Word: salarymen
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...After all, this is the land where salarymen pour over comic books on their way to work and where stay-at-home moms are also videogame afficionados. In many ways, robotics combines two of Japan's biggest cultural crushes: technology and animation. Some experts say the roots of the national love of robotics are in Japan's Shinto religion, which blurs the line between the inanimate and animate and in which followers believe that all things, including objects, can possess living spirits. "Robots have a long and friendly history in Japan, and humanoid robots are considered to be living things...
...been years since karaoke, that staple of modern Asian life, was relegated to the ranks of drunken salarymen. Today in Hong Kong, it's being integrated into office life in a new tradition known as "K Lunch." Hong Kong residents are flocking to karaoke studios on their lunch hours, when many businesses are now offering two hours of food and song for less than $5. Students routinely hit up K Lunch, but the low price - using the same room after 6 p.m. costs about three times as much - also lures office workers, teachers, retirees and housewives. "You can have...
...foreign university degree and fluent English to help internally displaced refugees in Kurdish Iraq, his Japanese mother's friends told her they understood if she wanted to weep. After all, shouldn't a dutiful Japanese son return home and work for a big company, like the droves of salarymen before him? But in 1996, Onishi founded one of Japan's largest international NGOs, Peace Winds Japan, which operates everywhere from Sudan to East Timor. Today, the 41-year-old Osaka native has noticed that his countrymen no longer consider helping less fortunate foreigners a shameful occupation. Two former Peace Winds...
...salarymen are those that I encounter most frequently during my morning commute. They tend to maintain stern expressions yet many have small charms on their cell phones, and read thick volumes of manga. Many a morning I find myself in the throng of school children, who travel en masse to school in their uniforms reminiscent of sailor suits. They are the most social of those riding the train as they excitedly discuss topics beyond my realm of comprehension...
...That said, it is in the end the Japanese electorate that keeps putting political bluebloods back in power. Japan Inc. is trying to meet the challenges of the new century by rewarding innovation over seniority, and young Japanese are founding companies that don't rely on inefficient armies of salarymen. Unless Japan is willing to shake up its political system, too, the country - no matter who's anointed on Sunday - may end up getting the leader it deserves. It could do so much better...