Recently in Japan Category

This statement below has totally changed my position on Japan and the F-22.

Ex-chief systems engineer for the F-22 is "convinced that Japan can get fully equivalent capabilities in the areas of its needs at lower overall cost by other routes."

And that for the US to recommend the F-22 to Japan is like encouraging a good friend to drink and drive.

NBR'S JAPAN FORUM (POL) F22s for Japan: more signals to North Korea?

But there are what I regard as more substantial reasons to question the feasibility and desirability of purchasing the F-22 as well.

I say this recognizing very well the strength of Japanese desire for the aircraft. During a recent visit to Tokyo I had occasion to speak with a number of top air force officers as well as civilians involved in defense matters, and all made it clear that they feel Japan must have F-22s.

More than two decades ago, at the inception of the program, I was the chief systems engineer for the F-22 at Lockheed. That is to say that I know a great deal more about it than one can read in the press. There is no doubt that it is a very impressive airplane with no equal in the world.

It is also an extraordinarily expensive airplane. The 50 aircraft Japan needs would cost roughly $10 billion to buy (with spares and support equipment), and would have high ongoing operating costs. It is likely that any aircraft needing major repair or modification would have to be shipped back to the United States.

I am convinced that Japan can get fully equivalent capabilities in the areas of its needs at lower overall cost by other routes. I recognize that Japanese do not like to be told what they need by outsiders, but for the United States to encourage Japan to buy F-22s would be like encouraging a good friend to drink lots of alcohol before he sets out to drive home.

Michael Lewis has a fascinating review of a new biography of Warren Buffett, The Master of Money, by Alice Schroeder. Buffett apparently had dinner at Akio Morita's house and did not eat any of the food.

He avoids social conflict, unless there is money on the line, and also all sorts of new experiences. His long-time partner Charlie Munger likes to call Buffett a "learning machine," but there are whole swaths of human activity he actively resists learning anything at all about, such as the entire high-tech industry. He confines himself to the diet of an eight-year-old, refusing to eat anything much beyond spaghetti, hamburgers, and grilled cheese sandwiches. [Warren Buffett biographer Alice] Schroeder describes a bizarre scene in which Katherine Graham escorted Buffett to dinner at the Manhattan apartment of Sony Chairman Akio Morita. Japanese chefs served plate after plate that Buffett left completely untouched. "By the end of fifteen courses, he still had not eaten a bite," writes Schroeder. "The Moritas could not have been more polite, which added to his humiliation. He was desperate to escape back to Kay's apartment, where popcorn and peanuts and strawberry ice cream awaited him. 'It was the worst,' he says about the meal he did not eat. 'I've had others like it but it was by far the worst. I will never eat Japanese food again.'" Buffett ate what he needed to eat to remain alive--and learned what he needed to learn to invest shrewdly.

Clearly, I'll never be a billionaire because I don't care about money in the single-minded way Buffett does.

Frankly, I don't think a billion dollars would be enough to force me into a diet of only spaghetti, hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches.

via Curzon at Mutantfrog Travelogue

Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints

Wed May 13, 2009 6:09am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - Internet search engine Google said it would reshoot all Japanese pictures for its online photo map service, Street View, using lower camera angles after complaints about invasion of privacy.

Google's Street View, which offers 360-degree views of streets around the world using photos taken by cruising Google vehicles, has already run into privacy complaints in other countries and activists have tried to halt the service in Japan.

Google said in a statement on Wednesday it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40 cm (16 inches) after complaints they were capturing images over fences in private homes.

Amazing kid.  Watch through to the end and Ellen gives him a great surprise.

Hard Rock Hello Kitty

photo by kenleewrites

My father's good friend, Yamada Hisashi sensei of the Urasenke Chanoyu Center of New York City has passed.

The NY Times did a nice profile of Hisashi-san in 2008.

"There is no politics," Mr. Yamada said. "No talk about who will be president in America or prime minister in Japan."

While a tea ceremony might seem out of step with the pace of modern life, the Urasenke school has a waiting list for students.

"Once you begin the study of tea, it becomes a lifetime thing," he said. As for those who think they are too busy to make time for tea, "You discover that you are not as busy as you think you are."

At 80, Long a Teacher of the Philosophy of Tea

I think the only mainstream movie Hollywood has produced with Asian leads is the "Harold and Kumar" series, which is fun on it's own merit but is not an accurate representation of Asians in America.

Skip this movie, it's awful.

I first met Chenggang Rui at the 2006 Asia Society Young Leaders Summit in Seoul. I had no idea he was younger than me as he had a self-confidence of years beyond his actual age.

The NY Times has a long profile of Chenggang: Capitalism Finds Voice in China TV. It's a good read and covers a the Starbucks in the Forbidden City issue that became a hot topic right after I had met him in late 2006.

What's more interesting about Chenggang for me is that he has very thoughtful views on Japan, which is not that common in China (at least on the Chinese Internet.) ESWN has a great translation of a post from Chenggang's blog from September 2006 where he discusses his views on Japan.

Japan is a country that is closest to us but one about which we least understand. Most of our young people know much more about the European and American countries than Japan. Of course, Japan is not an easy country to understand, and there are two sides to the Japanese people. But from the viewpoint of a third person, Japan is no more difficult to understand than China. The problem is not that Japan cannot be understood. Instead, the issue is whether we are willing to try to understand. (Ruth Benedict's <The Chrysanthemum and The Sword> and Lai Xiao'er's are excellent books).

Those foreign friends who have visited China told me almost without exception that China was more splendid and better than they imagined. A trip to China often corrected their bad or mistaken ideas through reading too many novels. If you genuinely want to know Japan, a trip to Japan can often change many things. With this purpose, I went to visit Japan and it changed many of my previous over-simplified and subjective views.

EastSouthWestNorth: Rui Chenggang On Japan

Ken Cuiker at The Economist interviews Jake Adelstein, an expert on the Yakuza, Japan's mafia.

The Washington Post has a profile of Adelstein that provides perspective on how he became an expert on this topic: This Mob Is Big in Japan