Reporters on the Job

• What My Wife Says: Correspondent Bennett Richardson is a New Zealander married to a Japanese woman. But he's notes that she's not an example of Japanese women looking abroad for husbands (page 1). "We met in a bar in Tokyo. She dated plenty of Japanese men in high school," says Bennett.

"She read my story and agrees that there are more Japanese women marrying foreign men in hopes of having more freedom. But she didn't agree with the woman in the lead. My wife thinks that it's difficult to generalize. Everyone has a different story, and human relations are a very complicated thing," he says.

She says she knows plenty of good Japanese men willing to go against the stereotype. "She sees Japanese men as more enlightened than some of the women in the story say. They are willing to help out around the house and have spouses with careers," says Bennett.

• Serendipity and Soup: Staff writer Danna Harman didn't plan to interview Irene Meliqueo, the woman in the lead of today's story about "terrorists" in Chile (this page). I was driving around Temuco, enjoying the views of rivers and snow-capped mountains and looking for the 'traditional Mapuche museum' described by the tourism office. I stopped for directions and soon found myself getting a tour of Irene's garden, and being asked in for soup," she says.

"The soup was filled with little specks of meat and I am a closet vegetarian. But as Irene spoke Spanish (as opposed to Mapuche) I risked the soup to see what I could learn. It was very tasty."

David Clark Scott
World editor