BOY, DID JAPAN NEED THAT!

The big news today in Japan, eclipsing even the multifaceted Livedoor scandal, is the news of Shizuka Arakawa's winning the gold medal for figure skating in Torino, Japan's only medal for this Winter Oympics.

Yesterday morning at all the big train stations here in Japan, all the newspapers were handing out free copies of the story to commuters, who then stopped rushing to work and just stood there reading. It even stopped commuters! After all the bad news that's been oppressing the national mood, it was a very welcome uplift. Even Koizumi smiled an apolitical smile.

Life-sized Arakawa cutouts were on every news program, her performance was replayed over and over, the scene always cutting to her parents watching her in the stadium, then to relatives and local residents of her hometown watching her performance from local halls, all breaking into screams and tears of joy at the successful climax of her free skating routine... intercut with old documentary footage about Arakawa's skating history, how her mother had made all these outfits for her daughter over the years since she started skating at the age of 5, boxes of worn out skates (her mother couldn't throw any of it away), how two years ago Shizuka had decided to quit skating and had worked at a convenience store until, at the urging of her parents and coach to try for just one more year, maybe even make the Olympics, at last she decided to skate until she could perhaps achieve one perfect performance.

She did that at the Olympics, when it counted. I noticed that midway through her routine she broke into a smile for herself; she knew right then that she had it nailed. What a thrill it all is for Japan.

Interviewed on tv later, with her gold medal about her neck, she said she stayed calm by not watching the other skaters perform and not listening to their music, and by thinking of the ice cream and pleasant coffees she'd enjoyed in Torino...

She'll have a very different normal life now.