Japan is our Friend

I've never been to Japan and that is a major regret: I love sushi, the idea of Zen Buddhism, and spooky avant-garde Japanese horror movies. I spent my childhood in the 1980s, with everyone in Ohio fearing the Japanese industrial invasion and then being grateful when it came. I passed my driver's test in a Honda and drove a Nissan to my last day of school. I played Atari with my family and from the colored bits and blobs on the screen I imagined a fairly intense video world. Back then, all of us were slowly turning Japanese.

On that note, here's a favorite song from The Spinto Band, the state of Delaware's finest musical export this century. College band or no, they wax poetic with a line about Japan assimilating other cultures "to make their stuff". It's a line remembered from my youth, oft spoken to express America's inventive superiority over Japan. Nowadays we say the same about China and in response all I can say is yes, please. A sudden influx of Chinese culture may not be a bad thing. Such are my thoughts.