and long ways to walk — gone are the milling masses and the short distances between immigration and gates I had come to like in the small-ish Kai Tak terminal building.

Instead, it is a 40-km taxi ride into Central, and there soon will be a Disneyland, I am told.

I had breakfast at the Camellia coffee shop in the Hotel Okura. In walks Yoko Ono with an entourage of four, Kerry/Edwards buttons displayed prominently. They sat down at a table behind mine. The wait staff hovered and everybody tried hard not to stare. After 15 minuted, they get up and leave, Yoko Ono in a black satin jacket with the purple letters Baby Doll on the back.

Coming to Japan meant not attending the 45th Annual ATA Conference in Toronto. As webmaster for the ATA German Language Division I submitted my report in writing. It was my first report after taking over from long-time webmaster Michael Metzger last November.

Last night I left Omotesando subway station through exit B4 when I saw a familiar figure on the corner of the intersection: Michael M. It turned out that he was not in Toronto either.

To celebrate our joint absence from Toronto and the incredible coincidence of running into each other in the middle of Tokyo, we retired for the rest of the evening to Maisen (まい泉) in Jingumae, “Tokyo’s second-most-famous tonkatsu restaurant” — the most famous one presumably being Tonki (とんき) in Shimo-Meguro (both, as I just found out, mentioned in the New York Times Tokyo restaurant guide).

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What used to be a big “S” for subway is now an ornamented “M” for metro. Tokyo’s subways have changed.

There are many new lines. What stood out for me was the Namboku line (南北線). I used to live on what used to be the Mekama line (目蒲線), running between Kamata and Meguro, and the Namboku line is a continuation of the old Mekama tracks. My station was Numabe (沼部駅), which I used for 14 years, by far the longest of all the places I lived in Tokyo (see also here).

Numbering the subway stations is another novelty. I am not quite sure why it is done since it does not seem to make navigation easier, but maybe I am too locked into the old system. There are a number of maps of the subway system online, one of which shows all transfer stations by station number (als available in English), and one which puts subway lines and points of interest in relation.

While most subway lines belong to the Tokyo Metro system, operated by Tokyo Metro Co., some of them are Toei lines, operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. They have some new ones two, most notably the Ōedo line (大江戸線), a circular subway line.

Taking the subways (and trains) in Tokyo is not only economical and time-efficient, it is also a great way to get exercise. In one day of moving around the city and climbing the stairs from and to all the platforms I had walked more than during a whole month in Missouri.

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All the shiny new buildings and moving walkways at Narita airport could have given a first-time visitor the impression that they really meant it when they put up the big sign “Welcome to Japan.” But soon the passages narrowed and the long, winding line for immigration started. Strategically placed signs let us know that from this point on it would be 1 hour wait to clear immigration, then 45 minutes, than 30 minutes.

I had to chuckle about nearly everyone’s confusion about the infamous “Embarkation” and “Disembarkation” card — one card really, and except for the bar code the same design as nearly 30 years ago when I first set foot on the shores of Nippon and could not figure out the form either. In all this time nobody had found it necessary to add a clearly visible and unambiguous explanation for those poor, clueless visitors. Welcome to Japan, indeed.