As of last November, Japan is officially in a recession. It’s an especially bad situation for the country since they’re so dependent on exports, from automobiles to semiconductors to many other manufactured items. As they’ve done in past recessions, the Japanese news media is going out of their way to shed light on the new economic challenges being faced, looking at the business situation from many angles to help their viewers understand what’s going on and adapt accordingly. One of my favorite TV shows is called The Dawn of Gaia, a hardcore news program that delves into difficult issues of the day, from the falling birth rate to the coming lack of sufficiently trained medical staff in Japanese hospitals. The other day they did a fascinating story about the difficulties faced by the American automobile makers and what they were doing to change their businesses, with comparisons to what the companies in Japan were doing, and it was very interesting to see the Japanese take on the situation. It may be the lack of 24-hour cable news lowering the signal-to-noise ratio, but my perception of the news media in Japan that they hold themselves to a higher standard of professionalism than what I usually see in the U.S., with less endless interviewing of “talking heads” who frequently say nothing and more meaningful reporting. Between programs like Gaia and Live TV Til Morning, a show in which top politicians are put in a studio to debate various public issues from midnight til 6 am while viewers watch, I generally think that Japanese TV viewers have access to higher quality news with less political bias than in the U.S.
During the show about the American automakers they interviewed G. Richard Wagoner, Jr., president of General Motors, and I remarked to my wife that he certainly had the proper head of “CEO hair” that you’d expect from the president of a large company. “What’s that?” she asked. “Company presidents have special hair in America?” Apparently this particular perception didn’t apply in Japan, although there are some things the Japanese believe about a person’s body that are quite interesting. First, it’s thought that a person with large ears will become wealthy, since the ears are so big money can’t help but “fall in.” If your middle toe is longer than your big toe (called ashi no oya-yubi or “the parent toe of your foot”), it’s said you’ll go farther in life than your parents did. And men, if you’ve got a large nose, you’re in luck: it’s commonly thought that the size of a man’s nose corresponds to another part of his body. Hope you enjoyed today’s edition of useless information from Japan!
The president of GM and his “CEO hair” (source)
