Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

East Asia is known to worship flight attendants. Chosen to be young, beautiful, and cosmopolitan, it is a group of people that many young women aspire to be a part of, and many men look forward to meeting when they are on planes, and date when they are off. The blatant objectification of flight attendants, as I argued in an opinion piece back in 2017, holds back efforts to advance gender equality and to allow people to have a realistic view of what flight attendants essentially are: overworked servants in cramped spaces that have been over-glamorized by society in a way that attract applicants to an otherwise unglamorous job.

The National Museum of Japanese History is a sprawling complex in Sakura, in the hinterlands of Chiba prefecture west of Tokyo. Its semi-rural location perhaps allowed the government and academic facilities that together set up a building complex that, albeit briefly, goes through the entirety of Japanese history from the pre-historic to the post-World War II era. It is an ambitious project challenging for both the curators and visitors alike. I started my tour of the facility at 11:45 am and had to rush through the last two sections of the museum just to make our exit before it closed at 5 pm. 

As the global vaccination efforts against COIVD continue steadily, governments are preparing for how to systematically handle international travel in the post-COVID world. Aside from putting in place measures that detect new cases from incoming travelers, facilities to quarantine, and creating institutions responsible for continued monitoring, governments around the world are seeing a new "vaccination passport" as a way to ensure safe travel on a large scale while minimizing risks of a new contagion. The argument goes that if there is some sort of global standard for assurances of a traveler's inoculation from epidemic diseases, costly prevention measures would become obsolete.

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.

In a small coastal town three hours drive from Tokyo, a beautiful two-lane wind through seaside hills overlooking remote beaches barely visited by tourists. Mostly uninhabited, the winding road is home to few occasional gated housing compounds, cordoned off from public views with high concrete walls and dense canopies of palm trees. Only by walking higher up the hills, away from the road, one can see what are inside the mysterious compounds. They are luxury private homes with large balconies facing the ocean, flanked by Mercedes and BMWs, fronted by meticulously tended gardens, standing in what seems to be the middle of nowhere with a great view.

It's rather odd for me to hear people question my Japanese-ness even implicitly in Japan. Granted, I am by no means Japanese by ethnicity or nationality, but speaking Japanese without much of a foreign accent while having the looks to fit straight into the mainstream, I am accustomed to people assuming that I am Japanese as long as they don't ask for my real name or a copy of my identity card.

When I first heard about the massive explosion that obliterated the port of Beirut, my first thoughts went to the small West African country of Gambia, where I jetted off back in 2012 as a grad student in London. To my surprise, the country was filled with Lebanese residents. The Lebanese dominated the local economy, running everything from local shops selling imported goods to large logistics companies that made international trade to that remote corner of the world possible. Locals seem to be accustomed to the Lebanese presence, established over course generations of migration as part of European colonization.

The "Go to Travel" campaign was supposed to symbolize the return of Japanese tourism. In an industry that has been battered by a 99.9% decline in the number of foreign tourists, the government-initiated campaign promised to save restaurant and hotel operators around the country by subsidizing domestic tourists to make up for the shortfall. Yet, just a few days before the campaign was due to start, the government announced that trip to and from Tokyo, the epicenter of COVID transmissions in Japan, will be excluded as a target for subsidies, leading to a surge of cancelations of hotel and tour bookings.

At first sight, the massive two-floor Patagonia store in the heart of Tokyo sounds like a place where the fashionistas of the world would spurn. Ceiling-to-floor posters extol the value of independence and ruggedness, as beautiful men and women are pictured cooking, kayaking, and hiking in the resolute mountains of, well, Patagonia. The men and women in the posters are simply dressed, with durable dark-colored, simply designed coats, jackets, and pants, a far cry from the vibrant colors and thoughts put into the arrangements among clothes worn by the passersby on Tokyo's high streets.

As the coronavirus epidemic continues to spread around the world, moving abroad to improve career prospects may be the last thing that many people are thinking about. But individual careers do not take a break just because parts of the world economy are temporarily shut down to help suppress the further spreading of COVID-19. Just as it was before the emergence of COVID, moving to a different country for work may be extremely helpful for career development. In particular, in the post-COVID world, Japan and South Korea may be two locations that prospective job seekers should examine.

Tokyoites, living in their train- and bus-filled metropolis, often take for granted that getting from Point A to B within the city takes no more than a few minutes of wait at the local train station or bus stop. Even in the depth of the coronavirus epidemic, the city's trains and buses have continued to run their regular schedules, with little changes beyond keeping windows open for better air circulation. Judging from half-empty trains even during what would normally be considered rush hour, revenues from collecting fares have undoubtedly seen a significant decrease, but that has not changed the operations schedules by much.

At first sight, the program seemed like just another travel-themed variety how all too common on Japanese TV in recent years. A group of entertainers, actors, and comedians alike, watched and commented on a video that showed a Japanese chef traveling around the world, checking out local restaurants, and going through the menus. As it is so often the case, the guests at the TV studio bantered about foreign stereotypes and politely but superficially discussed the exotic nature of countries that they frankly have no wishes to ever step onto in their lifetimes.

For the Japanese and foreigners alike, Japan is known as a land of hot springs... Perhaps too many hot springs. In a land where people have too few holidays and young workers faces decreasing starting salaries and increasing uncertainties in their job security, coaxing more people to far away from major cities even for a weekend trip is proving more and more difficult. And for those who are looking for an ideal dip in naturally warm waters, there are just too many hotels and hot spring towns fighting for attention using ever more ingenious ways.

The elite in every country, first and foremost, is defined by money. Your normal middle-class person cannot fathom the amount of money a member of the elite has. It is not just about the ability to buy whatever material goods or services without having to worry about budgeting to not run out of money. Instead, there is so much money in their bank accounts that they can buy up entire companies, start brand-new ones, and pay to make governments and laws work for them so that they can continue to retain and increase the amount of their wealth across multiple generations.

The atmosphere is absolutely relaxing. An extra-long wooden sofa with plump fluffy cushion in a leafy courtyard. Playing in the background are acoustic covers of some of Japan's most famous pop songs from the 1990s. Next to the sofa is a stand serving up carbonated blueberry juice and coffee from Myanmar. Customers lounging around on the sofa are quietly sipping their drinks while reading copies of artistic magazines describing the most innovative architecture and delicious specialty food stores around Tokyo under a windy but sunny cloudless sky.

In front of the Harajuku train station in Tokyo is a busy shopping arcade called Takeshita Street. During the 90s, this was the epicenter of a major fashion counterculture in Japan. Young women with tanned skin, boldly colored hair and gaudy clothing strutted down the street, presenting themselves as the antithesis of a mainstream culture that believed in the beauty of fair (read: white) skin, jet-straight shiny black hair, and cute blouses with toned-down designs. The eponymous "Harajuku style" became known worldwide as a streak of individualism in a Japanese society perceived as fundamentally conformist .

One of the oddest things about traveling in smaller towns in Japan is the lack of family guesthouses. While national hotel chains are present throughout the country's many towns and cities, they are able to keep prices relatively high because consumers, outside major tourist attractions, have few choices other than staying in those national chains. And considering that big chains will only invest in massive multistory facilities that are consistent with their brand images, little towns with little out-of-town traffic simply will not be considered for future investments.

On one of the major downtown boulevards of Tashkent is the Central Asian headquarters of Huawei, the now highly controversial Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer. The blue glass-tower, split into an A and a B wing, both emblazoned with giant red flower logo of the firm, are truly conspicuous on the streets of the Uzbek capital dominated by faceless concrete apartment blocks. It is around noon, and Uzbek employees, company IDs hanging from their necks, stream out of the towers front doors for lunch.

The Uzbek word for "hello" and "thank you" are respectively "salam alaykhum" and "rakhmat," but in part of Tashkent, one will only hear "zdrastvuyte" and "spasiba," their Russian equivalents. Bring a foreigner makes hearing Russian more likely, as it is the "high" language used for communication with foreigners (just like French in Arabic-speaking Morocco), but unlike Morocco, many people in Uzbekistan, even if they are not ethnically Russian, choose to speak among themselves in the high language.

One thing that was great about the Soviet Union is just how much effort the state put in to popularize some of the canons of Western classical arts. From ballet to opera to orchestra, classical arts, within the limited, non-political forms, thrived even in the remotest parts of the USSR, helping to spread their reach and training a cadre of excellent performers, who found ready audiences among the urban elites, who had little alternatives for entertainment.