Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

After spending months denying that COVID-19 is a big issue in Tanzania and promising that God will save the country from the epidemic, Tanzanian president John Magufuli was suddenly pronounced dead. His death only comes weeks after his public disappearance, leading to speculation that he was airlifted to Kenya for urgent medical treatment. More than his denial of the seriousness of COVID, Western media made sure to include references to his attacks on Tanzanian democratic institutions and opposition politicians since coming to power in 2015 in their obituaries of Magufuli, implying that his death provided a chance for Tanzania to reverse its democratic decline.

"No Masks, No Service." As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, the wearing of surgical masks in public has increasingly a global norm, spreading beyond the confines of East Asia where it has been used for decades to mark colds and other potentially contagious illnesses. As scientists around the world shift from recommending not just essential health workers, but everyone to wear masks, their ubiquity, and level of general acceptance have increased, despite some continued resistance.

As Tokyo declares the second state of emergency for the ever-increasing number of cases of COVID-19 in the greater metropolitan area, one of the focal points of the lasting long-term damage from the policy may be education. In a nation that is already facing a steadily declining and aging population, with an ever-lower number of births before COVID, any government signaling that the pandemic is not completely under control is only going to dampen the enthusiasm of its young citizens reproducing. The possibilities of offsprings facing interrupted education and a not-so-vibrant economy in which jobs are difficult to find will only further the deterrence.

"Digital transformation" has become a hot trend in the non-IT business world in the past few years. As a slew of software firms come to maturity peddling productivity-enhancing programs for more legacy firms, the legacy firms have come to grips with a renewed sense of crisis that they need to adopt more IT in their day-to-day operations just to keep up with tech firms that can achieve so much value with relatively few employees. The idea of using the tech firms' own products to help retool the likes of manufacturers and traditional brick-and-mortar service operators is becoming not just mainstream but urgent as they adapt to the work-from-home world of COVID-19.

When people talk about dynamic centers of future industries in Japan outside Tokyo, Tsukuba, a town some 45 minutes by train north of Tokyo, gets frequent mentions. Home to high rankin, tech focused University of Tsukuba, the national space agency JAXA, and various state-funded science research organizations, the town is supposed to use its human capital in STEM to propel a series of successful tech startups, just as Stanford and Berkeley help to fuel Silicon Valley with human talent.

I recently had an opportunity to speak to a group of new university graduates just joining a particular Japanese firm, as part of the company's initial training for new hires. As an icebreaker to get to know the group a bit better, I asked each member of the group about why s/he decided to join this company. The answers, to my sheer disappointment, was extremely underwhelming. One mentioned that the company is big and stable, another said that the firm's older employees all seemed to be very friendly, and scariest of all, one person bluntly mentioned that there is no particular reason that she chose the firm over others.

The prediction about the potential death toll from the coronavirus has become grimmer by the day. With experts in the US predicting that the virus may kill as much as 200,000 people within the country, extrapolation of the prediction to the entire world would see millions perish as the virus continue to rage uncontrollably in corners of the planets that are less capable of implementing measures designed to suppress excessive face-to-face contact among residents without their suffering grave economic consequences. The permanent loss of a significant portion of the world's productive labor force is now not unimaginable.

For frequent viewers of Japanese TV shows, the widespread use of blurring people and whole neighborhoods out can be quite noticeable. When shows take to the streets, interviewing people or following them to their homes and workplaces, everyone and everything that are not the subjects of the shows is pixelated to mask identities. The widespread use of visual disguise is a result of strict Japanese laws on privacy protection, which require that individuals only be displayed after receiving explicit consent from them to do so. For a crowded street, asking the passerby one by one is impracticable, so better blur the whole thing out.

Recently, the world has the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto popularly elected leader of Myanmar, hit another low at the Hague the past week with her highly anticipated hearing on the country's treatment of its Muslim refugee issue. Aung San Suu Kyi likely lost the last of her supporters in the West by refusing to apologize for the state's role in systematically driving the Rohingya out of the country through rape and murder, instead only recognizing the excess of some soldiers and that the overall situation is "complex." She made no mention of the Rohingya by name and refuse to recognize them as legal citizens of the country.

A term that is frequently used when Japan talks about foreign countries and individuals is 親日, roughly translatable to "friendly to the Japanese/Japan" or more directly, "pro-Japanese." Often, the usage of the term crops up in discussions concerning international exchange at a grassroots level. A "pro-Japanese" country, the narrative goes, is much more likely to be friendly and helpful to Japanese individuals traveling or living in the country. Local citizens, additionally, would be much more receptive toward learning about Japanese culture and adopting at least some aspects of it in their daily lives.

At first, the show seems to be just another Japanese TV show that features a bunch of well-known comedians and other celebrities sampling good food around the country. For this episode of the typical "variety show," the group headed to Yokohama Chinatown to find the best-tasting and best-valued Chinese buffets in the area. The hour-long show featured the group going to four different restaurants to try out shrimp, shark fin, spicy stir-frys, and gourmet fried rice. There were plenty of mouth-watering close-up shots of the food and plenty of celebrities talking about how good the food is. So far so good.

In recent years, major train stations in Tokyo have been increasingly home to a new type of poster. Amidst ubiquitous ads for commercial products and services are government-issued notices encouraging citizens to look out for terrorist activities. Frequently highlighting scared citizens at the front and center, these posters call upon citizens to report to the local police on any sort of suspicious persons and activities, under various slogans that state that "preventing terrorism is the responsibility of all citizens." Highly trafficked train stations, as the posters imply, ought to be the focus of vigilant citizens.

It almost seems deliberate just how Joker is timed to match the real-world protests happening around the world. The recently premiered film that traces the origin of the most famous villain of Batman features a growing tension of the rich and the poor in a Gotham that has seen public services fall apart as conservative politicians cut back government funding to supposedly help the poor stand on their own feet. The movie begins with one mentally problematic man's journey to navigate a city that seems to be turning its back on people like him by the day but ends with thousands of anarchists taking to the streets to destroy the physical symbols of the powerful and the rich monopolizing the power to dedicate the city's future.

On this second day after turning 31, I want to belatedly celebrate the beginning of the tenth year of keeping up with this blog. In hard numbers, what started a place to jot down my random thoughts straight out of college has gained 200,000 pageviews from 95,000 visitors. It really is not that much and much more can be done, I would admit, to attract more visitors and readers. Pictures to go along with the text would certainly be nice, and a consistent theme that keeps people coming back for more information would certainly be a great source for additional pageviews.

With a dominance of recruitment agencies when it comes to people switching jobs mid-career, Japan"s labor market is already quite unique in the supposedly egalitarian, information-transparent Internet era. But, paradoxically, the dominance of professional recruiters also create a semblance of uniformity in the job market, by standardizing the image of what is considered a desirable employee. Without explicit intention to do so, decades of norms within the recruiter industry has led to more or less standardized codes on who is considered more desirable as employees in the minds of recruiters, often irrespective of employers' actual needs.

Collecting taxes can be a very expensive exercise for any country. For income and sales taxes, legions of investigators are needed to make sure that the sales and incomes that are being taxed are not being understated to depress the overall tax revenue. For some countries, further efforts are expended to make sure not too many people are being paid under the table and not too many things are sold without proper receipts. Inherence, investment, and real estate taxes can be even more tedious, as specialists are needed to value illiquid assets, whether they be real estate, antiques, or paintings, to get the fair amount of tax revenues.

As protestors on the streets of Hong Kong continued their street battles with the police to demand the withdrawal of a controversial extradition bill, there have been some extraordinarily cynical comments about the ongoing events and their limited impact on the forcefulness of the Chinese government. The gist of the cynics' argument is that the protests are only likely to halt the inevitable passing of the bill by a few years, as the Chinese government and its puppet-like representatives in Hong Kong back off temporarily, only to move forward again more discreetly and in another form, under new leadership.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings that marked the beginning of the end for the Axis powers in World War II. As one of the Allied powers, China undoubtedly celebrates this occasion in its own muted ways. The sacrifice of more than 150,000 soldiers who landed on the murderous beaches of northern France was the first step in ending the more than a decade of warfare China was fighting, largely by itself, against Japan on the other side of the world. D-Day, for China, is the necessary precursor to the end of the war celebrations, of which is certainly goes all out for every year.

Walk around the backstreets of the main tourist cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva in Uzbekistan, and one would never be too far away from a "hotel" or "hostel" sign hanging from a building. On some streets, it almost seem as if every single building has been converted into family guesthouses seeking to get in on the roaring foreign tourist trade. Along with restaurants and to a lesser extent, tour companies and independent guides, tourist revenue is trickling down the most entrepreneurial members of the local society.

One of Uzbekistan's most evocative sights is Registan, a trio of 14th century madrasas that are famed for their beautiful blue tile work and geometric decorations. As Uzbekistan open up to foreign tourists, it is becoming the major draw to the city of Samarkand, a major Silk Road city frequently mentioned in Western classics on the topic of Central Asia. And sure enough, on a Saturday, the complex is full of tourists from across Asia, Europe, and America getting a firsthand look at the famed destination.