When Japanese Conductor Seiji Ozawa went home for a visit with his orchestra, the Boston Symphony, last March, he took time out for a special project: a long-planned TV series on Japanese orchestras. As part of the series, Tokyo's Gakushuin University Orchestra performed the third movement of Brahms' fourth symphony, and viewers got the royal treatment. In the string section of the orchestra was Prince Hiro, 18, eldest son of Crown Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko. The prince, a freshman, has chosen to follow in his father's footsteps and attend a public university. And like both his parents, with whom he plays in a trio at the palace (his father is an accomplished cellist and his mother plays the piano and harp), Hiro is devoted to music. When he joined the Gakushuin orchestra, he put aside the violin he had played since kindergarten and switched to the viola. By performing with a lower register instrument, says the prince, he can better hear his fellow musicians.

Why is this woman truckin'? Model-Turned-Actress Deborah Raffin is revving up fo her role in a March 10 CBS movie, Willa. Raffin, 25, plays a waitress who takes up truck driving after her husband abandons her and the kids. To prepare for the role, she put in 50 hours learning how to drive a 16-wheel, 40,000-lb. rig. "It's so powerful you could almost run down a street light and not know it," says Raffin. "I was petrified." But the fright was worth it, Raffin thinks, because the film shows how well women can cope on their own. Her hope: Willa will be TV's An Unmarried Woman.

Clad in blue jeans and toting a brown paper bag filled with his belongings, H.R. Haldeman said farewell to jail last week. Having served 18 months in federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., for his part in the Watergate coverup, Richard Nixon's former chief of staff was paroled in time for Christmas. "This is generally considered a special time of the year to rejoice, and it sure is for me," said Haldeman. Two days later, John Mitchell, the last of the Watergate gang still behind bars, was permitted a five-day Christmas furlough.

The subject is hard to please. The first official portrait of Henry Kissinger, painted by Boston Artist Gardner Cox and commissioned to hang in the State Department, was vetoed: Kissinger did not like it. He was pleased, however, by a second attempt, by Houston Artist J. Anthony Wills. "It's an excellent likeness, swelled head and all," pronounced Kissinger last week. He didn't even mind that Wills had "painted out the scepter." In fact, quipped the former Secretary of State, the unveiling was "one of my most fulfilling moments. Until they do Mount Rushmore." Artist Wills, too, felt fulfilled. Unlike Cox, who was paid only $1,500 in expenses for his rejected picture, Wills will collect a fee of $10,500. He will be the last painter to be so lucky. Jimmy Carter has requested that in the future, all official portraits be color photographs.

On the Record

Nguyen Cao Ky, former Premier of South Viet Nam, who now owns a liquor store in Huntington Beach, Calif: "I am not Americanized yet. I do not wash dishes."

Norman Mailer, author (Armies of the Night), on his five trips to the altar: "I suppose I've married so often because we all travel in different ways. Being married to two different women is like being in two differnt countries."

Alfred Eisenstaedt, photographer, on working with Sophia Loren: "I click with her."

lohn Updike, novelist: "I have never liked authors who kill off characters blithely. I think it's quite a solemn act and should done with as much pomp and love as Tolstoy does it."

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