My top secret mission to Japan starts tomorrow–5th trip in a year, I think it’s the 19th in 14 years–and on this visit, code-named “Top Secret Mission To Japan,” I’ll be writing about architecture, certain beverages, countryside haunts, and the possible links between social concepts of honne and tatamae and the country’s use of pesticides to produce perfect looking fruits and vegetables.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last night who travels to that region and further south often.

He noted that historically, unless Japan has faced an existential crisis (the Perry mission, the end of the Second World War), that it has resisted change and painted itself into a corner culturally, economically, and politically.  That was a very interesting observation.

Meanwhile the mission continues.