Put a pause on everything and went to Japan for 21 days. I ran the Tokyo Marathon and traveled around. I stopped writing daily; it's really challenging to come up with ideas I deem high quality every day. It's really rewarding to go back and read previous thoughts, though. Definitely need to commit to some frequency.
This was my second time in Japan. I went to some slightly less popular destinations: Kanazawa, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. Spent some time in Tokyo and Osaka as well.
Japan is the mecca of industrial design. They seem to be continually trying to improve processes and things. Day-to-day items work better; they are well designed. The mirror in every hotel does not fog up in the place where you usually reflect your own face. Every taxi door opens and closes automatically. The rails that carry blinds intertwine for a perfectly dark room. Airplanes and airports are adapted to use two worms to make boarding and deplaning smoother. The toilets wipe your ass! Scissors fold into a carryable little square, there are staple-less staplers, and some metro stations have gates that work with face recognition. When paying with coins at convenience stores, you just throw them all into a slot and the machine automatically sorts them and adds them up. The list goes on and on.
And things are not simply more practical; they also harmonize with their environment; they are elegant. You can tell there is intent behind every decision that is made. Time is spent thinking in systems, in how things will interact with each other. Where will things be stored? Even chopsticks have their parking spot.
This idea of thoughtfully shaping useful objects and thinking in systems is not unique to Japan, obviously, but this recent exposure to such a good implementation of the practice is infuriating, coming from a place where we seem to be complacent about inconvenience and ugliness. Our answer to displeasure is tolerance.
Some things are worse indeed. Getting a good cup of coffee is an ordeal and what's up with the single ply toilet paper?
But to see the passion of competence and coordination expose our mediocrity is a wake-up call.