Japan

Apropos of Christmas:

Happy holidays!

I see them a lot in Japan, in not particularly geeky contexts, so I’m sure they must have a name. I’d call them polygon graphs. Anyone knows the common name and perhaps where I can find more about them?

Before I came to Japan, I used to pester my sister who had been here with the question of what exactly did Japanese people do during their looong commutes (around 1 hour each way!). It’s perhaps the biggest free time chunk of one of the biggest economies in the world, so it intrigued me and it still does.

Well, they read Japanese books (usually quite compact because of kanji’s density) or the newspaper (carefully folding it halves or quarters), play Nintendo DS or Sony PSP, listen to music, sleep… But mostly, they use their ketais. Not to talk, no one ever talks on the train (despite the alleged perfect reception), but to text, watch TV, check train routes, surf the Japanese mobile web…

Chiba is where she’s from. William Gibson’s Neuromancer also took place here. It’s the eastern sleeperside of Tokyo and I currently call it home. Its kanji mean thousand leaves and so, of course, the mille-feuille is the official cake. Japanese make a great deal of its shape and 2 animal logos based on it are in current use. Isn’t the yellow one captivating in its deformity?

As a kid some of the books that I most reread were from the Time Life science library, an affordable expensive (at that time and place) and fascinating book collection my parents happily bought for the family. They say that when I was very, very young the book I loved the most was the one about Primates, which had lots and lots of great pictures of monkeys.

But I don’t remember that far (I have a poor memory of very early childhood).

The rest of the year will be as exciting as always! As I said just a post ago, I’m now in London and for a week more I’ll stay here, culturally my favorite city in the world. The next week I’ll move to Oxford—I’ve often fantasized about living in a university town, this is the university town. In both cities I’ll stay in great rented rooms (cheaper and better than hostels, of which I’ve seen more than my life’s share already)!

By late August I’ll fly to Hong Kong for a few days, the world’s first Special Economic Zone, Friedman’s miracle of capitalism. Then off to Singapore for a month, where I’ll meet her and we’ll stay in a beautiful rented room better than most hotels, a great find. In 1960 S’pore was as wealthy per person as Mexico, 3 decades later it was 4 times wealthier and still is—it’ll be fascinating to witness one of the world’s most succesful countries. Then off to Bangkok for a month, living cheaply, coding lots, and eating delicious Thai food every single meal!

Then 1.5 months to Chiba: Japan again! To live with her, finally learn Japanese (I can’t say I lived in Japan for 7.5 months and still suck so much at it), and perhaps try my hand at the Japanese job market once more. I’ve missed her far too much.

Finally back to Mexico in time for the holidays.

Wish me luck!

Exactly!

That picture above is from a Japanese upscale convenience store. Yup, the Japanese have so refined the convenience store concept, called combinis in Japan, that they even have upscale ones. The sheer density and quality of combinis throughout Japan just boggles the mind. Did you know Seven Eleven is, since 1991, a Japanese company? And, at least in Japan, it’s the Toyota of convenience stores, of which there are many brands.

Compare with Europe, where, as far as I can tell, they simply don’t have the concept of convenience stores. Here in Spain they only have ugly, pricey, mom & pop dry good stores, called “Chinos” because they’re mostly run by Chinese.

Mexico itself has lots of convenience stores, better than the ones in the States I’d say, and there’s some interesting innovation going on of micro-supermarkets specialized in groceries, or pharmacies that are convenience stores too.

That’s the kind of thing that fascinates me when I travel, the kind of thing you don’t notice until you live with it, and that you never read about anywhere. The kind of mundane things that really change your day to day life, instead of the one-off, impressive, touristy things that you just see and its over.

I’m a strange kind of traveller, like a very slow kind of tourist, a be-ist! I prefer to stay at places for months and not focus on them much, just let them gradually reveal themselves. I like keeping place in the background, how it makes the fringes of my life (like city walking, shopping, eating, bookstore browsing, the new media…) interesting and new. But for the core of my life I really am very happy making stuff, it’s the thing I want to do most. Intensive travelling, where the place (and its people) are the very focus of your life is not that appealing to me, it’s too distracting.

Travelling all across the developed world this question’s naturally recurring. Here some likely fragments of the answer:

It’s a stab. Please help with more ideas that come to mind.

Obsesionado como estoy con la cuestion de lugar, me he topado en mis busquedas con estas 4 oportunidades internacionales para Mexicanos. Me gustaria fueran mas conocidas y aprovechadas, por lo que las comparto aqui desapasionadamente pues si creo en el consejo es cuando es descriptivo, no prescriptivo, cuando te abre caminos, no cuando te empuja.

My public and personal library nibbling, my bookstore standing-reading, used to make me feel uneasy, undisciplined and unfulfilled. Not so lately. Split is the new short. and reading book chapters feels like a good balance between substance and stub. Here 5 interesting ones read recently:

Prologue of Ian Burma’s Inventing Japan, for that great Tokyo Olympics anecdote.

Chapter 11 of Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice, for honest, useful advice for living at “the pinnacle of human possibility”.

Chapter 3 of Po Bronson’s Nudist on the Late Shift, for the gripping, amazing tale of how Sabeer Bathia started and sold Hotmail.

Also from Nudist (and partially available on Wired), chapter 7, for an inspiring, charming portrait of Danny Hillis at crossroads.

Chapter 1 of John Nathan’s Sony: The Private Life, for its depiction of the fascinating soulmate relationship between Sony’s founders, Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka.