Hmm

I've been helping out at the Minato Citizens' University, a joint function of Minato City in Tokyo and Temple University, Japan Campus.  One of the benefits of working at this thing is getting to attend the lectures and taking part in discussions with the lecturers afterward.  These people are all faculty at my school, and most of them work in one or the other of my major fields, so the lectures have been mostly fascinating and occasionally frustrating, as the speakers don't always touch on points that I would like to see addressed.

Then it occurred to me: oh, hey, I'm studying this stuff.  I could probably go ahead and touch on those points.  I'm not going to tonight, because it's 1 AM and I have to go and sign a lease on my new apartment tomorrow, but this is a great place to explore some of the meatier aspects of Japanese geopolitics.

(The sound of chairs scraping on the floor as people silently edge towards the exit.)

That's okay, I think it's interesting, and, what's more, I think I can make it interesting.

Here's the deal.  If Japan goes the way it has been for the past twenty years or so, within the next one hundred years its population will dip below the viability level and it will cease to exist.  There's a lot of denial about that, and a lot of discussion, and I legitimately think I have something to add to that discussion.  Which is sort of one of the reasons why I'm in college.

Other interesting topics I intend to cover are the insular nature of Japanese culture, the institutionalized racism, the aforementioned spectacular denial, gender issues, the aging population, infrastructure in a nation where cronyism is rampant, xenophobia, the attempt to run a cultural trade surplus, and oh so much more.  Like, you know, China.  Lots of China.

(CUT TO: one empty desk chair, spinning slowly.  A door closes in the distance.)

Best part: I'm not kidding.  I'm going to have to write about all this stuff for school anyway; might as well get it up here and hopefully get some love from this direction.

I'm also going to complain a lot about how Japanese people cram right up against the outside door of the train so as to grab a seat right away, but when the door actually opens, they rush inside and then stop right inside the car, so that nobody behind them can get a seat..  I've started just running right over these people.

So, yeah, this.  Enjoy.