Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients come in for a visit.

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

The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.

The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.

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.

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

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