So, I'm currently sitting in the Singapore airport - quite possibly the greatest airport on earth! It has a free movie theater (where I watched the tail-end of transformers 3), sleeping lounge, gym, hair salon, butterfly conservatory, etc. Unbelievable! We are about to board a flight to Cambodia and just finished spending our first week visiting Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto in Japan. I'll give a quick blurb on Japan and then try to keep up with this more consistently.
Japanese people are VERY different than Americans. For example, in Japan it's all about developing relationships in business much more than just getting a deal done. If you don't have a long-standing relationship with potential customers/clients/business partners, you don't have business with them. It takes literally months and years to develop those relationships.
They are also very quiet. On the subways and trains people were very quiet. Americans are comparatively very loud.
Face is extremely important to them. You would never do anything or ask any question that would cause Japanese people to lose face. For example, at our business visit to Mazda's HQ in Hiroshima, I implied that there were similarities between Mazda's 3 and the BMW 3 series interior and asked if that was coincidence or intentional. Apparently that embarrassed the presenter and caused him to "lose face" (look bad) and he awkwardly and immediately got defensive and claimed that they did not copy BMW - which is totally bogus, everyone who's driven both cars knows that Mazda is a knock-off of BMW in some of their models.
Kyoto is old school Japanese. It has extremely rich and old history. Very old temples and places of worship for Shintoism and Buddhism. Hiroshima was incredibly sobering. That is the first place that an Atomic bomb was ever dropped. The devastation was unreal and the peace park memorial was fascinating. The mayor of Hiroshima has written on average about 2 letters per month to governments all over the world calling for the ending of nuclear weapons and dismantling of them. Each letter is personalized and posted on a wall in the peace park museum. There are hundreds and hundreds. None are based off any sort of template and most are in response to current testing of nuclear warheads. The world has completely ignored them. I don't know exactly how to convey the feeling, but here is the idea: they get bombed. Their people literally get blown to pieces. Their city was leveled in an instant. And in my experience there, I felt no grudge, bitterness or hatred towards Americans. They never retaliated. They don't seek to build Atomic bombs and retaliate. They just want peace. They want the warfare and the innocent casualties to end. That's all they want. And to see the world ignore them...it made me angry. That was probably the best word to describe the emotion. The vast majority of the victims of the A-bomb were innocent civilians - men, women, and children. I don't care the rationale, that isn't right.
While we were there, there were hundreds of Japanese school children apparently on field trips visiting this place. They love Americans. They would say hey to us in english (most Japanese people can read and write english quite well) and as I walked past the lines of them they all reached up to give high fives. So, the children and grandchildren of those who were bombed to bits by our parents and grandparents harbor no ill-will, no grudge. That, to me, is miraculous!
Time to board. I'll try to write more later and post pictures. This place is incredible and I think everyone should find a way to visit Asia as soon as they can.
Best,
Jeff
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