Japanese maps tend to come in two varieties: small, schematic, and bewildering; and large, fantastically detailed, and bewildering.

The Japanese drive on the left side of the road. Most streets literally do not have names.

Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.

A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

Japanese maps tend to come in two varieties: small, schematic, and bewildering; and large, fantastically detailed, and bewildering.

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.