Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

starting up around the world

This recent article by the CS Monitor (thanks Andrew) is quite interesting regarding starting up a business in different countries. Japan, of course, is not in the top 10 (for ease), but thankfully not in the bottom 10 either. The Worldbank sight mentioned is actually very interesting. Japan’s details are here.

So, it seems it would be ranked 31st, which actually doesn’t surprise me. If the paper-work needed to purchase a simple book in a Japanese company is any indication, I’m not surprised dealing with the gov’t is such a chore. The tough part is measuring corruption though; I feel like in Japan this often happens *after* the business is started. Consider — you finally get the green light to open your sandwich store in Roppongi. You arrive early the day after opening and one of your windows is smashed. As you go through the day cleaning it up, serving customers, and getting the window replaced, some suited guy walks in and says, “So, I see your window was smashed. I can help “protect you” if you give me xxx yen at the end of the month, and every month thereafter.” It’s actually a clever way for the “underground” to appear less directly involved with gov’t corruption.

Even being the second largest economy in the world, Japan just as consistently ranks rather pathetically from this most recent one, to the sad 47th it scored for most travelled-to nation. It will be interesting to see how well Koizumi’s efforts to double tourism will go. I’m thinking it could just as easily backfire.

Amusingly enough, i’m actually reminded of a conversation I had with a French colleague about dating Japanese girls. You may remember a previous post about an article analogizing the French woman as marathoner and American woman as sprinter. I got to wondering about Japanese women, but through the course of discussion something he pointed out struck me. He noted that Japanese girls who date foreigners do so largely out of cultural curiosity (mind you this is not a scientific study). It seems like a fairly valid point; Japanese girls seem to find their own culture ‘boring’ and are often amused if not surprised of gaijin who express interest in Japanese culture. Some may call it bashfulness, but it seems a bit elitist of them, actually. Regardless, I think this lack of desire to outwardly share (or over-modesty, whichever you want to call it) is part of the reason this country is so unaccommodating to foreigners. America, on the other hand, is a little overly aggressive, and now it’s in trouble for it. Ironic how both extremes seem to have bred the two largest economies….