(All Around Tokyo. Something you cannot give a kick to.)Tangible vs. Intangible Domains
Rich people working around the Wall Street and City found that there was a virtual world built by the Internet and other IT technologies.
They realized that the financial sector could advance and deploy in the virtual world.
By becoming frontiers in this movement, they, mostly Anglo Saxon ultra rich men, multiplied their financial assets.
However, if Microsoft, Intel, and Google were all Japanese companies and computer software codes could be written in Japanese so conveniently based on technical standards specified by mostly Japanese businesses, Japanese economy would grow at a 10% rate leveraging the virtual world.
It is a framework that matters. Japan should leave a paradigm formed through the success in the industrial, physical domain built up in the 20th century.
America would still continue to prosper fairly relying on its military, financial, and energy sectors, but strong warnings have been given repeatedly from Heaven.
So, it is a spiritual matter that matters in deploying in a new framework.
SECTION I: Key to Japan's Future Growth: The English Internet?
It is truly amazing that Japan is the No.3 country in terms of the number of Internet users (as of 2007), while China has a 1300 million population, the U.S. has 300 million, and Japan has 125 million.
It is also quite amazing that Japanese is the No.4 language in terms of the amount of usage over the Internet (as of the end of 2009), while there are so many English speakers, Chinese speakers, and Spanish speakers, each in different countries, who also use the Internet all over the world, while the Japanese language is only used in Japan roughly speaking.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
It is apparent that the future of Japan consists in this peculiarity of Japan and Japanese. If Japan achieves an annual 4% growth, the key to success is all the more in the Internet or the IT technology.
Japan must more appreciate the merit and advantage of its own language, which allows for such great deployment of the Internet in the general society. But, it must also correctly correspond to the global mainstream, enhancing its ability in communications in English through any channels, including the Internet.
Chinese will have to learn and use English and Japanese if it continues to grow keeping some quality. It is not difficult for Chinese people to learn both English and Japanese. Their language has affinity with English as a spoken language as well as with Japanese as a written language.
But, for Japanese with such a uniquely advanced mother language, it is ironically not easy to learn other low-tire or wild language such as English.
For ordinary Chinese, the Chinese traditional culture does not mean anything so binding on themselves. They do not identify themselves at the core of their consciousness with the traditional culture. They identify themselves with the Chinese style of living. This difference is not so explicitly large, but decisive. Riding on the culture irresponsibly or blindly is different from continuing to input a spirit and seeds into it as a person in charge if self-appointed. No Chinese look like sacrificing their life in order to enhance their traditional culture. It is partly because a majority of the Chinese are simply too poor and too poorly educated, and noble classes of China who in a great pride developed the Chinese Civilization till the 20th century had long gone. Though today's Chinese adhere to being a kind of successors of the great ancient Chinese Civilization, most of Chinese do not find codes, norm, or value so binding in the tradition, in comparison with material success under any conditions, including the Communist ruling state and the Western dominant globalization.
But, for Japanese living in a tradition that the most people, from farmers, samurais, to noble people, have contributed to development of the Japanese culture, the Japanese unique culture that has made Japan the No.2 nation in the world has a more influence or restrictive power on them. Being Japanese does not mean that he looks like a Japanese but that he is under a critical influence of the Japanese culture and tradition. As this influence is so strong that most of Japanese cannot build an English-speaking function in their mind, no matter how many English words they might learn by heart.
Yet, computers and the Internet belong to the English-speaking domain (while China cannot lead the world in the modern cultural competition though Japan has some influence though inconspicuous).
In this context, a future 4% growth of Japan depends on how Japanese people will cultivate a skill to handle English and communicate in English over the Internet, while keeping the Japanese culture and the merit of the Japanese language. English-based Internet activities by Japanese users must be supported by the fundamental Japanese culture which only can promise success for Japan and the Japanese people in future, too. It is so since Japan already achieved what it could do to the utmost in the 20th century type of industry.
Nonetheless, it is not so easy.
It involves a matter of religion. That is why Japanese must at least study Christianity in earnest.
SECTION II: Interest of America
Who decides the national interest of America?
In a broader historical view, voters in 2008 decided that it met the American interest to elect Mr. Barack Obama as president, since those voters believed that they constituted the right part of America and they had a right to choose even a minority African American if the George-W.-Bush type of elites could not serve them well.
Accordingly, reformation is going on in the medical/insurance sector and the financial sector with whatever outcome and effect as well as in management of the War on Terror.
The BP offshore oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico would be related to this agenda: Who defines the national interest of America?
Not all the non-rich in America want to be rich like those rich of today who have sacrificed so many others in the War on Terror and the Wall Street Shock. "The rich are probably not right Christians any more," they must think in the bottom of their mind.
Even non-rich men can enjoy their own life style in America. But, they need assurance that rich people and elites would not harm their view on the world, sharing the same idea on the American value.
But if this belief that the American national interest is pursued by elites in Washington D.C. and New York very properly for all the Americans has vanished away from the mind of a majority of non-rich people, another change should occur in America.
I think it can be an underlying theme in the 2012 Presidential Election.
It has been triggered violently by the 9/11 Terror, financially the 9/15 Lehman Shock, and environmentally the 4/20 BP Rig Accident, but it would progress to a spiritual or a philosophical domain of the American people.
A new change will be pursued with an agenda not only in terms of security, economy, and environment but also in terms of the American spirit.
Indeed, as those without a right American spirit have decided what the American interest is for so long, poor and non-rich Americans are still being sacrificed.
Accordingly, this movement must be first manifested in who will be chosen as candidates for the presidential election in 2012.
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I saw a young woman riding on a bicycle with a cellular phone on the one hand.
While waiting for the signal to change, she said to the phone, "That one is nothing in my emotional world."
She is angry with somebody, so that she denies the person in her mind. (What is peculiar is that she restricted the matter in her emotional world, which may be not so bad objectively and socially.)
If she can draw a distinction between her emotional world and the world governed by the God, she would not be involved in any violent accident, no matter how casual she looks.
So, the sky was covered by gray clouds all over around Tokyo.
It may be time for me to go and see a sea, since you can reach a seaside travelling over 100 or 200 km from any point on the Japanese Island.
Dan 6:25 Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you.
Dan 6:26 I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end.
Dan 6:27 He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.
Dan 6:28 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.