It will continue to be a tough time financially for a lot of people in the world next year in 2023.
I've been traveling around South East Asia the past few months. I learned a lot more than I thought I would.
We’ve entered an AI era, in which big Japanese companies and institutions will play a role in. Success in the field would be a fortune, but I also feel that Japanese like being analogue.
The news tells us that we need to adopt to this IT phenomena, which some will, but it doesn’t have to be everyone. The more digital the world becomes, it might be good to go completely the opposite towards analogue.
The best thing about Japan
It used to be so normal for a Japanese that Japan has amazing nature. The Japanese have engaged in it and there is so much culture here built around the change of the four seasons.
I was also very surprised that people in South East Asia will tell me how it’s clean in Japan was their favorite part about Japan.
A lot of Japanese reaction will be, “Well, Singapore is cleaner” but they say it’s different. They seem to mean that the scenery is clean and natural which was an ah moment. That might be true.
Japanese love IT. We want to see the world of Doraemon and love to engage in digital, but we shouldn’t forget that we have something very opposite of digital, which is we have nature that we protected, enhanced, and passed on from generations to generations.
What I learned from my food trip in South East Asia
I'm in Bali, Indonesia right now. Here the food is absolutely amazing. My Airbnb family slow cooks it from charcoal, which is the best way to bbq or grill all kinds of ingredients. In Japan when we had more time but less money, we used to do the same thing.
Everybody has an equal 24 hours a day, where did our time go? The majority of food we eat comes are instantly cookable either ready to eat, or microwaveable. Japanese have forgotten how we used to be engaged in cooking.
Wages are unbelievably cheap even in an international resort in Bali. But the locals stick together with family and share food. They live very close to each other and gather to eat especially for dinner.
They drink an alcoholic beverage called Arak, and they share it within the family in just one cup. They told me it means that we are all equal.
They also share some food together with 1 spoon, and we will chat for a long time. Then another family member will come...and another one... huge family lol. My dinners in Tokyo used to be 10 minutes on a weekday. Who’s happier?
We’ve forgotten that it’s ok to share.
The Japanese are too busy to share anymore. We of course have very convenient stores that we call "konbini." The three biggest konbinis in Japan are Seven Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson, and it's everywhere.
A lot of Japanese can't live without konbini anymore. You can quickly fill your stomach with konbini and the cost performance is amazing. But does it fill your heart? Not really.
We work long hours for a better living, but taxes and inflation rise while our wages do not. This is resulting in a very stressed-out society. So should we take it easy and share food and time together or alone eating from SevenEleven?
What I came across during the earthquake in Niseko
Having said that I actually went through this sharing system in Niseko Town in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan.
The Niseko area is now a very branded resort, and land prices exceed Tokyo. But Niseko actually used to be, financially poor. It snows way too much you can’t really do anything except winter sports. The ski boom ended in Japan, then until the backpackers from Australia found the powder snow there it was a run down resort. I heard residents couldn’t make a living a lot abandoned their houses to leave for somewhere else, when right now it could be sold for a fortune.
So, a lot of the locals in Niseko still live humble lives with their main job as farmers.
When the earthquake hit Hokkaido, a lot of my friends from all across Japan messaged me if I was ok, as it was big news.
The news will be showing that the water supply is cut off from the town that was the center of the quake.
But in Niseko we have 4 springs that give us mineral water that comes from Mt. Yotei. Our neighbors kept coming to say hello to us in the morning, making sure we are ok. Not just physically but mentally. Some brought their vegetables from the house farm, rice, salmon that somebody fished...
I remember being touched that our neighbors care a lot about an outsider like us.
This is where the elders can share knowledge on how to prepare for what might come next, while the younger ones like us can help them with heavier duties that elders will be challenged by.
Each neighbor would give us something to eat to prepare for a possible cut of food supply, (which never happened)
Some even fished us salmon. So we dug our farm and had a bunch of things we could share back.
We had a pile of food on our dining table because of the earthquake, and we realized how we are not alone in the neighborhood.
Not just on emergencies, but the neighbors would pop by for a chat with seasonal tsukemono pickles, Japanese desserts, a lot of things. And we'll chat for a while.
Inflation has less impact when you can produce it yourself
Japan rely heavily on imports in life's essentials including food, energy, materials.
But if we shift to the countryside, then people actually have the knowledge and skills to DIY (do it yourself)
Some people in Niseko knew how to recycle housing materials from abandoned homes to upgrade their houses.
I came across farmers that are dumping their food from bad weather. Tomatoes grow very fast and burst before we could harvest them all when it rains too much. So the farmers will let their friends or neighbors come harvest as much as they want, to do whatever they want. Eat it, cook it to a sauce to put in the freezer, sell it, anything.
Inflation is more severe when the product is imported. But when it's produced by yourself, it's free.
Some villages in East Hokkaido promote the usage of a fireplace rather than gas heaters. You can go to the government building to get free wood for your fireplace. I heard the wood comes from overgrown trees that the government needed to cut for disaster prevention purposes. The government went creative to chop it for the residents to share, which makes it a little more ecological and economical.
What I will be doing when I am back in Japan
I will be trying to farm my own food. If I go back to my mother's hometown, her family has a piece of land that my grandpa used to farm.
It's good timing when prices are rising due to inflation. We also have natural disasters a lot in Japan, that's one reason we rely more on importing food.
But the Japanese farmer I used to live with told me food production can be well controlled by using the proper knowledge and technology.
I will be cooking a lot more for myself. All Japanese used to do this. And I feel we should be spending less time working and taking care of ourselves more. People focus too much on making more money, where we might be richer in money but not wealthy.
More emphasis can go on "how to cut my daily cost?" Grow your own food instead of buying from the market. Then, trade what you grow with others, or sell the surplus to the local market. This helps boost chisan chisho 地産地消 which is "produce locally, consume locally." This will help cut the demand for more resources of energy, which Japan is scarce.
Who really has the wealth?
Inflation is crazy everywhere in the world right now. Indonesia, Vietnam where I was before Bali, and India where I expect to be next are all strong against inflation as they have commodities/resources to sell.
Everyone needs to eat. And these 3 countries are big agriculture countries, so as long as I stick to local ingredients, I'm a happy camper.
Indonesia is a big exporter of natural gas and oil. So, I realized that they are least affected from this inflation phenomenon.
The Japanese trading firms are doing well to stabilize the prices on such a weak yen double punch. No wonder Warren Buffet started to put his funds into our trading firms!
But I think those who are not really happy in the urban areas of Japan, should start shifting to the countryside. And we will grow our own food, and use the sharing system to live ecologically.
If one starts to grow their own food and have a surplus, our food self-sufficiency rate goes up. And this is a big deal for Japan. And the Japanese are already starting to realize that they love being with nature.
We used to do it, in Edo Period before the Americans arrived and told us to open our ports:) And yes it will be somewhat more inconvenient but we have the internet now where we can be so creative.
Follow Ryu Aomi for more to come :)
In this blog, I write about my food trips of the list of countries I want to visit.
I also love to experience how locals live in each destination, and share what I learned.
After closing my travel business in Japan during Covid, I realized I didn’t have the right mindset to sustain the business, and got into Buddhism, mindfulness, knowing myself more.
I realized I wasn’t very materialistic and loved engaging in cooking, nature, and good relationships.
To know more about me, I wrote it here.
Here are the SNS channels I have, but I mainly focus on Twitter at the moment.
I started blogging in Japanese, too! I hope it becomes something useful for those who are interested in Japan and who study Japanese and plan to live there.
These 2 books changed my life.
If things are great, keep it up! You’re in the right path. If things aren’t working out for you, then these helped me a lot.
Good habits are essential to achieve your own way of success!
Managing relationships are challenging, but it’s a skill you can learn.
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