The L.A. Press Club will bestow its President's Award on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein next June, almost on the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in they covered as Washington Post reporters."Woodward and Bernstein's series of articles for The Washington Post unraveled the biggest American political scandal to date, culminating in President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974," says the club's announcement. "Four decades later, the stories still stand as a bellwether of investigative journalism."

Noted: The Press Club hands out its annual National Entertainment Journalists of the Year awards on Thursday at the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown. Hugh Hefner is the guest of honor. Tix

I couldn’t fly to Japan for the weekend. But from LAX, it was only a 10-minute drive to Torrance, Calif., which might be the next best thing. Home to the American subsidiaries of both Honda and Toyota, Torrance has thousands of Japanese residents. And now it has a hotel — the Miyako Hybrid — designed specifically for Japanese business travelers. (The “hybrid” in the name is meant to suggest that, like a hybrid car, the hotel is energy efficient.) By staying there, I hoped to recapture some of the excitement I felt during my first trip to Japan, in 1989, when I didn’t want to sleep, lest I sacrifice a minute of exploring.

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