Japan - probably the best country in the world

Loving to travel, my wife and I went to Japan (and Taiwan, another subject) recently. There for a grand total of 10 days, that is hardly sufficient to get to know a nation.

However, I've been around more than some: Grew up in the UK, studied German and French and lived on and off in both. I lived in China for 4 1/2 years ("how did I survive/ put up with it for so long?" is a common question of many former residents) and now I live in Canada.

I read a fair bit a bit about east Asia too, so to my reasonably well-trained eye, Japan made me notice in very fine detail many aspects which are (very generally) known to many. Most of my observations made it clear to me that Japan does nearly everything better than any other country you could name.

Orderliness might not be the sexiest sounding attribute of a country, but the ultra-intelligent and artful degree to which it has been taken in Japan provides the visitor with a continuous stream of deft touches that surprise only in terms of their depth.
Neatness and tidiness is more than a given. "Tell me when you see a piece of litter," I said to my wife after a few days there. Even construction sites were largely free of dust and clutter with bricks stacked and even sand in nice compact piles.
Then there's hygiene - a cafe having a little basket for its wash cloths on top of the fridge is one example. If it sits for a few minutes, bacteria will start to grow. Elsewhere, a cloth seems to be treated as something of a magic wand that only ever cleans surfaces and itself never gets dirty.

Sizes and portions of food might look small to many, however if eating slower and mindfully, you're getting what you need and no more. "Competitive sizing" on the other side of the Pacific is, if we're honest, a wasteful joke. Japan's example is proof too that national wealth need not lead to obesity. Mayor Bloomberg of New York's move to ban half litre drink sizes gains fresh perspective, though what the US might need to legislate for comes naturally to the Japanese. The restraint is merely cultural, the reflection of American culture was the fact that groups went to court over Bloomberg's initiative to force a reverse (citing for example "freedom" - most Americans who use this word today have no real understanding of the concept.)

Humans of a larger size (upward here, though of course outward too) would find themselves challenged too. The low door of my hotel room in Tokyo was only nose height (I'm 6'1). There were a few stairwells that had me doing a bad limbo dance on the way down, and one or two ventilation pipes I needed to crane my neck for. Then again, most days where I live now there's a low tree branch to deal with almost daily.
Nothing is wasted, especially floor space, and the same goes for ceilings. Who really needs a 10 foot ceiling at home? All it really does is generate extra revenue for the power generation companies.

The "human architecture" works in the same way. Out walking, everyone stays on the left. Everyone keeps up a good pace, and movement is wonderfully fluid. When I needed to stop and look at my map, I would check behind me and put up my hand if needing to stop.
While the population density is high, there is no need to worry in a crowd. I lived in mainland China, which suffers by comparison in this respect. There, one is constantly on edge, prepared to be jostled, elbowed and knocked off balance in return for no apology. The list doesn't end there, and the underlying reasons could generate an article three times the length of this one. Suffice to say, the argument that high population density makes all of that inevitable is rubbished by the example Japan sets.
While I never got to see the famous "train stuffers" on the Tokyo Metro, I personally always felt relaxed. Just keep moving, you'll be fine. Stay on the left on escalators. They are not an opportunity not to walk as frequently happens elsewhere, along with the "weirdo" look when you ask to get past (I'm looking at you, Canada).

Japan is of course famous for its bowing etiquette. Instead of dissecting the entire practice, two anecdotes offer good illustrations of its core essence. There's the man who dropped his bag, and bowed to the nearest lady to say sorry for "startling" her.
Then there's the tourist who, somewhat slowly buying train tickets just before 9 o'clock, could see 2 businessmen fidgeting behind him, running late but not daring to even gently suggest greater haste. To apologize for causing them delay, as well as thank them for their patience as well as politesse, the tourist bowed. Yes that was me. It felt appropriate. I had understood that bows I had received from those with limited English and asked for directions were also expressions of regret for not being of more help.

Just as litter is unheard of, so the foundation and make-up of all ladies in Japan is flawless. Speaking about it to a friend with a Japanese wife, he said she had detailed notes and diagrams, and that even face washing was "another subject".

If forced to arbitrarily assign just one adjective to Japan, it would be cute. Everything is that way, down to public information signs. The main postal service has a cat carrying a kitten in its mouth. Japan's rather large stationary stores are full of notepads, pens and sticky notes adorned with all manner of animals from mice to hippos.
So it's hard for the first timer not to be charmed by all that can be seen and heard. Ladies tend to speak with fairly high voices, and cover their mouths when laughing even when wearing face masks which are a very common sight. They are worn not only for the more obvious reasons but also out of caution during the recovered but still contagious phase of a cold. That mindset has to be kept in mind when the uninitiated are so charmed they feel like hugging everyone.

Trying to find one sole example which encapsulates all of the above is not easy. The conductor on the bullet train (Shinkansen) is the closest this writer can draw on. Upon entering and leaving each carriage, she bowed. Flawless make-up and cutesy voice, she was clearly saying exactly the same short speech to each passenger, even when it was to tourists who plainly didn't understand. The same courtesy and consistency for everyone, even if it did seem a little robotic. Leaning over to take look at a passenger's ticket, her hat would drop a couple of centimetres. So before starting with every single new passenger (without exception), she would put her index finger to her temple and push up the brim of her hat those same couple of centimetres.

To be sure, the Japanese do not see much of the above as smile-inducing the way this visitor did. That aside, what is the flip side to all this glue that holds society together? It wouldn't have been immediately obvious without some prior background knowledge. A high suicide rate (the highest of any major industrialized nation by some accounts) is one that this writer was aware of. The rigidity of Japanese etiquette, of having to carry on and force a smile regardless, along with it being seen as a bad thing to show negative emotions in public surely make for a lot of bottled up feelings. It might be possible to examine the eyes for a slight giveaway, but by and large everyone is holding everything in. The phenomenon of "Hikikomori" - young hermits who lock themselves away for months at a time - is perhaps another symptom. In Tokyo there seemed to be a lot of young men sitting by themselves in cafes late on a Monday or Tuesday night. "No home to go to?"

So, loneliness, long hours, high pressure to conform and a general societal straight jacket with a (perceived) lack of emotional outlets. These problems may not be unique to Japan, they don't directly affect others. Affecting others most certainly, especially China and Korea, are many attitudes towards Japan's actions in World War 2.
I'm told the average person is indifferent to things like the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands dispute with China. Hopefully, it's a matter of letting the rabid nationalists get on with it, however further reading suggests ignorance of what others are upset about. What is lacking, a Chinese friend in Japan told me, is the kind of fury towards China that Japan receives in the other direction.
Both countries' present day national leaders are on balance as bad as each other when it comes to this particular dispute when seen in isolation (though history is undoubtedly the root cause). While this may be hopelessly optimistic, Japan's could better play its own part by applying its otherwise abundant attention to detail to empathizing with the position of its near neighbours, and truly grasping why some sore points still remain.

None of these bad points are obvious to the visitor though, only the subtlest of hints are there for those who care to look. The endless good impressions, however, charmed this writer from start to finish. Tokyo is pushing to host the Olympics in 2020, and it is hard to imagine a better qualified applicant city.
Japan's cultural underpinnings are essentially Chinese, though Japan is a far superior manifestation of them. Much of the west too, especially slothenly North America could also learn a lot about cutting out laziness, waste and unneeded clutter. All is perhaps not what it seems, however on the face of it, Japan is probably the best country in the world.

Hugo Chavez: Gone at the right time?

The passing of Hugo Chavez is to some in Venezuela, probably a minority, a source of relief or even joy. Those of that leaning saw his actions as something approaching class warfare, increasingly anti-democratic and at times even embarrassing on the world stage.

To others of course he worked hard to improve the lives of the poor, and helped restrain what many South American leftists see as the corrosive influence of the United States.

To an extent both are true. Poverty alleviation was working reasonably well by some accounts.
But being that his cause was "so right", his supporters and not least of all himself saw nothing wrong in changing Venezuela's erstwhile constitutional limit on each president to two 6 year terms.
He appeared to fashion himself on Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and was building a personality cult to match his self-image. His weekly tv program Alo Presidente came across to many as a way for him to fuel his narcissism.
He may have been doing some good for his people, though some may debate that. Yet it is clear that his presidency was one of creeping authoritarianism. The writing was on the wall for dictatorship, at the very least under the pretext of it being "the will of the people".

But, we never got there after the intervention of cancer (the laughable assertion that the US somehow had something to do with that is best ignored). Being in power too long and having an increasing monopoly inevitably would have led to increasing abuses and reversal of any progress made.
The people of Zimbabwe still have a healthy president in Robert Mugabe, who at the age of 89 has long been running that country into ground despite descriptions from a few observers of the early promise his tenure held.
The early years of communism in China were great years say many, though the following 20 were ruinous and the country could only begin making progress after Mao's death in 1976.
The list of those who might have held good intentions but in the most extreme fashion possible let it go to their heads is long. Hugo Chavez was rapidly joining them. However, his early passing means that unlike certain other figures, objective historians won't be able to claim "dictator" as his only, defining characteristic.