Some Thoughts on a Trip to Japan and China

日期:2013/07/16

At the Shanghai parks, thousands of Asian women sit with posters behind them advertising their college educated girls' availability for marriage. The girls seem to be in a minority in the population because of the one boy syndrome so they have a competitive edge but they are too busy with the exams and too shy to meet to have a good chance of marriage. The prices in China for American goods seem a bit higher than they are in the US for the comparable goods.

Prices in China seems slightly lower than in the US. The McDonalds Big Mac costs 4 $ or so. And the meal comes to $ 8. To the extent that China has benefited from low prices and low wages in the past, and this has been their model to grow, aside from spinning off the state owned businesses to members of the party, they would seem to have a damper on the growth.

The Chinese 30 and unders like to wear the kinds of clothes that 12 and under wear here with frills and ribbons and lace and sequins. The % of women wearing high heels is about 5 times higher than in the US. Of course, the skyline in Shanghai and the number of skyscrapers on the Bund and the number of good restaurants there easily dwarfs by 3 or 4 fold the comparables in NY.



All the restaurants are twice as busy in China as New York as the space is cramped at home, and it is traditional to have the family and friends dinners at restaurants.

All this talk about the smoking and pollution in China is terribly exaggerated. There are numerous parks in Shanghai and the air there is just as good as anywhere in New York. The % of smokers in Shanghai would seem to have been well below 10%. The prices of sushi in Japan seem to be about 1/50 at the fish market and the fish stores in the fishing villages as what one would pay in New York. And of course there is no freezing and the taste is much better. Had more abalone there in a week than in the US in the last 50 years, and much better.

The competitive economy in Japan seems to be riddled by duopoly, oligopolies, unneeded distribution, and layers of the old boy network. My very entrepreneurial brother in law has been there 30 years and had dozens of entrepreneurial ventures, and each is blocked at the end by an old boy network or extra level of distribution that has to be overcome. Of course, in his defense, he has a great entertainment business based in Kobe, and that was knocked off the block by the earthquake.

The plight of women in Japan is somewhat saddening as they have to be overly subservient, and they do not seem to have much opportunity for advancement to the upper levels of success.

A haircut in Japan is a major adventure as you need 5 or 6 hair cutters to cut your eyebrows and hair, and the good one forbid the facial and neck hairs. That is typical of everything else in this stratified society. But everything works much better in Japan than in the US. There is nothing that would not fix their economy and make it thrive a thousand times better than the US that open immigration would not cure. While I was there, they seemed to be adopting a much more open view towards letting skilled immigrants in than the US policy of closing down the businesses with illegals making the minimum wage.

Of course things are so much more harmonious in Japan than the US with no honking of horns, no dirt on the street, no garbage cans because people are so neat, and everyone trying to do a good job. Throughout the Chinese economy one sees pockets of amazing activity e.g Hagen Daaz in every corner, but it turns out that these have to a large extent been delivered and granted and licensed to high ranking members of the party.

Much of the woes and obstacles to a dynamic society in Japan and China come from the examination system where a very small number of students get into the best schools and everyone has to study 120 hours a week for the exams until they are 12 or 15 and has no time for anything like innovation.

There is about 1% as much physical activity like jogging in Japan as in the US but in China all the parks have thousands exercising in the morning whereas in Japan there is hardly any.

Mr. Leo Jia performed admirably in facilitating all aspects of the trip for Aubrey, Laurel, Susan, me, and Victoria and Artie, and Mr. David Cole was totally benificient in Japan.

Worth the time and price of a trip to Japan in and of itself is a meal at Hayashiya in Hyago port in Kobe city on Awaji Island. Magnificent shell fish and tuna and yellow tail and sea urchin and white fish fresh off the boats for a meal that would cost perhaps $ 12,000 at Nobu or Masa but for $ 300. And of course nothing frozen or delayed 10 days.

The monkeys in Kobe are behaved just as well as the Japanese. I gave them a few tests on using tools and they lived up to their names (they were the first to discover how to wash bananas and pass it on) when they used a broom to sweep the apples I placed away from them down an inclined plane to get their food.

The one untoward incident I had was when I was chased away by a guard with a cudgel waving after me after I mistakenly walked a few steps into the Eastern part of the Imperial Garden. It is amazing to see the wealth of the shoguns in Kobe and the castles and parks that they maintained.

 The Japanese respect for their elders is somewhat harmful to their economy as they can't be thrown out until they are 80 and this reduced the flexible turnover and new blood necessary to compete in a competitive economy.

The traditional Keirutso dining in Kyoto has much to do with tradition and face. We ate in the highest restaurant on a mountain with the water down to all the other restaurants about 30 in a row. Like Ishmael who liked to get the first draft of wind, the best restaurants like to have their water flow down to the others, and this applies to the way they hang their laundry also, with the senior patriarchs hanging their clothes out above the others.

John and Rosanna Floyd are can do harmonious travel companions that made the whole trip even more harmonious than would have been possible to imagine and Susan and I and my family thank them. Amazingly, the last things said to each other was "where are we going next year?" after 10 days of togetherness and encumbrance by me.