Money: It never passes hand to hand. When you buy something you place your money in a dish, and the cashier scoops it out of a dish and returns your change back into the dish. I asked once why that is and the only answer we could come up with was that it is historically rude to 'throw' money at people in Japan. Handing money to another person, who is a stranger, can't be hand to hand.
News content: News in Japan is somewhat puzzling. There isn't as much crime here in Japan so most of the news stories is a mix of oddly chosen stories of other countries, a spotlight story of a person which can be inspiring or sad, and small top news headlines which very little time is spent on. The top stories now adays are the Toyota Prius Hybrid story. It is important because it is a 'vertically integrated' Keiretsu, not as big as Sumimoto bank, or Mitsui or Mitsubishi, but it holds a lot of power in Japan, and needless to say in Japan, mistakes can't happen. The other top Japan news story is the story about the Asashoryu, a sumo grand champion, who got into a drunken bar fight with a stranger. He was ashamed and retired from the world of Sumo. He was Mongolian born, and while he is a hero in Mongolia, there are mixed feelings about him in Japan, in part because of their racist attitudes towards some 'outsiders'. It is news worth caring about? Not really, but it is interesting to me that it is interesting to them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment