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Highly regarded ramen shops avoid franchising to control site-specific inputs: noodles, negi sourced from Sato in Chiba, pork broth, and bamboo shoots.
In late-19th-century Europe, Van Gogh, Degas, and Monet drew inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints used as disposable wrapping.
After the Cold War, a CIA position paper considered making Japan America’s next enemy. The US government did not adopt it.
Japan celebrates the person who makes something brilliantly. The American Walmart model celebrates the company that sells it.
Shinzo Abe weakened the yen to boost exports, unintentionally making Japanese hotels, meals, and travel cheaper for foreigners.
Japan had about five million foreign visitors in 2003. Two years after 2023, the count was nearly 42 million.
Relaxed visas for Thailand, Malaysia, China, and Indonesia helped trigger Japan’s tourism boom and brought English menus to restaurants.
A late-1990s trip to Japan shattered the idea that America permanently led global culture. Japanese people looked impossibly stylish.
Japanese artists made new culture feel familiar by remixing T-shirts, sneakers, old jazz records, and hip-hop.
What a society honors shapes its businesses: merchants produce Walmart-like scale, while craftspeople produce small places doing one thing exceptionally well.
The United States feels liberating to Japanese visitors who believe they can shed the behavioral codes attached to being Japanese.
Nearly half of respondents in a survey about visiting Japan named culture as a reason.
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