Japan

Prof Tommy Koh published an essay entitled Why I Believe in Japan recently. In it, he praised the Japanese people for their resilience, unity and civic-mindedness, and attributed their survival through Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster to the same.

Yet, at the same time, he mentioned that it was time for Japan to 'open up and embrace the world'.

I do not disagree with his assessment.

I have spent a little time in Japan, and found that theirs is a culture that was founded on very strong traditions. Every japanese that I had met was excruciatingly polite, some to the point that I was wondering if I was being mocked or pitied. There also appeared to be certain unspoken signals which passed between, which I, as a 'gaijin' was unable to decipher.

And despite my ability to understand (in a limited fashion) kanji and (in an even more limited fashion) hiragana and katagana, I was often lost whenever I tried to find my way in the Tokyo railway system. According to friends of mine from Kyushu who were with me then, they had a smiliar problem. It was the system and its layout that made it complicated, sometimes beyond the explanations available on the maps.

Then there was the culture shock that I received at Akihabara. Needless to say, the presence of young women dressed in diaphanous replicas of schoolgirl uniforms was unexpected. Yet, everyone elsed passed them by as if they were a normal sight. Perhaps they were, just not to me! And imagine how I felt when I visited Harajuku after that!

To a tourist, or someone taking a course there, these were all little quirks of the country that made for good stories. But it also shows how closed off Japan has become. It is as if its people live in a separate world. Even Tokyo is distanced from the other parts of the country.

So, yes. Japan needs to open up further. And perhaps it will.

But not in my lifetime, I think.