Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The common people are never expected to know the truth and will easily believe any form of the "truth" supplied by information sources that they trust. The media, of all countries and ideologies, act on the belief that its loyal constituents will follow them 100% when they post news articles that present the on-the-ground facts in certain perspectives so that even the most "facts-only" pieces somehow contain sharp and twisted opinions of the editors. The inability of the common people to obtain the truth is exactly why the media can think in this particular way with confident impunity, and it is why governments and political groups seek to control and mange the information as released by the media to the public . But, in times of extraordinary events, even the most trusted and seemingly benign sources come under serious scrutiny, casting a doubt upon their true intentions for portraying certain events only in certain ways. The Quake and its aftermath in Japan has

The blood donation center was a sight that could have brought a man to tears. People, with absolutely nothing to gain other than pain and physical weakness braved hour-long waits to have thick needles stuck in their arms. But all of them still managed to put on smiles on their unnaturally whitish faces after 400ml were ruthlessly sucked out from them by a shaking, noisy machine that only made the experience seem more cold-hearted... So I decided to spent this morning at a blood donation center in downtown Tokyo. The building the center was situated is home to both the blood donation center on the 6th floor and a Japanese passport application and processing center on the 2nd floor. Interesting enough, the lines at both of those centers were equally long, with people patiently waiting more than an hour to do what they went there to do. Of course, the news on the TV in both of those places were equally grim. The fear of nuclear disaster is escalating as doubts about whether Tokyo El

Yesterday, work abruptly ended before noon. In Sales Development, the original plan to deal with inbound calls from customers and shop owners (expected to be many as none of the goods are really be shipped) for the entire day was suddenly scrapped after the 部長 came in and informed us that were are going to be "waiting/working at home" (自宅待機/勤務) until further notice. When somebody actually gathered enough guts to ask what does it mean by 自宅待機/勤務, the awkward answer that came back was something along the lines of "think about how Rakuten can improve services"...

The Japanese and the Chinese often refer to a concept of 国民性 (roughly translated as "national character), which states that citizens (and long-time residents) of a particular country share certain similarities in behavior because they have been residing in that particular country for a long time. This concept tends to be much broader than that of "customs" used in the West to denote practices shared by people of a particular culture. The Chinese and Japanese have such a strong faith in this concept of 国民性 that in attempts to find it out about other countries, their "research" often border racism in their incessant desires to generalize the patterns and trends of different people of one country into a formulaic one-fits-all stereotype. For example, just after meeting a few Indians in the company, some Japanese colleagues made no hesitation to talk about "those Indians ALWAYS do..." But perhaps the one instance when this idea of 国民性 actually does make