THE NEW BICOASTALS : Transpacific commuting is a a way of life for many. Among the challenges are jet lag and loneliness.

Elmer Stone’s life spans half the globe, sustained by the telephone, facsimile machine, overnight mail and the longest of work days.

As an American attorney in Tokyo, he is on the phone at home well before he heads off to the Morgan, Lewis & Bockius law offices in the city’s Roppongi district--at 6 a.m., dialing New York, where it is 4 in the afternoon. Shortly, he is in touch with the law firm’s office in Los Angeles. Less than 12 hours later, London is calling.

Courier packages bring the hard currency of his personal and professional life--memos and documents from the Morgan office in Los Angeles, bills to pay from his Hancock Park condominium.

So it goes as trade and investment across the Pacific escalate, splitting the lives of more and more Americans between two continents. Dual households, long-distance personal relationships, late-night phone calls, exasperating time differences and insufferable periods to, from and in airports and airplanes; such is the stuff of the Pacific business boom.

Futurists and economists have confidently proclaimed the years beyond 2000 as the Pacific Century, and with that in mind Americans are fanning out across the region, helping their law firms, investment houses, banks and manufacturing firms establish a presence in what has become the fastest growing economic region in the world.

Today, the Pacific region accounts for more than 22% of world trade, compared to only 12% in 1970. At the same time, U.S. investment in the area has ballooned. Total U.S. direct investment in Asia, including Japan, has climbed in the last five years to $33.26 billion from $20.7 billion.

With so much money moving across the Pacific, an unprecedented number of Americans are living and working in Asia, settling in cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs reports the number of non-military and non-governmental Americans living in Asia was up 30% in 1988. Meanwhile, the U.S. expatriate community in Europe, long the center of international business, has declined 12%.

Lawyers, bankers, consultants, farmers, accountants and exporters are filling the air lanes--some of them engaged in routine transpacific commuting.

Among them is Yukuo Takenaka, national director of the Japanese practice for the accounting firm of Peat Marwick Main. He lives in Palos Verdes but keeps apartments in Ark Towers in Tokyo and at the Promenade complex in downtown Los Angeles. His trips to Japan are scheduled to last two to three weeks because air travel is “pretty tough on the body.”

But his habits help him adjust. “If I get in anything that moves--a car, train or plane--I go to sleep.” And he is well equipped for the experience: two secretaries, one in Tokyo and another in Los Angeles; two wardrobes, and two facsimile machines. “The fax machine is the greatest invention for the international businessman,” he said.

The number of transpacific passengers like Takenaka doubled to 12.2 million in 1987 from five years earlier, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Assn. in San Francisco. “The Pacific is the fastest-growing airline market in the world,” said Stephen M. Wolf, chairman of United Airlines. Transpacific passenger air traffic is expected to grow 7% to 8% a year through 1995.

“Compare these figures with a world average growth rate of passenger traffic in the 4% to 5% range, and it is clear that we have crossed the threshold into the Pacific Century,” Wolf said.

Any American business person who heads off for Asia must cope with the cultural differences. But for those individuals dispatched to actually live there--or those who must regularly shuttle between the West Coast of the United States and the East Coast of Japan--the biggest adjustments are personal. The lives of those who are at the vanguard of the Pacific era provide a glimpse into a new bicoastal life style that may become increasingly common for business people in the next century.

They’ve Adapted, but Still There Are Strains

For Paula Stone, the hardest part about living in Tokyo this past year was not being here to help with preparations for her daughter’s recent wedding in Los Angeles, where she and lawyer husband, Elmer also own a condominium.

“It’s been quiet desperation time for my wife not to be involved,” observed Elmer Stone. In the final month before the wedding, he said, “the phone bill was $600.”

The solution was to hire a wedding coordinator. “With the telephone, fax machine and wedding coordinator we managed,” said Paula Stone, and the ceremony went off like clockwork.

“What was difficult for me was that I didn’t see anything. I didn’t help (my daughter) pick her dress out. I did not see the invitations until they arrived. That’s not important other than from a mother’s viewpoint.”

Paula Stone returns to the States about every two months. Elmer is back more frequently--once a month for a two-day visit to the Los Angeles office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and once every two or three months to the law firm’s headquarters in Philadelphia.

Their travel routine is well established: Fly Singapore Airlines in business class and in their favorite seats; do not check in the luggage; avoid certain arrival days, such as Sundays in Tokyo, when the Japanese return from weekend travels; and depart Los Angeles or Tokyo on a Friday to have the weekend to recover.

One technique for coping with jet lag after arriving in Los Angeles is to slip out of their Hancock Park condo at 2:30 a.m. or so to grab breakfast at the 24-hour Pacific Dining Car restaurant at 6th and Witmer.

Every once in a while when he makes a quick turnabout between Tokyo and Los Angeles, Elmer forgets where he is. “Just the other night I got up, and I thought I was in our Japanese apartment and ran into a wall” at his Hancock Park condominium.

And, Elmer added, “I dream in Japanese since I’ve been there.”

“The most difficult part is getting to the airport, waiting for the flight time,” said Elmer. “It’s very boring.” When at LAX, they check in at the airline, put their carry-on luggage in a locker and head for the nearby Hyatt Hotel to have a relaxing preflight lunch. The flight then takes about 10 hours. Leaving Tokyo is more difficult. To get to Narita Airport, they leave no less than 3 1/2 hours before flight time.

The Stones, who also have a home in Palm Desert, moved to Japan in April, 1987, to open a Tokyo office for the law firm.

While the two longtime “Japanophiles” (he speaks Japanese) have adapted easily to most aspects of life in Japan, getting used to Tokyo prices was something else.

Entertain at Home

Their 2,000-square-foot, four-bedroom Tokyo apartment at the newly developed Ark Hills Towers is comfortable but rents unfurnished for $14,000 a month, which the law firm pays. “It would cost another $900 a month for a parking space.” Stone explained. So the Stones use public transportation.

With the exorbitant expense of taking clients out to Tokyo restaurants, the Stones do a lot of business entertaining at home. Paula can put together a nice dinner for an average of 4,000 yen, or $32, per person. To go out would cost anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 yen--or $80 to $160 per person.

Other entertainment in Japan, such as theater, is expensive, and tickets are hard to come by. “When the Bolshoi (Ballet) came to L.A. last year in May or June, we had tickets in the Founders Circle (at the Music Center). They were $56 per seat. When the Bolshoi was in Japan and tickets were 20,000 yen, or $160, apiece.”

Both the Stones buy their clothes in the United States. “I’m not a Japanese size,” explained Paula, who stands 5 feet, 8 inches. And clothes aren’t the only things she snaps up here. “There just isn’t anything you can buy in Japan that you can’t get here for half price,” she said. “If I have any little corner of my suitcase available, it is filled up with something,” including Ziploc plastic bags.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Lovers

Gayle Oshima, a first-year law student, was studying alone in her Sacramento apartment when the phone rang. Husband Timothy Ome was on the line from Tokyo with best wishes on their six-month wedding anniversary.

“I was worried about a tort reading assignment. It was like, ‘Oh, yeah, happy anniversary.’ ”

So much for romance in a long-distance relationship.

Ome and Oshima, both fourth-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry, have been apart since she left Tokyo in August to attend University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. They met a year ago at the opening of the Tokyo office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a Los Angeles law firm.

Ome, 36, was newly transferred from New York to Shearson Lehman Hutton’s Tokyo office, where he is vice president in charge of money market investments. Oshima, 27, worked for four years as a staff member specializing in trade at Sony Corp.’s international relations division in Tokyo.

“We had two things in common. We both smoked. We both didn’t want to get married,” recalled Oshima.

50-Minute Commute

Otherwise the two lived different lives. Ome walked from his two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot apartment in Ark Towers to his office in the nearby Ark Mori Building.

Oshima, who originally had come to Japan to assist her newly widowed grandmother, lived with her in a house on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in the Yotsuya area of Tokyo. She rose daily at 5 a.m., jogged, swept the temple grounds, vacuumed and wiped down the halls on her hands and knees. “You have to clean every day because the house is so old.” She breakfasted with her grandmother and then headed off for work at Sony.

The commute took 50 minutes on two trains and one bus for a total cost of 320 yen or $2.54. A 15-minute taxi ride cost 1,500 yen or $11.90 one way.

Oshima, a graduate of UC Berkeley who grew up in the Bay Area, was planning to return to the United States to attend law school when she met her husband. The prevailing Japanese attitude that women should marry and not pursue a career struck her as stifling.

“After spending four years being a woman and being American (in Japan), she couldn’t do certain things she wanted to do,” explained Ome. They were married last March.

After two wedding receptions in Tokyo, another in Hawaii (where Ome grew up) and still another in San Francisco for Oshima’s friends and family, they settled together at Ome’s apartment. They were together for five months before she left for law school in August, and Ome has been lonely since.

Chance to Visit

“I think if we had gotten married and separated immediately, we wouldn’t have gotten into a routine. You get a sense of comfort, a sense of pride among your colleagues that you can go home to someone who is very special. If we had been together a year, maybe it would be a little more comfortable. . . . We got a taste of married life but not the full meal.”

The first two weeks of separation were particularly difficult for Ome. More recently, his business has taken him on extensive travel, and he gets back to the West Coast and New York every five or six weeks.

He has already visited his wife four times and he hopes she will be able to find summer work at the Tokyo office of a U.S. law firm.

Ome and Oshima keep in touch by phone and answering machine. “We’re supposed to be sophisticated and can limit stress,” observed Ome. “She is in law school--that’s stressful. My business is stressful. We added the additional stress of being married long distance.”

Life Is Fragmented but She Isn’t Complaining

About 10 times a year, Jane Rees leaves her Nob Hill apartment in San Francisco to live at the New Otani Hotel in Tokyo, where she typically spends two to six weeks each visit. It’s part of a regular job shuttle that also includes stays at the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles.

Until this summer, the New Otani’s executive consultant for corporate development spent about 10 months a year in Japan. Today, she spends more time in the United States on the hotel chain’s new projects here.

Rees feels perfectly comfortable in Japan. She lived in Tokyo for 25 years when her late husband was in the shipping business. Her two children were raised in Japan and her daughter is fluent in Japanese. “I never feel like a gaijin (foreigner). Maybe it’s because I don’t feel like a gaijin that I don’t act like one.”

She attends a steady stream of parties as part of work related to the hotel chain and a weekly society column she writes for the English-language Japan Times. Still, the life style is difficult on her personal life. “Since my husband died, I’ve been doing this, running back and forth, living a fragmented life. I refuse to let my friends fall away. I have big phone bills. Luckily I like to write--two or three post cards on every plane ride--to touch base with everybody.”

Work Comes First

But Rees puts her work above her personal life. “You have to put your personal life on a back burner a little bit when you work for a Japanese company. Their attitude is that the company is the family. On the other hand, they are very understanding when there is a personal thing of importance.”

When Rees packs up to head home to the States, her clothes go into storage at the hotel in Tokyo so she doesn’t have to bother with check-in luggage. “I believe there are two kinds of luggage: carry-on and lost.”

The rigors of traveling do not bother her much. She eats little, drinks a lot of water and avoids in-flight movies in order to catch a nap. “If I meet a friend (on the plane) on the way, we might have dinner, but I say I can’t talk all the way. It’s my quiet time.”

On the plane she tucks her square Louis Vuitton bag under her feet and uses it as a footrest--”good for circulation,” she said.

She battles jet lag her own way. “I think a person cannot give in to it.” After arriving in San Francisco, she forces herself to stay up all day.

Rees always enjoys returning home to her Nob Hill condo, where her doorman collects her mail during her absence and a friend waters her 8-foot ficus. “I could not do it without a good friend here. . . . I have no family” in San Francisco, she explained.

With all the hassle of transpacific commuting, why does she bother? “I’d rather sit in a crowded airplane than in any castle in the world. I just love to travel.”

A Key Part of His Day Spent at Dinner Table

Ted Tanaka spends 10 to 14 days every other month in Japan. On his way there, he reviews business magazines and client-related materials. But when coming home to Los Angeles, Tanaka usually relaxes by watching the in-flight movies or scanning Japanese magazines--including fashion publications. “They help me keep a pulse on the culture, what’s hot and what’s fading and who’s in.”

In Tokyo, the 49-year-old international business consultant works at optimum efficiency. Ninety-five percent of his appointments are confirmed before his Sunday arrivals. The Century City-based deal maker schedules four appointments a day: at 9:30 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and dinner.

“Dinner is the most important to me of the entire business day. Often Americans ask why. For the duration (of dinner), you have someone for four or five hours. You have him away from the artificial environment of the office. He is relaxed, getting half drunk.”

Entertaining overseas visitors like Tanaka allows Japanese executives to splurge on their expense accounts. When Tanaka met with an old friend employed at a major Japanese electronic company, they went to dinner at Happo-En, a Tokyo restaurant famous for multicourse dinners, or kaiseiki ryori .

The $5,000 Dinner

According to Tanaka, his friend said, “Even as a member of the board of directors, it is difficult for me to justify coming to this restaurant. But because you are from overseas, we can take you. We thank you for coming, so we can enjoy this restaurant.” Said Tanaka: “They were very open and very revealing of their policy of how a Japanese executive can spend. We had a full-blown, anything-goes, price-wise kind of dinner. It was about $300 per person.”

Tanaka recalled the ultra-expensive dinner for eight with the chairman of one of Japan’s largest retailers at the Kitcho restaurant in Kyoto. “You cannot be admitted unless they know you and you have been there before. There is no menu and, and there no check. . . . The bill just shows up at accounting at the end of the month.” He estimated that the dinner, with no music or entertainment, cost $5,000.

Costs Are High

“A foreigner realizes that you can’t reciprocate,” he says. “It is fruitless to try to match over here what they did there. You should try to find something here that is uniquely American or Californian. Don’t try to match the cost. American companies just won’t or can’t match that.”

Tanaka’s own costs as an independent businessman traveling so frequently to Japan can really add up. His single room at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo costs $230 a night. A breakfast of two eggs, juice, coffee and toast runs $24.

When Tanaka and four American clients decided to relax once over a non-business dinner at a reasonably priced Japanese restaurant, they ordered two bottles of a 1982 Robert Mondavi Chardonnay. “It was like an ordinary yuppie restaurant, like a Charley Brown’s,” explained Tanaka.

But when the bill came, the total astounded even Tanaka. The wine alone cost $126.