Payback

The search and rescue teams from Japan are leaving Christchurch, New Zealand. They thought they were just going to go home, but now they have to go search for their own countrymen.

So in an act of class, New Zealand is sending Japan a third of their own search-and-rescue teams to accompany the Japanese teams to the tsunami disaster areas. The mayor of Christchurch says it’s the least they can do, given how much help Japan sent to New Zealand.

I strongly suspect that NZ and Nippon will be much better friends in the next few years. There’s nothing like helping each other through mutual sufferings to create bonds.

Oh, and here’s a story about Japanese manners in a crisis. The other side of this is that a sincere heartfelt invitation to speak freely elicited sincere answers, as you see. This is why Japanese businesspeople go out drinking together so much — sincerity and informality create bonding. But obviously, in a society where people live close together, suss out each other’s feelings and speak by context, and feel debts and resentments keenly, you don’t really want to get intimate with everybody, ’cause you’re too intimate already. Younger people probably don’t feel this need for manners so much, because they are mostly only children who live in the suburbs and have a lot of anonymous online escape from family and community constraints.