ln love with Japan

I have been on a hiatus for close to an year, and for reason. Most of my writing of last year stuck to business, which, incidentally, was a disaster of tsunamic proportions.

But what has prodded me to recommence my online banter has been my recent trip to Japan. Ever since I can remember, this country has fascinated me immensely. And the movie, The Last Samurai, had but served to inspire further.

Royal Park Hotel in the BG, the tallest building in Japan

By any yardstick, Japan has to be the most polite and respectful nation in the world. I have visited North America, Europe, Africa and some parts of Asia. And Japan is the first country I have been to where even the Immigration officers at the airport are polite. This is only the beginning.

This is also a country where they have made a religion out of cleanliness. Everything is spotlessly clean. Even the chairs,- and I mean the underside. I had happened to knock over one in my room, and the underside was as spotlessly clean(ed) as the cushion-side. To put things in perspective, if you are in public and want to use the washroom, make sure you wait till a Japanese person comes out.

If they treat cleanliness with religious fervour, they are also meticulous to a fault. I think the fabled tea-ceremony is just one of the more publicized acts of perfection in action. Truth is, they make a ritual out of any mundane act. We were in the breakfast lounge in our hotel, (70th floor!), and there was this person pouring sauce over his salad in a slow, meticulous and near perfect motion. And he was just another guest. In the ads, as in real life, you see only the chefs do it this way.

Quite strangely, meticulous also equates to efficient, though occidental education and upbringing suggest otherwise. The Japanese are the gold standard in efficiency. And it goes right down to speech. They tend to talk less, shut up more and think deep. In fact, one of their proverbs is,- Hear One, Understand Ten. We were in a meeting with around ten executives of JGC, and this is probably the first powerpoint presentation I have made in my entire professional life, where they actually listened and observed throughout, not just heard and saw. The questions that came up post presentation where accurate and educated. And short. I feel the Japanese actually believe that too many words contaminate speech,- if you go by another quite poignant proverb of theirs: A stalemate is too many people talking too much!

In the last Samurai, the Japanese emperor is shown to be observing the cherry-blossoms the very next morning after a blitzkreig on their village. He seemed to be absolutely detached from the violent proceedings of the previous night where he nearly lost his life, and demonstrated the nonchalance of one who accepts destiny as destiny, one who is entirely immersed in the present. The Japanese seem to manifest this incredible state of equanimity on a daily basis. The kind of composure they demonstrated after the double whammy of 2011 show just how resilient, tenacious and strong-willed they are. Somewhat like Mumbaikars,- barring the composure part.

The not-so-marketable element of Japanese society like xenophobia didn't unsettle me much, although this would have seriously offended a politically-correct nation like the US. I don't even call it xenophobia or racism, just a cultural thing to keep within themselves. Japan could be the most homogeneous country in the world, but if preservation lies in purity, so be it.

To sum up by paraphrasing someone else who has managed to put my thoughts to words more eloquently than I could ever manage:

"Partly it is the beauty of the country...
Partly it is the ancient, intricate arts and crafts...
Partly it is the bottomless depths of Zen Buddhism...
Partly it is the cuisine...
And partly--and perhaps most persuasively of all--it is the kindness and sensitivity of the Japanese people...

The truth, of course, is that all of these attributes interact in amazingly complex and compelling ways, creating the whole of Japanese culture and countryside--a whole that is as enchanting as it is enigmatic."
Traveler's Tales - Japan, True Stories of Life on the RoadDonald W. George, Amy Griemann Carlson