Japan on quadrillion yen

At first acquaintance, Japan disappointed me much. Before that, we, Soviet students, diligently studied her on textbooks, and Japan appeared in our fantasies a country of unusually seductive, and words "Sony" and "Toyota" sounded charming music.

However, Japan, which I saw in May 1976, did not resemble the country of the future, ahead of the West in the latest technologies. From the port of Iokohama, where our ship arrived from the find, we were lucky by bus for some kind of countryside with non-zero houses and narrow roads. On the side of the roads – landfills with rusted abandoned machines and other trash. In rice fields along the roads, roened women, so not similar to beauties with glossy Japanese calendars who hung in those years in many Moscow apartments. Where we were brought? Where is this fantastic one, nothing like Japan with skyscrapers, high-speed trains and computerized life?

High Fastfud Technologies

But soon everything fell into place. I saw a surveillance of high spirits in Tokyo, and the implausible world of his stations leaving to the ground for many floors, appreciated the many Japanese thoughtful trifles, very facilitating the life of a person in the metropolis – especially the electronic boards on the roads warning about the trumps that arose ahead.

However, the symbol of Japanese high technologies was not the Tokyo Quarter of Akihabar with dozens of electronic stores (there, crazy people are joking, you can even find a system for guiding a ballistic missile), and the cafeteria on the mountain pass. In the early 80s, I went to my first journalistic business trip on a state vehicle and after a couple of hours a ride on a serpentine in the fog, under the small rain was on a completely deserted platform, where in a neat pavilion was placed with a dozen automata. For several coins, they gave a thoroughly warmed jar with coffee, poured hot water into a cardboard cup with a dry soup or brought to the desired temperature a bun with a cutlet. This is an electronic miracle, regularly and who worked in this wilderness independently, made me feel the hero of a fantastic film.

Manufacturers of valuable garbage

I constantly come across how common ideas about Japan and the Japanese are little corresponding to reality. Take at least a well-known anecdote "with beard". After the excursion in Russia, the Japanese asked what he liked in our country most. Japanese answers: "Children". – "And what else?" – Japanese thought and says again: "Children". – "Really nothing else?" – "Children get well, "the Japanese answers, – and what you are doing with your hands is not very".

So, the Japanese in this story is absolutely unlimited. Firstly, our brought up neighbors in the Far East would never have become so rude by the interlocutor, and secondly, the Japanese had long had to do anything for a long time.

Word "repair" Here they understand exclusively as a replacement of one block to another. If the situation requires a non-standard solution, the Japanese, as a rule, falls into a dead end. Long-term agreement begins, the client is exposed to increasingly solid accounts, and this is a sense, as a rule, does not happen. This reflects the deep peculiarity of national psychology: the Japanese are not inclined to self-identity, but they are ideal performed by instructions. If it requires to wrap the nut "Two and a half twist", Be sure – it is always it and under any circumstances will wrap up. Inability to work with hands in modern Japan – also the consequence of the highest standard of living. This country has long and firmly turned into an endless consumer vakhanlia territory: here the main problem is not what to buy a new thing, but in where the old one is. On Japanese roads – only new cars of the last brands, in "Star" Moving only a few lovers of automotive antiques. This also applies to another technique: in the hands of the Japanese it is impossible to see a video camera or a camera that does not correspond to the latest e-fashion. Where they extend previous models – incomprehensible. However, the key to the solve this secrecy can give a walk through the Tokyo streets in the early morning. Something you will definitely see in the fences lonely standing TVs, radio tape recorders and other good. Mostly all this technique works regularly, but, alas, ceased to please the owners with design or color. but "iron" This kind of here cannot be thrown as easily as, say, a can of beer or potato cleaning. For the removal of such garbage you need to make a fee, so someone is trying to get rid of the boning techniques secretly, under the cover of the night.

The mystery remains where the Japanese keep the monstrous amount of clothing and accessories that they buy for each season. Japanese are obedy by "firm". This is perhaps the world’s only country in the world, where the supermarket saleswoman is affecting the clock "Cartier", Rings "Bulgari" And with bag "Louis Wuitton" For a half thousand dollars. Every Friday, 12 channel of Tokyo television is transferred, in which the reporters stop on the streets of women and with jokes they analyze their outfits – from the shields to the ring on the finger, and the price of the reason for which the price appears on the screen. Topping the most standard, often not too spectacular resident Tokyo usually pulls for several thousand dollars. Japanese’s prosperity confirms statistics: the average salary here is 3-4 thousand dollars, and the employees of large companies after a certain senior age, it is rarely less than 5-6 thousand. In Japan, over 1.3 million people with a personal state of over a million dollars. In the accounts of individuals in Japanese banks, more quadrillion yen is over 10 trillion dollars!

With all its wealth, the Japanese are modest and do not like to expose their welfare. They dwell in close apartments, do not be cut to twist the ram of the truck, which delivers goods, or they themselves serve customers in their own dry cleaning. Japanese by nature are not businessmen, but neat selfless employees. By the way, the word "samurai", which are often referred to as the inhabitants of the rising sun, this is exactly what means – "servicing". The Japanese are generally avoiding what many people dream of most – stand out from the crowd. Mentioned above the saleswoman in the clock "Cartier" bows them not to lose the nose to the girlfriend, but with the inverse purpose: buy the same watches as she is not to be embarrassed from their social group.

Collective conscious

The history of Japan significantly reflects the psychological features of the Japanese nation. Collective consciousness works every time Japan turns out to be a participant in global processes. In 1941, the rising sun of the rising sun commanded to go to war – and they selflessly died in their name, to put it mildly, the wrong idea of ​​building the Great Empire from India to Australia. In 1945, he ordered to fold the weapons, establish democracy and engage in economy – and the Japanese with the same enthusiasm began to build a peaceful economy based on the principles of pacifism and economic feasibility. Japan maybe the only large country in the world that did not know the bloody revolutions and real civil wars. Even at the most steep turns of the story, there was never seriously the question of the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of the republic – in contrast, let’s say, from Britain, where such ideas periodically appear. Of course, in the second half of the XIX century, Japan experienced large shocks associated with the breakdown of feudal system, the introduction of Western technologies and state management models. However, the Japanese never had a slogan "before founding and then". The development of this country resembles Eastern Pagoda, where one next floor, if necessary, simply extend one more – and no one in mind comes to demolish the entire building to clear the site for something new, even even the most modern and wonderful. The Japanese and the bitter lesson of the middle of the last century were redeemed … More Our neighbors began to fight, it seems that they do not want, and to ensure their safety prefer to hire the same Americans, generously paying for their stay on their territory of the US Armed Forces.

Golden youth

Of course, a country rejecting all kinds of revolutions, from the inside the inevitably changing. The elderly Japanese grumble on the challenge youth, which still wants to live in the covenants of fathers who devoted all their life "work on your company", Accumulations in a bank, endless loan payments. Young are now distinguished by independence, tight to non-standard actions, the desire to decide their fate. Japanese girls are increasingly postponing marriage and the fate of a housewife, agreeing to make a family only to thirty years.

But there is another side of the coin: it is "non-standard" Japanese youth made a sensation, won the unprecedented number of Olympic "Gold". They also provide the growing successes of the country in atypical areas for it, requiring enterprise and originality: in fundamental sciences, cinematography, design.

Thanks to the young energy of new generations, Tokyo, where Tarkovsky once removed "city ​​of the future" For your "Solaris", It really becomes similar to the scenery to a fantastic film: it is gradually filled with multi-level islands of asymmetric skyscrapers and cutting space multi-storey high-speed overpass.

… but do not rush to believe those who say that all Japan consists of concrete, asphalt and electrical wires. Recently, leaning nostalgia, I went to the university town, where arrived at the internship in the distant 1976. Believe me, everything is the same: the narrow tracks between rice fields, rusted cars in landfills and non-zero peasants, so not similar to stylish maidens, knocking heels in Tokyo sidewalks.