A Japanese lesson... or two

The last couple of weeks I have been away.

For one of those weeks, I had the delight of a journey across Japan. Japan is a country I have been to before, but only briefly for work many years ago, so it was an opportunity to get out of the office and find out a little more about what life is like there.

Now typically before you go anywhere you have preconceptions about what to expect.

For England it is probably cups of tea, biscuits and the Queen (to be fair the first two are pretty accurate) and for Japan my expectation was everything was going to be super expensive, super high tech and super different. It's like living in the future!

Pre-conceptions of course can be quite dangerous. More often than not they turn out to be wrong, especially when confronted with details and reality of normal life on the ground. In most cases, things are more similar and relatable than you may expect and this was the case with Japan.

Expensive? Not particularly, both food and train travel were cheaper than the UK, and by quite a margin. Imagine my delight rushing through the Japanese countryside at 180mph having bought not one but two packs of Japanese sandwiches (and a fruit sandwich at that), with extra snacks.

High tech? In many ways, it did deserve this high-tech future moniker. This was especially true in terms of the transport and digital infrastructure (the latter a legacy of high labour cost or low labour availability I suspect).

Granted in some areas, it does remain old-fashioned and traditional mind you…some areas of Tokyo, at night in the rain, did remind me of Blade Runner, although this would make it less 2024 and more 1982 I suppose with is about right I suspect.

Bringing something back

Yet throughout the trip there were a couple of things that really struck me and I wanted to bring home.

The first was the approach to kindness. Japan has a reputation for being polite and respectful. Undoubtedly acts of simple kindness, like offering to give up your seat for someone were warmly acknowledged and appreciated.

What surprised me was how this generated such a degree of reciprocal respect, to the extent that it made everyone feel better about themselves. It was just lovely and within a week we were racing to see who could be more generous... tidying up after ourselves, double check to ensure we had taken our trash with us and being extra quiet so as not to disturb others. I would say this is not behaviour I typically see on the 7:45 to London on a grimy November morning for sure (Yes, I am talking about you, Mr public, on speaker, video caller on the train).. Maybe it is something we need more of here.

The second area was the changing use of technology, in this case when travelling.

I have written before how easy access to cell phone data is changing travel, be it calling home, booking a taxi or navigating on maps. On this trip, however, it was the use of AI.

Using apps, such as Google Translate, to read signs, menus and labels is a game changer. All of a sudden the fog of a different language evaporates and you actually start to know what you are buying for lunch.

And then we have LLMs. For the first time, I saw the use of this really in the wild. Reach a new city, what is there to see...? Simply ask chatGPT and generate an itinerary, or be the guide, question and answer, style to find out all the weird and wonderful stuff that you are interested in.... 'is there really such a thing as spam sushi....yes there is, it is called Spam Musubi'... I did not know that.

Then another use case.

Looking for a Manga book, as a gift in a random store, and needed to buy something vaguely suitable... given my Japanese reading ability is absolute zero, what to do?.... of course, these days you simply take a photo of the cover and ask chatGPT for a brief outline of the story in English... it really works, amazing

(btw ... it also worked for deciphering food dishes for lunch - what is this - and also strangely extremely useful in deciphering the buttons on the Japanese toilet, thereby avoiding colonic irrigation and actually finding the flush... this was a use case I did not expect!).

All in all an interesting week. Certainly, the ideas around kindness and reciprocity will stay with me. It is something we used to have, and having seen it again may be something we need to get back to. Food for thought.

Have a good rest of the week all... more on the second week soon.