The price to pay for development...

Doing research in Japan is just not the same like doing it elsewhere. I am still wondering and learning on how did they incorporate their customs in life (over-rated respect towards seniors/superiors) into science and technology but yet progressed much in this field. We all knew that rigid minds hardly made new discovery due to lacks of creativity but as special as Japan itself is, this special people with their special way of thinking and extraordinary hard work just could make it happen. Equipped with this attitude, no wonder these Japanese who was at one time the losing team in WWII, now emerged as the second largest economy in Asia and the world leader in terms of technology and industrialization.

One chill evening, as my eyes and body grew tired out of 5 days research work every week, I took a chance to unwind along the river next to my apato, the Takano Gawa. As I stroll along this smooth flowing river towards the point where it meets with Kamo Gawa at Demachiyanagi, I noticed that despite of being the leader in technovation, Japan has never neglected the environmental factor in its modernization. The river still flow with the same crystal clear water no matter how rapid that the city grows. However, this should not be so interesting to us as we should already knew that a huge amount of money being allocated to maintain this condition and by being a developed country, a keen concern towards environmental issues is a must if the government wish to stay in power. Please don't compare it with our Sungai Klang and Sungai Gombak because the politician that forms the city council here in Japan are the one who serve the community well or else they won't get elected. In Malaysia, it's the other way round where the politician are the one who 'wet their beaks' in most of the so-called taxpayer's projects, so just don't compare and contrast before changes being done, or else it might be an unfair ground comparison. ;p true?

In this post, what I wish to highlight the most is the existence of the blue canvas villas at nearly most of the bridge's underpass in Kyoto City. This blue canvas villas is one among few other places in Kyoto where homeless people seek refuge. This is a permanent self-build structure and do belong strictly to the person who builds it. Some of them even had a TV set and even grew their own vegetables at the river banks (refer left pic 2). Homelessness is the condition and societal category of people who lack fixed housing, usually because they cannot afford a regular, safe, and adequate shelter and this scene here just represent a micro percentage among an estimated 100 million of homeless people worldwide. Homelessness have been a major problem to the world for long and don't be shocked if I tell u that among these homeless people in Kyoto, some of them are actually the people who builds the city but get sidelined due to several pathetic reasons. From the information I get from several Japanese friends, some of these homeless people were alcohol abusers but some had really good background. Some were even doctors, managers, engineers and psychologist previously. This shows how different is the homeless society in Japan to the one in America, which occurred due to high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and mental illness. In Japan, large proportion of the homeless people had steady jobs and stable lives until their companies went bankrupt and they were put out of work, mostly due to the crush of the Japanese asset price bubble (バブル景気　baburu keiki) which represent the time of skyrocketing land and stock prices in the Japanese economy, lasting from 1986 to 1990. The homeless people now are mostly the product of 'bubble collapse' (崩壊　houkai) and this is what we called the price that we have to pay from rapid development.

As Malaysia now moves into its next chapter of the development full with corridors criss-crossing the map from north to south, I do always pray and hope that our leaders will carefully and intellectually plan the best strategy to drive our country. We want to leap, and we want to fly high..but we must always remember that the bigger we became after the leap, the harder we will fall...

Till then for now...Let me enjoy my jog..enough time for serious thinking..I want to let loose and enjoy the view!!