Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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.