I’ve been using my ADSL connection to the world, uh, Internet, to download movies. It’s free, and I have nearly unlimited selection. “The Pianist” came in through the pipeline last night.

In the first five minutes, I wondered if I could make it all the way through before having to write something down. I feared it had loosened the plug on my feelings about the current political situation engulfing the world, unleashed a barrage of useless feelings, at the expense of a good movie. I hate not watching a movie all the way through.

So here I am, 26 minutes and 57 seconds into a really good movie, blathering futilely about war and its political consequences. Even though I would be out protesting the war if I was in the U.S. or if I had time off during work during the anti-war protests here, it’s a fairly safe bet that although few people like war, let’s face it: some wars are necessary.

To let the Hitlers and Milosevichs and Hirohitos and Husseins of the world go unchecked, when there is a worldwide organization promoting dipomacy, is a failure of that diplomacy. It is the fatal flaw of the United Nations: too many crazies are allowed to implement their lunacy on others.

Bluntly put, Hussein’s got to go. I commemorated what could potentially be the beginning of World War III, the next Viet Nam or not much at all with food. The best way to celebrate any tragedy is with food, so last Friday I visited a Pakistani all-you-can-eat lunch buffet in Nakano; Sunday found me at an all-you-can-eat Israeli dinner of wine, falafel, hummus, lamb and other Middle Eastern delights.

But Hussein’s not the issue here. The issue here, the biggest of several bones I have to pick with how this war is going, is the bizarre curtailment of free speech in America.

Veterans go on public record saying that to protest against the war is un-American. Cities across the U.S. arrest non-violent war protesters. A major American news outlet declines to broadcast an important speech from an enemy leader because of a recommendation by the government occupying the White House.

If this war is so just, and I believe it is – although not for the terror-based reasons that Bush the Younger would have us believe – then why are freedoms being curtailed? Why are people afraid to speak their mind? Why has it become nearly a crime to tell Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and co. to take a long walk off a short pier?

What the holy heck does all this have to do with “The Pianist”? The movie begins with a montage of short scenes illustrating the curtailing of freedoms in German-controlled Poland – and they are frighteningly similar official and self-imposed restrictions now promoted in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Stand up for your rights, people. Defend the ones you love, defend what’s morally and ethically right, but don’t let that blind you to the lies and lines being fed to us.

San Francisco and Northern California in general are beautiful places. Adjective-defying views of the ocean, of mountains, of the oceans and mountains practically sitting in each other’s laps, of a veritable orgy of Nature when you toss in the redwoods – it’s enough to make any nature-lover blush.

Or at least pull out a camera.

Yet as stunning and overwhelming as they are, there aren’t many cherry blossoms in San Francisco.

Blossoms here in Japan are a yen a dozen when the season is right, but for the moment, sitting on the precipice of the annual sakura, cherry blossom, explosion, I find myself able to enjoy my first cherry blossom experience without having to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of eastern Japan.

It’s easy to see why the Japanese go ga-ga for the little white flowers. Without exaggeration, they are beautiful. Perhaps their luster would be diminished if Tokyo wasn’t so often perceived as being devoid of natural pigmentation, perhaps not.

Or maybe if the summer wasn’t so intensely humid, as I’ve been told, then the hanami, cherry blossom viewing, season would be less important as a time when you can actually enjoy being outside.

Regardless, the suckers are nice to look at. Part of the problem with living in an area that has seasons is that winter is usually dark, dreary, boring and cold, unless you’ve got 15 feet of snow, in which case it’s white and cold. The sakura and their pinker, seasonally earlier cousins, the plum blossoms, really are good markers of the end of winter. (This is your cue to check out the plum blossom additions to the Hiroo gallery.)

It’s kind of like the difference between a kimono and a Brazilian bikini: sure, the kimono is beautiful, and no, the Brazilian bikini just isn’t subtle or elegant no matter how you want to look at it, but after months of kimonos, bikinis are quite a change for the better.