Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

I was eating mochi for lunch when I started wondering how the word mochi managed to enter the English language despite the product being not so well-acquainted among the average native speaker of English. The word itself is completely meaningless to someone without exposure to Japanese or the wider East Asian culinary tradition, a simple transliteration of the Japanese term for "gluttonous rice cake" that has, in some corner of the Western world, symbolize an exotic snack almost exclusively, despite it being around for thousands of years and used in dishes sweet and savory, for proper meals and desserts.

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.

For a publication that is known for supporting liberal causes, most important of all the respect of human rights around the world, the Economist can be highly pragmatic. The magazine argued for institutionalizing international migrants as second class citizens in their host societies to placate the worst tendencies of anti-immigration xenophobia that has made headlines in many recipient countries. Setting aside the discussion on whether systematically introducing bureaucratic and economic inequalities between migrants and "natives" contradicts the principle of universal human rights, one should not doubt that the Economist  values practical solutions over lofty ideals in dealing with real-world issues.