T A B L E+T A L K What items can you not leave home without? Pack your bags in Wanderlust R E C E N T L Y Nigerian nightmare By Jeffrey Tayler A death-defying bus adventure (01/13/98) Road Warrior By Dawn MacKeen Frequent flyer guru Randy Peterson shares his secrets (01/12/98) In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great By Michael Wood Tracking Alexander the Great through the Hindu Kush (01/08/98) The Inuit Olympics By Mary Roach Inuit Games: Head Pulls, Knuckle Hops and other madness (01/07/98) Mayan dreaming By Douglas Cruickshank Mind-bending visions in the Yucatan (01/06/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust feature archive - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		N A G A N O : NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME ++|+P A G E+2+O F +2 Takakazu Fukushima isn't your run-of-the-mill Buddhist priest. Armed with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, he gave up his professorship at a prestigious university in Yokohama when he heard that Nagano had been selected as the site for the '98 Games. Nagano is his hometown, and he returned to fulfill his obligation as eldest son to become a priest like his father (who had encouraged him to do so after he retired from teaching, not at the peak of his career). He was attracted to Zenkoji's nonsectarian stance; it is the only major "nonaligned" temple in Japan -- virtually all are affiliated with a sect of Buddhism, such as Zen, Shingon, Jodo or Tendai. The first thing one notices about Zenkoji is probably the famed main temple, but the CBS building right next to it runs a close second. I ask Fukushima-san what in the world possessed them to allow the network to slap up a building next to one of Japan's national treasures. "It's a great thing," he says. "We were very excited when they approached us with the idea. They understand the concept of culture much better than does the organizing committee. Zenkoji will be the center of the world for a short while. They couldn't have picked a better spot. The Olympics fit in well with our philosophy here." Fukushima-san has an intense presence: He somehow manages a burning stare with laughing eyes, and has a tendency to guffaw when making his points. I ask him how he feels about how the Games have been managed so far, but he wants to know my first impressions first. I say that I have just arrived, and that I haven't seen or felt any of the "Olympic fever" that I had imagined would be in the streets, with the Games just a month away. It's difficult to tell that such a big event is in the making, I say. "Exactly!" he says. "There's almost no consciousness among local people. Most of the merchants were naturally hoping to profit off the events. Who wouldn't? Why else have them, from their perspective? Japan's 'glory' Olympics were the Summer Games of 1964. We had just risen from the ashes of the war, the economy was growing at a dizzying pace, we had built the fastest train in the world; we wanted to show the world what we'd accomplished in such a short span. We were genuinely proud of how far we'd come. "The reason you don't see much going on in the streets is that the organizing committee has pretty much denied them the right to use the official emblem unless they become paying sponsors. They're expected to be enthusiastic cheerleaders for the Games, but they can't muster much up. They are expected to be happy with all the new roads and the new shinkansen. "NAOC [the official acronym for the Organizing Committee for the XVIII Olympic Winter Games, Nagano 1998] and the prefecture of Nagano spent a massive amount of money on bringing the Games here. But no one knows exactly how much, because, as it turned out in an investigation in the Nagano prefectural congress, NAOC officials 'lost' all the receipts. No official record exists on how much was spent." NAOC expected the entire show to be a profit machine, but, according to Fukushima, locals saw little, if any, of the money. Virtually all construction contracts -- shinkansen, roads, bridges -- went to Tokyo construction companies. Most industries in Japan form hierarchies; the bigger, older and more prestigious firms tend to be awarded the most business not because they are necessarily the most cost efficient, but because they carry the most clout. Nagano construction companies do not figure high on this list. "The only local people involved in much of the construction were the guys that reroute traffic with flashlights and flags," Fukushima says. Any enterprise the size and scale of the Olympics is bound to make lots of people unhappy about the way things are handled. But it will in all likelihood be hard to find fault with the mechanics of how things are run starting Feb. 7. The country's obsession with order, organization and avoidance of chaos has a long and distinguished history, and it is bound to serve Nagano well during the Games. The one potential glitch -- gridlock on the country roads -- has been mercilessly planned for, with all kinds of high-tech traffic management and parking systems now in place. State-of-the-art iris scanners, fingerprint identity systems, bar-code ID readers and other technologies will help minimize security risks. Very high resolution giant screen displays installed at every venue and microphones embedded in the snow and ice promise a richer sensory experience than in previous Games. Seiji Ozawa will conduct a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 during the opening ceremonies, broadcast live on five continents and linked via satellite, complete with a time-lag adjusting mechanism designed to overcome time-delay problems. The '98 Games won't do for Japan what the '64 Games did -- the country's first-world status has long been confirmed. But maybe we don't need such big goals anymore; it will still be a blast. I'm told that the Russian Club will play host to some serious parties -- if I could only figure out a way to get in there. SALON | Jan. 14, 1998 Eric Gower is a writer who lives in Kanagawa, Japan. Are you ready for the Nagano Olympics? Excited? Share your Olympics fever in Table Talk.