Desi in Japan..(A 70% fact-free post).

My earliest memories of a brush with Japanese smartness dates some years back, during a 5-day long contract negotiation meeting with a Japanese organization.

Taken in by their non-stop courtesies at the airport, I had almost started feeling sorry for the folks from the customer’s team, and had to sternly remind myself that I need to go slow and easy on these?gentle?people.

To cut a long story short, by the time these?gentle?people were done with me, I was too relieved to just grab my bag , flee to the airport and save my life.

Right from their faces that defy the slightest hint of emotions (?rage, impatience, joy, anxiety - you name it !?), to their long “Asahi” & “Sake” nights when they would invariably get you drunk half dead (till you wobble back and end up at some other hotel room door, if not?some other hotel itself, at 3 in the morning?), to them nodding sagely at every suggestion of yours during the meeting?without agreeing to a single one, to their lawyers who know the sweetest way to say F.O. (using the kindest of words) and counter your own lawyers with unbeatable (& devoid of any facial expression) logic, these meetings can take a heavy toll on your health (?& sanity). I have heard unsubstantiated rumors of people overhearing Japanese sounding cuss words originating from my side of the bed at night for several months after that. (?Okay, I was exaggerating here. But I guess you get the drift)

There are mainly three ways in which Japan continues to outsmart the rest of the world, while the western world still keeps underestimating its might.

A. Salvaging the core?- The first , of course, is the Japanese economy. It’s been quite a number of years that the Japanese have very smartly devalued their currency and gone into a severe & sustained deflation, thus out of competitive eyesight of the west. So while every other country was scrambling to get their currency to inflate , Japan did just the reverse. As a result, being a foreign investor in Japan would mean a never-ending nightmare of calculations, conversions and confusion. So you would never succeed making any progress if you wanted to go and do business in Japan. And even if you did manage to reach there, you wouldn’t go far because most of the Japanese organizations are somehow interrelated and trace their origins to joint families at the top , and hence you can never break into that intense entry barrier which is caused by their high suspicion of outsiders . To make matters worse, the Japanese are some kind of super humans who can work nonstop for 18 hours at a stretch, sitting on the same chair without looking up, without speaking a single word to the next guy (seated one feet away), or even going to the restroom (?forget about taking a cigarette break). Such rigid discipline needs a robust constitution and acquiring such robust constitutions means that they never fall sick, or even generally die till they are about 110 years old. So while the whole world rants about a growing young population, here you have a country-full of super-fit 70 and 80 year old wise oldies running an economy that is beyond comprehension of the 20 and 30-somethings from other parts of the world. Also, the absence of inflation for decades has freed up the Yen for past many years, and as a result of that, you have a host of Japanese financing agencies that are funding projects in the developing world at steep interest rates. Besides tying those projects and their long term debts into their own purse, these agencies also ensure that only Japanese companies get the contracts within the project, making it a win-win for them in every respect. So if you start checking seriously , you might discover that your neighborhood power plant, your father-in-law’s BMW and your family jewels now actually belong to Japan.

B. Competitive intelligence?- The Japanese have very cleverly unleashed two deadly weapons on the rest of the world. The first, of course, are the Japanese cartoons –?Shin Chan and Doremon, which they have especially created for other countries . This is the Japanese way of sabotaging the next generation of their competitor nations by inspiring them into becoming either a lost boy like Nobita , or like the ill-mannered upstart, Shin Chan. And while you are going crazy trying to drag your kid away from the TV set and from Shin Chan’s influence, there is a busload of Japanese tourists moving quietly around your city, each one of them taking pictures of anything and everything, pictures which they take back home, thus recording every nook and corner of your territory , making strategies on how to acquire the remaining free land (if ?there is any still left, that is?) and start manufacturing something (motorbikes, cars, airplanes, robots, customized In-laws etc) at subsidized labor rates, which they would then sell in the US which is understandably going through its worst ever crisis in trying to defend General Motors from the onslaught of the Japanese, hopelessly combating Japanese manufacturing costs in Hisar (Haryana, India) with American costs in Detroit. And while American leaders are blissfully distracted and focused on China & India , the Japanese have quietly sealed their manufacturing leadership position there while their kids are being groomed by the best of both worlds.

C. Culinary warfare?– If , by any chance , you have managed to defend yourself from?A?and?B?above, you just cannot escape Japanese food if you want to live respectfully in the modern world. Japanese food is the greatest fad that has hit the modern world since blue jeans & the Oprah Winfrey Show. So unless you are bit by the Sushi bug and unless you are forever gushing about the awesomeness of Sushi and Sashimi, you are simply not fit to live in a civilized world. For the benefit of people like me who still prefer a Haldiram thali for lunch (though they won’t admit it, even at gunpoint), Sushi is basically the scariest form of a slithery animal that you can eat raw (sometimes live). The Japanese insist that it is fish, but I do not believe them. It could be anything. You need to pick the slippery white substance with two chopsticks, dip it in a kind of sauce and a dash of seaweed (?that smells like stale fish) and eat it. It is actually quite harmless this far.?The trick is the accompaniment that goes with Sushi. It is a green and harmless looking paste called wasabi, which is Japan’s answer to chemical warfare . One drop of wasabi in your mouth can make all hairs stand up on your head & if you mistakenly take a large helping like I had once done (?mistaking wasabi to be something sweet, like our halwaa), your head will burst into flames and you shall need to call a fire brigade to douse the smoke coming out of your ears. Therefore you end up in a classic Catch 22 – to escape the torture of the raw snake-like meat, you turn to the wasabi and the wasabi causes your brain to explode. Four minutes into a Japanese meal, your senses are all impaired and you reach for a bottle of Asahi to wash down the fire inside your throat and sometimes bang the empty bottle on your own head in frustration. Several Asahis later, you somehow manage to crawl out of the restaurant and reach home, only to be bedridden, holding your growling tummy for the next one week. The Japanese, meanwhile, would be working 18 hours a day in your neighborhood , having taken over the local Haldiram outlet and converted it into a Sushi bar to lure people like you, while they ?themselves munch on their hotdogs , sipping decaf Americano, chuckling to themselves at your stupidity.

Phew !

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From my 2014 blog archives

(Disclaimer – This was a fun Sunday post written many years back & with no offence meant towards Japan, a country I deeply admire for its culture, heritage & people).

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