I just finished the book “Japan in the 21st century” by P. P. Karan and boy let me tell you, it’s is a good read; but shit was it a heavy read :P. The book is 385 pages long, but it’s double-columned almost A4 sized pages in a pretty small font. It took me on average an hour to read 10 pages, so I’ve probably spent around 40 hours on this book. It was definitely worth it though! It is jam-packed with information, it contains everything about Japan from 10 000 BC to 2004. History, geography, agriculture, economy, demography – you name it. It is in fact so heavy on information that it is used as course-material for this one-semester university course called “Introduction to Japanese culture” and that’s just the first one I found when Googling the book.
I want to pick out some funny things about the book, some very interesting things and then I want to finish off by saying what I want to know more about.
Funny & randomly interesting things
About the cleanliness of the Japanese people.
Compared to some parts of America, Japan certainly seems immaculate. However, the concept of “inside” is significant here. “Inside” refers to your family and your house or business or, if you are employed by a company, to the company and its grounds. Any place that is not part of anyone’s “inside” is neglected. Many public areas are filled with trash unless a government agency has money to pay to clean them up. The slopes of Mount Fuji in August appear to be one huge litter area.
Everywhere I’ve been in Japan has always been completely spotless, but I can actually image that this “inside”-stuff is very accurate.
Japan’s utility lines are highly visible, and their pattern is extraordinarily complex. They certainly are not buried underground.
[...]
The complexity of the pattern, moreover, is compounded by having lines at many levels and by lines that branch out at many angles from transmission poles along a single street.
[...]
Two main reasons for the profusion have been propounded. One pertains to Japan’s legendary frugality, the other to the nation’s “inside” cultural perspective. After all, the system of aerial lines never was organized; it just grew.
I’ve heard (maybe from Maho) that the reason lines aren’t buried is because they would break easier during earth-quakes and be harder to fix, but reading the book I think this “they just add on another line when they need one”-theory makes more sense.
The building of Western-style houses has resulted in a startling spread of what look like upscale American suburbs in the Japanese landscape. Nowhere is that more striking than in Sweden Hills of Hokkaido, where the driveways are packed with Porsches, BMWs, and Jeeps.
Outside the cities, the sprawling Japanese fantasylands include full-scale replicas of a Dutch village, Denmark’s Tivoli Gardens, a Spanish hacienda, a reconstructed medieval German town in Obihiro an Anne of Green Gables theme park on the northern island of Hokkaido, and a whole coastline of indoor beaches pounded by manmade waves.
That’s just crazy :P! I’ve been to Denmark’s Tivoli many times and I’d love to see how well-made their replica is :P
The average age at which Japanese marry for the first time has been rising for both men and women; in 1999 it was 28.7 and 26.8, respectively. Only in Sweden do people marry later, but unlike Sweden and other places, Japan is a country where unmarried couples almost never live together.
Yay Sweden, we never marry :P
Seriously though, later marriages and the aging population is probably one of Japans biggest challenges and has been for the last decade.
In the snowcapped rugged mountain regions of northern Japan, rural, rice-growing town are shrinking as young men and women abandon the rigors of farm life for the anonymous freedom of Japan’s giant cities.
Japanese custom affords no such freedom to the family’s oldest son, however. According to rural tradition, the eldest male must stay to care for his aging parents and inherit the family land. The situation has led to a shortage of eligible women in rural villages.
[...]
[About fixing the problem] So Shirataka and dozens of other rural settlements throughout Yamagata Prefecture have encouraged families to spend more than $25,000 each to import brides from China, Sourth Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.
Paid by the government to buy brides! That’s something…
The struggle for education is a grim one in Japan.
[...]
The reason for the intesity of the struggle is that where one receives one’s education, along with family status, means literally everything in job determination.
[...]
Failing the entrance examination is a common cause of suicide. Such intense striving for education is responsible for the 98 percent literacy rate in Japan – the highest in the world.
In Japan the pressure to excel starts with the exam to enter first grade in one of the most competitive elementary schools. Students enter cram schools to prepare for entrance exams. Cram schools have been a hotly debated facet of Japanese education for years, and the burden is spreading to younger and younger children in order to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive society. At about age three, children in some families begin a string of cram schools and exams that will play a crucial role in determining whether they retire from first-rate jobs sixty years later.
Cram schools at 3, that’s a bit excessive to me :S
Coca-cola, which has an estimated 60 percent of the carbonated beverage market, does not use artificial coloring in its products, because the company found that the Japanese prefer all-natural ingredients.
So thaaat’s why Coke tastes weird in Japan!!
Stuff I want to know more about
So obviously as you can see from the excerpts above the book contains a whole lot of knowledge in a wide array of subjects. But the biggest problem for me right now is that it ends in 2004. I want to know what has happened between 2004 and 2010. What legislature has been brought to alleviate the aging community problem and the lack of creative entrepreneurs?
Basically, this is what I want to know more about:
Japanese Economy 2004 – 2010
Has it gone up/down?
What has happened to all the bad loans of the 90’s?
Has there been a proper focus on IT-revolution?
Politics 2004 – 2010
What political reforms has been brought since ‘04?
Has there been any reforms of the lower house to correctly adjust the seating distribution?
Has there been any policies introduced to heighten the birth-rate?
Entrepreneurship in Japan: Is it possible? How is the start-up culture compared to, say, America?
Japan had huge struggles with environmental problems from the 50’s all the way up to the 90’s. In the 90’s Japan was still one of the worlds largest pollutants of a toxin called Dioxin, a highly poisonous gas released when burning plastics (garbage). Dioxin is deadly for humans and several reports of serious damage to human life has been reported around furnaces in Japan. At the end of the 90’s Japan released 40% of the worlds amount of Dioxin and the country had ~1200 garbage furnaces while USA has around 250. What has happened with this in the last 10 years?
The Sanrizuka Farmers Movement again the Expansion of Narita Airport. Apparently 7 farmers were until ‘03 holding up development of a second runway at Narita Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Has Narita gotten it’s second runway by now?
The last two points I want to know more about need a little more space. The first:
The Movement to Protect the Ikego Forest, Zushi City In an area of rampant urbanization south of Tokyo, the last significant green open space is the magnificent Ikego Forest in the city of Zushi. Its rolling hills nad lush woodlands are home to a rare diversity of wildlife, including many endangered species. The Ikego hills are covered with thick forests of broad-leaved laurel, chestnut, maple and oak trees, as well as wild cherry trees and wild camellias. Ikego is also home to more than 107 species of birds.
[...]
A joint project of the Unites States and Japan will cut the trees and raze the hills to build a massive U.S. military housing facility. The construction plan calls for 854 housing units and other facilities typical of an American suburb.
Please, please, please tell me this beautiful forest with it’s endangered species didn’t get mowed down to build an American suburb for the military. Please!
The last thing, but not least, is how Japan has dealt with the IT-revolution of the 21st century. Throughout the book the Japanese are described as lagging behind the western world in terms of IT development. But when I’ve been there I’ve always felt they are ahead us in IT development. The book finishes off by saying that the Japanese government has recognized the importance of IT and that they had a consensus on that IT should play a big role in the development of Japan in the 21st century. I obviously think it has succeeded with taking IT and computer technology to heart, but how and what are the plans for the future?
This Monday I was in Stockholm over the day for what was called Nova Forum. The whole thing was arranged by an organization called Nova 100, for some reason they don’t have more info about themselves in English than is on that first page. Shortly summarized it’s an organization that arranges different kinds of networking events and acts as a bit of recruitment ground for companies.
Nova Forum is their biggest event and there were 250 people attending. They started out with an inspiration lecture by a guy from Procter & Gamble. He talked about his career path and how he came to be where he was by accident. If he had to give just one lesson for life it would be to not let accident guide life but rather that you should make informed decisions to take you where you wanted to be. All in all it was pretty fun, and apparently no one at P&G stays in one job for more than 2 or 3 years, then you’re forced to move do a different position within the company so that you’re constantly learning new stuff and don’t grow stale and stuff like that, which seems pretty fun.
The best thing about the talk was that he said in a traditional career path, you can’t really get to a higher position without working some years abroad, it just doesn’t happen. He then asked how many in the room could consider working abroad and 250 hands went up in about 10 milliseconds.
Workshop with Scania
After the talk there was some time to mingle with other students and members of Nova and then it was time for workshops.
Everyone had gotten assigned to three companies (out of like 20) to have workshops with. The companies sort of request the kind of student they want to be matched up with so that their field is somehow relevant to the students studies. The student (me) also got to make a wish-list of companies to talk to.
At the first workshop with Scania we were taught Scanias 5 leadership principles.
Co-ordinate cross-functionally but work independently – take responsibility.
Work with details, understand the context.
Act now – think long-term.
Build know-how through continuous learning.
Stimulate commitment through involvement.
Our winning score presented
Of course this is just meaningless business-speak without a proper explanation and further insight into how this is put into practice. So we got 5 problems with 3 suggested solutions each, we were then supposed to match up the problem with the right principle and rate the solution in it’s correctness. Our ratings were compared to what Scania themselves thought and the points were tallied up. We were team 2 so as you can see from the picture we won!
The second workshop was more interesting, it involved a real case. Abbott makes medicine and apparently intestinal disease is very common, there are a wide variety of diseases and they gave Crohn’s disease as an example. Every third person or something like that has some sort of curable intestinal problem.
My buddy Emanuel that had just been given a bow-tie from the founder of modefluga.se
It is however (at least in Sweden) somewhat taboo to talk about that kind of problem and a lot of people are ashamed to seek help for it and many people don’t even know they have a problem that can be fixed. Apparently a large problem is also that Swedish hospitals don’t get enough money to get the right kind of medication. So the case was to design a marketing campaign for intestinal disease; raising awareness, money and starting a political movement to give the right kind of money to hospitals to cure it effectively. I think we made a pretty good grass-roots kind of campaign.
At IBM we pretty much just discussed what the company had been up to since the 80’s. They’re doing something called Smart Planet where they try to improve life through technology so they wanted us to make a “Smarter University” somehow. Very fuzzy task so it wasn’t that fun, and most of us were pretty tired by then. We came up with some machine-learning scheme to create an AI that could react as students to lectures. You’d feed this AI data from a years worth of lectures and then teachers were supposed to be able to put in their lecture in advance and see if it would turn out good or bad in the eyes of a student. It’s all sort-of technically possible, but a pretty vague idea.
Dinnertime
After the workshops were over (we got a wonderful salmon steak lunch in between the different workshops) there came dinner. Absolutely lovely dinner with some entertainment by an A Capella group. Everyone was mixed in amongst company representatives and I got to sit down next to a recruiter from McKinsey & Company. Had some interesting discussions with her about what kind of place McKinsey is and it gave me a bit of different picture of the company than I had before.
The whole thing was over at 23:00 and I then boarded a bus toward Lund, a 7 hour bus ride. I’ve done more fun things in my life, especially since there were some very talkative loud people right where I was sitting.
One funny thing happened on the bus though, there was this guy who could speak Japanese, but he had learned it from his girlfriend who was Japanese so he said he spoke Japanese like a girl :P
I really can imagine that there are more clearly defined speech-patterns for males and females in Japan than other countries. But anyway, this guy said that when he was in Japan, people had told him he spoke Japanese like a gay guy because he spoke so girlish.
I was at home at 7 AM and had at that time been in my suit for 23 hours straight. A fun and rewarding day, but the next time I’m definitely arranging some other kind of transportation.
First off I can just let everyone know that I’m going to be leaving Sweden at the start of July, so I will still be here for almost a half year more. There are some paperwork to be done but the institute through which I’m taking this education makes things quite a lot easier so it’s not that bad.
I said in my previous post that the whole thing was kind of scary; it is! I find that whenever I am moving forward and big changes are happening I’m a little scared. But it’s a good kind of scared. If you’re doing things right in life you should always have a small, small sensation in the back of your head that you might have taken on too much, that you’re changing too quickly, that kind of feeling. Progress is a little scary but you shouldn’t live without progress. Scary is good.
I will be leaving Sweden entirely for a year, the visa won’t allow me to leave Japan without going through a bunch of paperwork to get back in. This of course means that I’ll leave friends and family behind entirely, and I’m sure I’ll miss them. There’s not much to do about it though and it’s something that just has to be dealt with when the time comes.
Before I leave there are some things I want to get done, which leaves me unable to just completely phase out and dream about Tokyo for 5 months until the time comes; I suppose that might be a good thing. Stuff I want to do is get my motorcycle drivers license, I’ve been wanting this for over a year but last year it was hindered by Japan and work. My good friend Jonas has been living in the US for a year come summer and he’s planning a cross-country road-trip over this summer which I’d really like to join in on for a week or two. The plans will be released on his blog this Friday (the 12th) so we’ll see if there are any suitable points for me to get on and off the trip that would have me being there for the right amount of time in the beginning of June. Other than that, I obviously have 4 months of school left, and I’ll have to add some Japanese studies to my ordinary curriculum to be able to have a foundation to stand on when I get there.
All in all, I’ll be going to Japan, but there’s still a lot of stuff to do and to think about before I get there. It seems like a journey in itself.
Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. This is one of those times.
A short while ago Emma told me she was going to Japan for a year to study Japanese. About four or five years earlier I took a short class in Japanese and ever since, I have wanted to go to Japan to study Japanese. As you may know I have been in Japan on two occasions and before both those occasions one alternative was to go there to study over the summer. That alternative was on both occasions dismissed because of various reasons, mostly economic ones.
After (the Swedish equivalent of) High School I took a year off from school. Something I had planned on doing pretty much since the start of High School, but taking two years off was never an alternative in my mind. Going to Japan a year to study was therefore never an alternative even though it was something I really wanted to do.
Since the very moment I decided to go to University it has been my mantra and the code by which I live to put school first, to keep my head down and power through when required and to finish everything as fast as possible. I have in my mind “always” said: “I will finish school in 5 years. Get done as soon as possible and then start my ‘real life’.”
Not once have I ever thought about the possibility to take time off school to pursue any other interests. A big reason for this is of course that I actually kind of like school. I find the majority of the things I study extremely interesting. I like the challenge that school brings and I love to learn new things every day.
Since taking a year off school was never really in my play-book, I always imagined I would go to Japan to study Japanese for a year (or more) after I was done with school. Things never really turn out the way we expect them to though, and this is a good thing. If everything in life was expected and could be planned for; it would be boring.
When Emma told me she was going to Japan, I immediately felt that this is an opportunity of a life-time, this was not going to happen again and was what I had always wanted. I asked Emma if I could join and she shared my opinion that a shared experience is a greater one. There was still the matter of taking a year off school though which was somehow wrong in my mind.
Since I don’t get a bachelor degree at my school we don’t really follow any strict programs or such, we just sign up for courses as they come along and if we wish to take time off we just don’t sign up for any courses at all. It is for everything practical a non-issue. There are no physical restraints on taking a year off school, no disadvantage at all.
The reason I wanted to power through school in one go was because I wanted to start my “real life” as soon as possible. I wanted to have Japan part of the “real life” and not of my school life. I have realized that this imagined sectioning of my life is really only rhetorical, it is not actually how I feel, but how I state the reason for not taking time off school. There is really no difference between doing 3 years science, 1 year Japanese and 2 years science instead of 5 years science and 1 year Japanese.
The only real disadvantage is that I might loose focus on school, might loose the edge-knowledge of how to solve partial differential equations and calculate the wave-functions of electrons in a solid-state crystal of Aluminum-Arsenic. This is actually a real issue, one that I can’t say is utterly meaningless in all senses. This will happen, and it is a sacrifice I have to make. Now I can lessen this disadvantage by bringing some books and reading a little in them once-in-a-while, but ultimately it is a sacrifice. The question here is if it is worth this sacrifice to spend a truly fantastic year with my best friend and gain experiences and moments in life that could not possibly be attained in any other way. The anwer is simple.
There is also the risk of me not returning to school, but becoming caught up in another life entirely and simply quit. I almost forgot to write about this because the risk doesn’t exist in my mind. As I said, I love learning, I love what I study. In my mind there is no way I can exist in my future life without having a masters degree. No, quitting school just isn’t an alternative. No force however strong could ever convince me that taking those two last years would be unnecessary or boring.
It has been hard to overcome my mental image of how life was supposed to be and to accept that taking a year off school will not be a bad thing. Having done it now however, having accepted that it really isn’t a bad thing; I feel like I’m about to live a dream and am on the cusp of something truly amazing, which actually scares me just a little bit.
I am going to live in Tokyo for a year. Can you believe that?
