Japan-Extraordinary Courtesy & Cleanlyness

If a society can be judged by the efficiency of its infrastructure, Japan has it all. You can set your watch by the trains and eat off their floors. The buses are equipped with full color road map digital GPS displays showing their location. The taxis are spotless. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the dictatorial societies where the infrastructure has crumbled.This hits you the minute you step into the streets of Hanoi or Havana.

Attending a Japanese ball game is a religious experience. The Japanese never do anything half heartedly, baseball included. The noise and spirit at a game between the Osaka Buffalos and the Kobe Blue Wave would have rivaled a big ten-football game. The fans stand when their team is at bat beating drums and chanting enthusiastically. Beer and food are consumed in prodigious quantities. Half- way through the game I developed a pounding headach and had to leave.

No visit to Japan would be complete without seeing a garden. An outstanding example is the Shukkeien Garden in Hiroshima which was devastated by World War II and was beautifully rebuilt after The Bomb.

Newly Weds in Shukkeien Garden, Hiroshima, Interior perspective of Garden

Ethnocultural Museum Dragon, Shimizu & Tanaka Interport Students, downtown Kobe

Not 14th street NYC but a Kobe subway station, Japanese students mugging for Americans

First landfall since Vancouver, Grandma and Grand son riding the train