Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Economic inequality is not new.  It is a phenomenon that has haunted human civilization ever since agricultural production became systematic and people saw the benefits of accumulating wealth in one place.  A ruling elite with the power to organize the institutions and structures of society came to tower over others, giving them the ability to reshape how society operates to benefit themselves.  The result is the rise of an elite that is both politically and economically powerful, often in a hereditary manner.  For too long, the general populace was OK with such an elite, notably because there was a belief that anyone can become equally as powerful and rich through individual efforts.

The Japanese are, by now, famous in the developed world for the hostility of the general public toward the prospect of mass migration.  Even as the government mulls policies that increase the number of foreign workers in the country, the media, both mainstream and otherwise, debate whether the shift to the extreme right under in way in Europe is a result of uncoordinated, unstructured, and unprepared nature by which millions of Africans and Middle Easterners streamed in.  What is implied, of course, is that the Japanese do not repeat the mistake of mass migration that the Europeans brought upon themselves.

It is certainly difficult being an Uyghur these days. Not only is an Uyghur person constantly subject to racial profiling and intense surveillance by the state in China , but the Chinese government's downright inhumane policy of disrupting Uyghur self-expression has also found support outside China, as Central Asian states bow to Chinese demand for suppressing their own Uyghur diaspora and Islamophobic Westerners express tacit approval of overt attempts to secularize the Uyghurs.  For some, the threat of Islamic terror has made the Chinese government's heavyhandedness platable, if not outright admirable.

Newsstands at Japanese train stations are usually fronted by racks full of front-page news from the country's vibrant tabloid newspapers.  On a recent day, half a dozen tabloids lined up on the racks spoke a uniform voice against Huawei, the Chinese smartphone-cum-telecom equipment manufacturer that is currently under massive scrutiny across much of the developed world.  "Huawei Smartphones: the Spying Devices that are Just around Us," one tabloid declared.  Others concurred and added in extra details about the aftermath of the ongoing saga over Huawei CFO's arrest in Canada.

Across the rich world, Japanese food is well-regarded.  The trend of wealth youths in the West eating sushi and sashimi come from the image of Japanese cuisine as healthy, characterized by the use of fresh fish and vegetables, and a relative lack of oil and heavy seasoning.  In hip American urban neighborhoods, especially, people are willing to shell out quite a bit of money to get the authentic Japanese dining experience.  The quality of Japanese food as a near-universal truth is confirmed the likes of the Michelin Guide, which has no failed to name Tokyo as the city with the most stars for many consecutive years.

A few years ago when I was living and working in Taiwan , I applied for a position at Uber Taiwan as an Operations Manager.  Uber was just entering the Taiwanese market and usual as it is for the firm, aggressively expanding into major cities with lofty goals of overhauling the entire transport market.  In the interview for the position, I noted that the advantage of a global platform like Uber is its universality.  Because it is the same platform for anyone anywhere (with perhaps the exception of language), it can open up a foreign country for new foreign residents and travelers with little prior knowledge of the new destination.

Living in Japan, it is difficult to escape the omnipresence of uniforms. Whether it is the high school uniforms that titillate the salarymen , or the various uniforms of working people, from the train conductors and supermarket cashiers to the street cleaners and, who can forget the salarymen’s dark suits. Aside from introducing uniformity, the uniforms also become what people aspire to, as a symbol of their professional identity separate from their private lives as individuals.

The Japanese female high school uniform is almost a cultural institution in itself.  Immortalized in anime such as “Sailor Moon” and countless bittersweet love stories of campus romance on the big and small screens, its distinctive blue-and-white sailor-like design is recognizable to even the most casual purveyors of Japanese culture.  For millions in Japan, it is the visual manifestation of what it means to be youthful, innocent, and full of hope and drama.  It is the physical reminder of the coming of age.

Having joined many tours in the past, I come to see certain patterns on how they are organized.  That is especially true for shorter tours, where the ability of the guide to make the trip entertaining seems to be one of the primary criteria to evaluate whether the tour is worthwhile.  The sights might be great, but without proper presentation of them, it is hard to say that people who paid good money to be on the tour actually gained much from being on the tour as compared to just going around and looking at the same sights by themselves.

The general public can be easily misled by greatness shown in public.  People tend to assume that when a person acquires great fame and fortune through their own efforts, they are full of positive qualities that help them achieves the success.  The abilities to lead others with compassion, to get public opinion on their side to sell themselves and their products, and to improve the world with slices of their own undoubtedly admirable personalities are almost assumed.  Simply said, people think a person can achieve great things because s/he is a great person with great qualities not many others possess.

It is surprising that Crazy Rich Asians , the cinematic pride and joy of the Chinese-American community this year (quite honestly, of the last couple of decades) was even shown in theaters here in Japan.  It is distinctly lacking multiculturalism, despite its attempt to appeal to all Asians with a distinct story of the newly wealthy Asia and the familiar rags-to-riches Asian migrant story (not to mention the title of the film itself).  It is difficult to see what the regular Japanese person is supposed to get out of the movie, considering that it takes place in a distinctively unfamiliar environment and conditions for the Japanese.

Roppongi, in some ways, is a rather special entertainment district, even for a Tokyo that is inundated with many special entertainment districts .  With many embassies nearby, it became a preferred hang-out of moneyed expats.  Many clubs and bars that cater to foreign clientele and many Japanese who are keen on a more "international" lifestyle make the neighborhood both high-end in terms of prices but also rather shady in terms of the people that frequent its many crowded back alleys and underground haunts.  There are plenty of options for those seeking to be entertained in however ways.

For someone who has not been to one of the most famous "shows" for tourists in Tokyo, it could be a bit difficult to understand what all the fuss is really about.  The Robot Restaurant in Kabukicho, the reputed red-light district of Tokyo, offers a robot-themed show, about one-and-a-half hours long, for 8000 Yen (slightly less than 80 USD at the current exchange rate).  Dinners-in-a-box that look (and taste) like they are sourced directly from the local convenience stores sell for a highly inflated 1000-2000 Yen each on top of the 8000-yen entrance fee.  Extra spending is needed for canned drinks and popcorn, going for 500-1000 yen each.

Looking at brochures that Japanese governments and private firms create (in English and other foreign languages) targetting visitors to the country, there is often a tendency to resort to extreme ways in describing some highlights.  Phrases like "the best food," the "most beautiful temple," and the "best preserved natural landscape" abounds, both when the said brochures try to compare themselves to other, similar attractions across Japan and in other countries.  Such emphasis on the extreme can seriously distort the image of the country in ways that are, in the long term, detrimental to attracting more tourists from abroad.

The international terminal at Harbin’s Airport feels crowded from the early morning. In front of the check-in counters are a few rows of seats in a tiny waiting area, holding a couple of hundreds of people waiting for check-in to start for just two international flights. Once the staff announce that check-in is open, everyone rush through just one X-ray machine that checks their bags before the check-in line. With space limited between the X-ray machine and the check-in counters, lines and crowds pack themselves both in front of and behind the X-ray machine. The scene is repeated after check-in, with passengers lining up again in narrow corridors, first in front of two open security lines, and then two immigrant stamping booths.

At the Aigun Historical Museum, patriotism is the main theme.  Situated on the ruins of the Aigun fortress, the walled city that was destroyed by Russians, it documents how the land north of the Amur River was lost and the details of the atrocities against Chinese civilians perpetuated by Russian troops.  The underlying message is one that ask visitors to contribute to strengthening of the Chinese nation so that the Chinese people can no longer be bullied by foreigners in the future.  The museum's collection of pictures detailing national leaders who visited the site allude to official support for the project.

In Samuel Huntington's seminal work "Clash of Civilizations," one of the underlying assumptions that there are certain geographical boundaries among the different civilizations he identified.  Certainly, some regions can be considered transition zones where two or more civilizations exist side by side, but ultimately, he sees there being visible defining characteristics that can distinguish one civilization from another.  And when a person goes from one civilization to another, one can easily feel the change and thus need to adapt to the new civilization.

At the main museum in Blagoveshchensk, a massive mural greets the visitors.  The mural depicts in dramatic fashion Russian and Chinese officials signing off on the Treaty of Aigun, which granted land north of the Amur River to the Russian Empire, and for the first time, made the region, with Blagoveshchensk its capital, formally part of Russia.  Three Chinese visitors were standing in front of the mural.  One let out a sigh, "this is when we lost Outer Manchuria forever," he noted rather dismayingly.

Khabarovsk is a city of more than half a million people, located more than twelve hours by train away from similar-sized Russian cities (Vladivostok to the south, Chita and Ulan-Ude to the east).  This very geographic fact should create a fairly big local market for consumer products that are not easily fulfilled by traveling elsewhere in the country.  People would buy locally simply because there are few choices to go buy somewhere else.  Yet, speaking to the city's Chinese merchants and a different picture emerges. 

Thee are many similarities between the Russian and the Chinese train systems. Inherited from the soviet system, both feature overnight trains marked by densely packed bunk beds that allow more than fifty people to fit into each train carriage. Ability to crisscross large distances overnight allow such sleeper trains to become a popular means of travel for common people in both countries. The communal nature of the carriages means that individual travelers must be quite OK with lack of privacy for extended period of time.

It is hard to imagine a more wilderness-filled stretch of land between two major cities.  The city of Khabarovsk, population half a million, and Komsomolsk, population 300,000, are separated by a two-lane highway running through a beautiful piece of untouched nature.  On a clear autumn drive, the eight-hour drive is an almost unbroken forest of yellow-leaved trees, with white, strong, and thick trunks as far as the eyes can see.  They are only punctuated by the occasional tributaries of the mighty Amur River.

Among one's friends, there are often a few oddballs that decide, one day seemingly out of the blue, that the careers that they have been building for years actually do not interest them anymore.  They decide to give that all up, go back to school and learn brand-new trades.  Upon graduation, they stay once again, in perhaps their late 30s or 40s, at the bottom of the hierarchy in a new industry that they have never been professionally involved before.  I, for one, admire the willingness to forego the comfort of the known and enrich one's life by plunging into the unknown even at an age when people avoid risks and instability.

Humans are social animals, and social animals have a tendency to put themselves into social groups to define who they are.  And if humans are to use social groups to define respective individual identity based on belonging to certain groups, then it becomes necessarily the case that they define what are the differences among different groups that they belong to and they do not.  By distinguishing the major contracts between the groups that they belong to vis-a-vis those that they are excluded or voluntarily exclude themselves from, humans can, in turn, make sense of who they are and who they are not.

Japan is noted for convenience for shoppers , and the focus on convenience is also very much present when its legions of salarymen go out for their lunches on any working weekday.  In major business districts are arrays of different dining options, ranging from take-out microwaved meals in convenience stores, street carts serving up quick freshly cooked meals, and various fast food options ranging from noodles to burgers.  In such a competitive market to feed hungry workers quickly, traditional sit-down restaurants should have little advantage to speak of.

A Chinese-Australian friend described his experience interacting with the local Chinese population in Malaysia.  If he mentioned that he was born but moved away from China as a child, people did not want anything to do with him.  When he tried to save money by going for cheap meals and skipping drinks, people thought he was a "cheap mainlander" trying to make trouble.  On the contrary, if he splurges on food and drinks while dissociates himself from any connection from China, he found the local population much more receptive to his attempts to communicate and befriend.

Travelers seek out new destinations for a variety of reasons, but it goes without saying that all of them want a positive experience out of getting to the new place.  How to define what is "positive," however, may vary hugely from individual to individual.  For tour guides who are hired by travelers to assist them with exploring the new destination, catering to what the travelers have in mind for a positive experience is certainly needed to ensure the travelers' satisfaction from joining a tour.  But finding out exactly how the positive experience can be had for each individual is no easy matter.

Waiting in the line to get some visa-related matters finished at the ever-crowded and confusing Tokyo immigration processing center was a Yemeni seeming lost in thought.  Asked what he is doing here in Tokyo, the man timidly answered that he is looking to get his refugee status approved.  And why Japan?  For him, it was the only country where he could get a tourist visa even to come in the first place.  The decreasing appetite for Middle Eastern refugees in Europe and America meant that those desperate for good-paying jobs are now looking to Japan for the slimmest hope.

Age 30 can be a convenient marker for many people.  If the twenties is a time for travels and new experiences, the thirties ought to be one that is more grounded.  More stable relationships, more stable jobs, and more stable routines that allow one to grow in a more structured environment.  But for people who have become so used to fluctuations, some voluntary and some not so much, transitioning to more routine-based way of life can be quite challenging, mentally and physically.  Romance and steady environment can help anchor a person to a particular way of life, but without genuine love for the physical location that one is to inhabit, it is rather impossible for keep the anchors steady.

Every time the author travels to the immigration office here in Tokyo, he cannot avoid the feeling that the place is almost designed to spite foreigners living in this fair city. Situated in the midst of the city's commercial warehouse area right next to the Port and stacks of shipping containers, the brutalist concrete monstrosity seems to swallow thousands of foreigners living across the city and the surrounding region, away from the preying sight of locals who no doubt would feel unease from seeing such huge congregations of foreigners in one place.

The practicing official was a nervous wreck.  Shaking hard enough that scribbling down his own name on the form was difficult.  His scorers, standing right behind him to watch his every move, kept interrupting the simulation to point out which steps he forgot to take and which fields on the forms he forgot to fill.  Such interruptions only made the official even more nervous.  He stuttered through his scripted lines to the foreign "athlete" and made more mistakes when filling out the "athlete's" personal information.  Correcting those mistakes meant filling out more revision forms, which created more opportunities to make mistakes.

"Now, this job is exclusively for males.  Workers are required to wear all-black suits...there should be no stripes of any kind on the suit.  The shirt underneath should be white, and there should be no color buttons on the shirt...only black or white buttons.  Dress shoes also need to be black.  For people who have hair that is not black, the hair needs to be dyed black before showing up for work.  Also, no facial hair of any kind.  No mustache, no beard.  The face needs to be completely clean-shaven.  No exceptions..."  The lady nonchalantly went on to describe the requirements for the job.

For most people, the image of being a student is probably one of habit.  With a set schedule of classes, seminars, and exams, students know where to go when, and when there are no classes, they spend a significant amount of time in libraries and study rooms completing their assignments and prepare for exams.  The student life is imagined to be a very regimented one, where the student would know exactly where to go and what to do during the course of their semesters.  Their only free time would be during summer and winter vacations when they are free to take up jobs or internships in preparation for full-time jobs.

Theoretically, finding an apartment in Tokyo should not be all that difficult.  Any residential area is full of apartment blocks in all forms and price ranges.  Those who seek a new residence only need to go down to one of many national chains of apartment middlemen for quick inquiries and will be shown several units of preferable size and price in a matter of hours.  The agencies take care of the paperwork and contact with landlords, and the client moves in a matter of days.

In an era of the general public being inundated with different kinds of museums displaying a wide variety of exhibits , for any to really stand out from the competitive crowd, new methods are needed to draw in the interest of potential museum-goers.  Factory tours, at the first glance, fit the bill extremely well.  But presenting how everyday products are made from scratch via seeing the process actually at work in a normal setting, factor tours tend to provide a much more interactive experience for the general public, in ways that static displays of words and pictures cannot.

A recent news that is causing controversy is the plan for the Danish government to get rid of the country's ethnic ghettos by more forcefully assimilating its non-white migrant communities.  It is just a long line of growing trend of migrant host countries to compel migrants to assimilate faster through political and sometimes legal means.  The French bans Muslim headscarves , in plenty of countries (including the US), knowing the national language as a prerequisite for naturalization, and here in Japan, foreigners have to change to a Japanese surname upon becoming a citizen.

Japanese streets on the weekdays can be extremely colorless.  Salarymen in their millions walk about in almost identical black suits, quickly rushing toward their office buildings and clients.  But the black suits, for all their ubiquity, is not exactly designed for the hot summers that engulf the island country.  As humidity soars and temperatures rise above 40 degrees Celsius in some parts, keeping to the business norm, fashion-wise, can become tortuous.  Salarymen constantly wiping off their sweats can attest to the difficulty.

When one thinks of Tokyo, dense, crowded streets full of neon lights and skyscrapers probably come to mind.  And for the central parts of the metropolis, that image is more or less true.  But people, even those who are born and bred in the city, tend to forget that Tokyo actually extends hundreds of kilometers to the south, to the Izu and Ogasawara island chains where sparsely populated and little-visited islands can be found.  Life on these islands cannot be any more different from downtown Tokyo and perhaps anywhere on "mainland" Japan.

Right next to the apartment where my girlfriend lives is a construction site where a new partment building is built from scratch.  Aside from the half-a-dozen construction workers who are putting together the building itself, there are another half-a-dozen workers who are doing nothing but manning the different roads leading into the construction site.  Holding LED-lighted guiding sticks, they direct the trucks transporting materials to the site, and apologize to each pedestrian who happen to walk by the construction.

It is tough to talk about a social problem faced by a social minority, especially in a country like Japan where social minorities are often assumed to be absent or nonexistent.  Many people simply do not want to face the uncomfortable fact that there are minorities among them who missed out of the country's general sense of prosperity and order.  Instead, they struggle for both society's acceptance and just make ends meet in the direst of material conditions.  A recent Japanese film Shoplifters , in such sense, is truly an uncomfortable one to watch for many Japanese people.

One of the little-known idiosyncrasies of the Russian Far East is the presence of a relatively large North Korean population.  The region's low population translates to a chronic shortage of laborers needed for low-paid construction and menial work Russians are reluctant to take up.  In European Russia, Central Asian migrants fill the role, out here the North Koreans play the same role.  Despite ongoing sanctions that dramatically reduced their numbers, North Korean laborers are still preferred by Russian firms for their manageability, diligence, and lack of negative cultural (read: Muslim) influence.

In the Kitay-Gorod (literally "China Town" in Russian) Mall in the northeast suburbs of Vladivostok, there are several shops selling nothing but parts for home improvements.  From bolts and nails to wallpapers and plastic railings the shop has everything a person would need to make the interior of a house more homey.  The only necessity is for the buyers of the parts to put in the efforts to put those parts in place.  That is easier said than done.  Customers are assumed to be professionals, and none of the parts come with instructions on how to properly use them.

Living among the cultural Other is difficult, and it is especially difficult to do so in a foreign country.  Strange language, strange food, and even stranger people.  All this can be depressing to face for people who are residing abroad for the very first time.  They just do not have experience in handling people who do not come from same cultural background, raised under same educational and social atmospheres.  In short, such is the situation faced by the migrants from rural China who now reside in Vladivostok. But they are not the only ones faced with such difficulties. 

History says that the USSR died back in 1991.  People are supposed to be so fed up with the economic stagnation, the political inefficiency, and low standard of living compared to the West that no one really misses it.  Only strongman and revisionists like Putin would say something ridiculous like how the fall of the USSR was a great misfortune and the great Russian revival requires reinstating some parts of the USSR.  To Western observers, the USSR represented a failed system that simply proved itself to be uncompetitive over course of history. 

The campus of the Far Eastern Federal University is a gorgeous one.  Situated on the mostly wild Russky Island south of Vladivostok, it is a mishmash of imposing modern buildings connected to the century-old downtown area with spectacular suspension bridges.  Perhaps as a result of its extraordinary setting, it serves as the regular venue of the East Asia Summit that bring together political leaders from Russia and its East Asian neighbors.  But for the importance of the Summit for Russia's Look East economic policy, locals are a bit annoyed by the Summit serving to shut down the city for weeks at a time.

It is a sight that is hard to miss even during the day time.  Drunk men, sleeping on benches and occasionally on the ground, occupying sunburn parks without a care in the world.  While in the city center, local police patrols try to get rid of such men to maintain a clean image for the foreign tourist crowds, in the suburbs, they could not be bothered to even more these drunkards.  And the drunks seem to be around all day long, whether it is 10am, 2pm, or 8pm.  Thankfully, Vladivostok has a relatively warm, but short summer.  In the winter, drunkards freeze to death.

In one of the exhibition rooms of the main regional museums of Vladivostok, photographs and objects depict the original Chinatown of the city from the 19th century.  Nicknamed Millionka, the neighborhood inhabited by Chinese Settlers was just one of several ethnic communities in a city with only 20% ethnic Russian population.  Even among the Russian Settlers, the background was diverse, with Settlers coming in from not only the country's European heartland but also Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus.  Foreigners and Russians alike mingled.

One of the greatest thing about living in Asia is the wide availability of cooked foods.  Whether it is a major city or a rural town, the main streets of any sizable urban community in much of East, Southeast, and South Asia are dominated by endless arrays of both hole-in-the-wall eateries and fancy restaurants serving cuisines of different regions and countries, at a wide spectrum of prices and quality.  Getting food is mostly just a matter of going downstairs, walking for a few minutes, and paying an equivalent of a few dollars at most. 

In Vladivostok, it is difficult to miss the city's two most obvious landmarks.  A pair of suspension bridges, towering above the low-rise cityscape, connects its centuries-old downtown area with southern suburbs across the Golden Horn Bay, and mostly wilderness Russky Island further south with the southern suburbs.  Already nicknamed "Russian San Francisco" for the zigzaging bays intersecting the city, Vladivostok only reminds more of the north American city with the bridges that look conspicuously like the Golden Gate. 

For the Chinese small traders in Vladivostok, 2014 seems to have been a watershed year.  Years of boom turned to gloom as traditional wholesale markets dominated by Chinese traders emptied out.  Merchants speak of a massive exodus of compatriots, as they no longer have enough customers to justify high financial and personal social costs of importing their wares and residing in a foreign city.  Some merchants gave alarmingly high numbers of more than 2/3 of fellow traders returning to China after 2014.

The Asian Exhibition Gallery at the Tokyo National Museum features some of the most exquisite artefacts from Pacific islands to the depth of ancient Mesopotamia.  The display is often a potpourri of different things from different eras, discovered by different people and sourced in different ways.  But in all the confusing variety of the artefacts, the central message of the Gallery was never lost in each of the exhibit: that the various cultures of Asia, as represented by the artefacts present, serve as the cultural foundations of Japan as a country and people today.

In many Japanese family restaurants, there is something called a drink bar.  After paying one price for the drink bar, the customer is entitled to get as many refills as they want from its various vending machines, usually with dozens of juices and sodas.  Amazingly, since water (free for all patrons, including those who did not pay for the drink bar) is also located at the drink bar and is taken with the same plastic cups, technically restaurant staff cannot who paid for drink bar at all.

When a person hits 30, the topic of marriage and having children become more and more frequent as a conversation topic among friends.  Some undoubtedly extol the joys of the family and how children give meaning to the daily grind that is becoming increasingly monotonous .  Others complain about the unaffordably high costs of child-rearing, especially factoring the need for bigger residence, better food, and high-quality education that are pretty much a given if the child is to have any sufficient choice to grow up when both healthy mental and physical conditions.

In a previous post, this blog argued that patronage of the arts is often a privilege reserved for the wealthy cosmopolitan elites of the developed world.  The sheer cost of maintaining opera troupes, orchestra ensembles, and opera singers ensure that impoverished countries with little extra resources simply do not have the means to allow their populations to enjoy supposedly "higher" forms of entertainment that have been passed down and refined through generations.  The absurd concentration of classical concerts, operas, and plays in the developed world's major metropolises reflect such reality.

The clock strikes 2pm at a local art museum in the well-off Tokyo neighbrohood of Shirokanedai, and the floors seem to fill with more and more people.  The museum's eclectic collection of a permanent exhibition on the history of art deco in Japan and a special exhibition on French children's books is drawing what seem to be a highly varied but equally enthusiastic audience.  College students carefully reading the descriptions bump shoulders with housewives snapping photos and middle-aged men in suits.  From the looks of the crowds, it just does not look like a weekday afternoon in any way.

In the modern Japanese context, the concept of "shitamachi" often evokes a sense of longing, traditoon, history,and community.  Roughly translated as "lower neighborhoods," the shitamachi is often credited as the repository of Japanese urban history, where traditional crafts and businesses thrived, and a sense of "togetherness," long lost in the faceless confines of modern apartment and office blocks, can still be found.  Simply put, they represent a supposedly more wholesome Japan, where pressures of modern corporate world has yet to disturb the social fabric created by centuries of traditional communal life.

The Spaniards have a saying, "in Spain, even the atheists are Catholics."  No only do churches dominate townscapes, social norms derived from religious practices are inescapable in daily life of any person in Spain.  Hence, even those who do not believe in God follow social norms designed by those that do believe in Him.  The pervasiveness of subtle religious identity is simply subconsciously absorbed to such a degree that no one even really think about the religious origins of common everyday practices.  And the Spanish  carried their religiously embedded social practices to far-flung corners of the world like the Philippines .

In the quiet residential neighborhood of Fukagawa in Tokyo's eastern suburbs is a leafy children's playground.  Amidst the tall trees, slides, and swings favored by local children and parents is a building that looks oddly out of place.  A three-story tall stone building, built in the modernist Western style so favored in early 20th century Japan, greet park visitors.  The neoclassical facade of the building is imposing enough to be a centerpiece for a major history museum, yet, located in the little neighborhood park, it has to settle for a much mundane role: the neighborhood public library.

One summer of 2008, the author found himself on a bus from South Korea, crossing straight across the DMZ north into the North Korean city of Kaesong.  It was a different time, when hopes of reconciliation between the two Koreas was high.  Hyundai Asan, a subsidiary of the giant South Korean conglomerate ran the tour, and the bus passed through Kaesong Industrial Complex, the symbol of economic cooperation between the two sides.  While tourists are monitored per usual protocol, there were talks of a better future among the South Koreans used to living under liberal administrations.

Indians are justifiably proud of their cooking.  Scrumptious curries result from ingenious combinations of dozens of spices, discovered through centuries of trials and errors.  The delicious results are admired and adopted throughout the world.  The West, especially, has greatly supplemented its simplistic condiments of the past with the riches of Indian curries, resulting in what some Indians would refer to as an "upgrade" of "tasteless" Western cuisines.

The hot topic in international diplomacy is "trade wars."  The idea that a major economic power, by blockading access to certain economic resources to foreign firms, can somehow hurt foreign economic interests to such a degree that the foreign country in question has no choice but to make economic concessions.  The idea is rooted in a "zero-sum" mentality, whereby economic victory and resulting benefits of one country and its firms is correlated with economic defeat and economic costs of another country and their companies.

Imagine you are sitting in an academic conference, listening to presentations by scholars from a field for which you have little background knowledge.  Among the audience they are members who are from the same field as the presenters, and they listen intently to the presentations.  Because they were able to comprehend the contents so thoroughly, at the Q&A session, they ask extremely detailed questions about the research presented, and a highly technical conversation between the presenter and the inquirer follows.  You, people from other fields, neither understood the presentations nor the questions.

Honestly, keeping in touch with people is not a forte of the author's.  Despite having thousands of people that he acquainted (some deeply, many quite briefly and superficially) accumulated as friends on Facebook, he not only barely speak to any of them, but do not even bother to check up on what they share with their friends publicly.  The resulting lack of information is so extensive that he is even completely ignorant of big life events of theirs, like weddings, birth of children, moving to a different country, or changing jobs.  He can only hope that they know more about his current developments.

The previous post pointed out that foreign cultures that seem "cool" can an enthusiastic following among foreign audience partially because the negative social contexts that the "cool" culture are not transplanted in foreign countries.  There is the example of Chicanos, an inner-city Latino culture in the US often associated with gang violence and poverty, scrubbed clean of all the negatives in Japan, where followers, short of trying to become Chicanos themselves, attempt to channel the supposed central values of honor, respect, love, and family.

As part of the author's Japanese to English translation freelance work , he is currently working on transcribing some Japanese interviews into English.  Interestingly, the contents are not of business or mainstream entertainment, as market demand would usually expect, but stories of a niche community of Japanese interested in aspects of the Chicano culture.  For people who do not know, Chicano refers to inner-city Mexican-American culture, a distinct immigrant culture that straddles the supposedly "pure" Mexican and "pure" American cultures of the two countries' cultural mainstream.

It is hard to believe, but Tsuruoka, a coastal city of little more than 100,000 people in Yamagata Prefecture, has been designated a UNESCO City of Gastronomy since 2014.  And the designation really shows in the local food.  From locally harvested rice, fresh seafood from Sea of Japan, to locally branded beef, chicken, pork, and vegetables, the ingredients are of top-quality.  They are cooked in what are countlessly emphasized as truly local ways, steeped in local traditions, and supposedly unique and not found anywhere else in the country.  Local chefs and hotel staff are undoubtedly proud of the culinary tradition.

Undertaking a popular political movement against a government backed by military force is often not the easiest of tasks, and the task is particularly difficult if the government is a military junta with no hesitation to use force to keep itself in power.  Organizers of political movements, with no military force of its own, inevitably come up against the barrels of guns when confronting the state, often with devastating consequences that results in endless bloodshed.  The state, fearful of losing moral authority and political legitimacy as murderers of unarmed civilians, would of course like to suppress news of such confrontations.

Every unplanned trip has its unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes those unforeseen circumstances can get quite costly.  And there was certainly one of those on this particular trip through the Silk Road.  On the way back from Yerevan, the Armenian capital to Tokyo, the cheapest way would have been to fly through to Russia and then to Japan.  The next cheapest, involving non-Russian transitions, would have been costlier by a margin of close to 300 usd.

The movie Black Panther has been all the rage back in the US for quite some time now, particularly among the black community given its depiction of a wealthy, confident, powerful black country not suffering under the yoke of Western colonialism.  While the concept of Afro-centrism or Afro-futurism as many have termed it, is worthy of note, a bigger theme that goes beyond race comes to mind when watching the movie.  That is the question of whether and how a wealthy nation engages its poorer neighbors.

It is unsurprising that in many places of the former Soviet Union, people (and middle aged men in particular) love their alcohol.  The winters are cold and long, so shots of vodka are great for keeping warm and whirling away the long nights.  The wide availability and cheap cost of making and buying the stuff make them friendly on the wallet just as it is on the senses.  The public's indulgence has created a very strong distilling culture, in which high quality alcohol is even made at home with different fruits.

The immigration official at the Armenian land border with Georgia looked quite hostile.  "What were you doing in Azerbaijan?" He asked rather angrily as he flipped through the passport to find the unexpected Azerbaijani entry and exit stamps.  When he received the usual "tourism" answer, he was simply unconvinced, deciding to take a copy of the passport page with the Azerbaijani stamps before allowing the passport holder into the country.

The little town of Gori an hour outside the Georgian capital of Tbilisi is mostly known for one thing today.  It is the birthplace of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.  To most outsiders today, Stalin is known mostly for his unpredictable political purges and disastrous collectivization efforts, leaving hundreds of senior Soviet leaders and millions of its citizens dead.  But in his hometown, Stalin is still celebrated, not least for his contribution to defeating Nazism and turning the USSR into an industrial power within a generation.

Just a few days ago, the author found himself discussing how to increase number of tourists in Azerbaijan with a few locals in an underground bar in Baku.  The economy was in dire straits as the GDP dropped along with oil prices.  The government's supposed diversification to non-oil sectors involved little beyond investing in infrastructure to increase exports of natural gas.  Tourism, for a city as beautiful as Baku, deserves to be one of the main sources of income in a diversified economy.

The restaurant does not look like much from the street level.  With a little "restaurant" sign pointing at a dimly lit set of stairs leading down to a basement of a otherwise commercial building filled with fashion shops.  But as soon as the set of glass doors dividing the stairs from the streets were opened, the loud sounds from down below were inescapable.  Simultaneously, almost disco-like lights from the basement give off the impression that one is entering a nightclub rather than a restaurant.

At the airport in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital city, the author found himself briefly unable to enter the country due to misunderstanding of the country's visa-on-arrival rules.  The immigration staff not only helped him step by step through the process, he also did so with smiles, jokes, and even free chocolate to help him get over the three hour wait at 11pm.  In the subsequent taxi ride from the airport to city center, the taxi driver got lost but remained good natured, joking about how streets shouldn't have same names.

Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, is in many ways the city of its president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.  Having came up with the idea of creating a brand new city to replace Almaty, the economic hub of more than a million people, as capital of the country, he certainly did not hesitate to put his own imprints on the city itself.  The city's new airport, university, several other institutions are unabashedly named after him, while the main museums all have sections exclusively dedicated to his life and politics.

The Mongolian names for dumplings ( buuz ) and restaurants ( guanz ) sounds conspicuously like their northern Chinese equivalents 包子 ( baozi ) and 館子 ( guanzi ).  Simultaneously the southern Chinese name for the same dumplings 饅頭 ( mantou ) made to both Korea as mandu and Central Asia as manty .  The favorite pulled noodles of Lanzhou 拉麵 ( lamian ) found itself to Central Asia as laghman just as it went to Korea as ramyeon and Japan as ramen .

The center piece of the central park of Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, is a gigantic statue of Lenin, flanked by memorials to Soviet soldiers crowned with the classic hammer and the sickle.  Various government buildings in the city, leftover from their prior usage as regional administrative offices for the Soviet Union, are still marked with obvious Soviet insignias despite obvious attempts by the current Kyrgyz state to hide them under contemporary national symbols like the country's flag.

When the Soviet Union found itself in power, it not only took over some vibrant cities in its territories, it also quickly worked to create brand new ones to suit needs of the planned economies and regional administration.  Villages are expanded into cities based on a consistent set of designs that adhere to Soviet philosophies of how cities should look like and function.  Based on the set of designs, many similar cities are created in the Soviet sphere of influence.

"Things are different here," the local driver nonchalantly quipped, "the rules that govern the rest of China simply does not work here in Xinjiang." As the driver took a drive in search of hotels in Urumqi, the metropolitan capital of Xinjiang, he began to remark on just how years of terrorist threat changed how locals in the city and the wider region live their daily lives.  After a few hours in China's volatile western reaches, the restrictions can easily be felt.

In some ways, the very concept of time is a social construct.  After all, it is by sheer convention of the centuries past that humans decided that, for instance, 7am means early morning and 7pm means dinner time.  The number could have been entirely something else had those who were in charge of creating standard time notations chose otherwise.  And because humans are so used to the idea of 7am and 7pm means the same thing everywhere, there came to be the idea of time zones.

There is a little village in front of the famed Crescent Lake in the middle of the desert near the city of Dunhuang in Western China.  To take advantage of the convenient location to the famous tourist spot, the villagers have been busy setting up one home stay after another.  By the time the author rolled around in February of 2018, practically every house in the village operates an inn, a restaurant, a tourist-oriented supermarket, or a small tour agency. 

When one crosses a country as large as China by rail, there are many opportunities to interact with locals.  Three days and a couple of thousands of miles bring together many complete strangers in the public space that is the railway system.  In the interactions is commonly and conspicuously missing among the hundreds of railway staff, bunk mates on sleeper carriages, and all the people working and making their living around railway stations.  That is the complete absence of greetings exchanged.

From those who may not know, the author is actually ethnic Mongol on his mother's side.  But as ethnic Mongols from the Chinese Northeast, his mother's family has very little connection to the Mongolian nation and culture.  They have not spoken the Mongolian language for a couple of generations and do not even know their proper Mongol names.  It is better get in touch with that little understood Mongolian heritage that the author decided to show up to Ulaanbaatar and meet with "real" Mongols who can at least superficially tell him what is it like to be really Mongol.

In front of the massive dormitory complex that the author lives in seaside Tokyo , there is a pedestrian crossing that leads to the park connecting the complex with one of the nearest metro stations.  Given that relatively few people uses the pedestrian crossing, it is not automatically activated.  Only by pressing the button on a pole next to the crossing would the streetlight turn green, allowing people to cross.  Without pressing button, the light will remain red forever.  The bright red button is quite visible, located conveniently right next to the curbside below the pedestrian light itself, with a bright yellow box with a human drawing.

One of the lectures the author took at the University of Tokyo makes a great point about the idea of rich countries hiring foreign laborers from poor countries to fulfill supposed shortages in labor. The lecture argues that the supposed shortages are socially constructed, where the mentality of the general populace changes to one of complete dependence after they taste the ease of paying relatively little money to foreigners to do their dirty unwanted jobs. Society has become used to having foreigners fill the very bottom of employment hierarchy.

Wulai is probably the easiest place to find a bit of nature outside the bustling metropolis that is Taipei.  The little aborigine hot spring town two hours south of the city has enough attractions to keep a traveler busy for most of the day.  Some nice shops, beautiful rivers and waterfall, as well as hot springs to soak in.  The air is cleaner than the city, and the ever-green mountains surrounding the town provide a beautiful background for some walks.  It is only unfortunate that not many foreign travelers know about the place, especially when compared to the famed day-trip sight Jiufen.

Even for someone who does not follow Chinese popular culture too closely, the author cannot escape the recent news of the government banning any display of hip-hop culture on television.  After the CCP decided that the subculture of underground rap that is gaining some mainstream popularity in the past months can supposedly instigate crime, take youths away from proper, healthy values as citizens, often based on so-called vulgar lyrics of rap songs, international news outlets have ensured that lovers of hip-hop and rap music, especially in the US, deepen their already steep hatred for the Chinese government and society .

After years of working in an ecommerce startup, the author has come to miss one thing that dominates the office landscape of tech startups: the high-rising stool chair.  In lieu of cubicles with their low desks and chairs that characterize established corporations, tech startups prefer a much more flexible arrangement where people are always on the move, working wherever they can find space to put down their laptops.  To facilitate the mobile nature of fast-moving employees, startups employ a series of these high-rising chairs, alongside equally high small tables.

Digital nomads who roam the world working on their laptops often makes an interesting claim.  Yes,their wages may be much lower, but by limiting their materialistic needs (including houses, cars, excess clothing, among others common to more sedentary life), they not only can survive on less income, but also set aside enough to travel the world in the process.  The basic conclusion of their tried-and-tested nomadic lifestyle is that fewer material possessions lead to a less expensive life.  Over the past years of traveling the world for different jobs, the author has come to agree with such digital nomads in the basic conclusion.

Japanese salarymen are a hardworking bunch.  After hours of toiling away in the corporate cubicles, they often have to put up with hours more of semi-mandatory drinking after work "officially" ends just to build necessary (?) camaraderie with coworkers to make sure work goes smoothly.  With sleep time taken away by the drinking and the drunken stupor afterwards, it is no wonder that many salarymen feel exhausted during the day, at their corporate cubicles.  Thankfully, corporate Japan is also highly forgiving of its workers' tiredness during the day, allowing them to openly take naps at their workspaces.

As a Master's student, the author did not consider himself to be the intellectual type.  The days of "studying" in London was spent mostly on the road, "studying" by observing Europe and its sociocultural realities on the ground firsthand.  That only new year spent in Europe, for instance, for instance, happened to be in Sarajevo , far from the libraries and study rooms of LSE where he was supposedly preparing for exams.  He felt that the greatest opportunity granted to students is having plenty of free time, useful for personal explorations that need not to be immersion in books.