I have made many trips to Japan for both business and pleasure. Japan never fails to provide an eye-opening-mind-blowing perspective on the future. I often see things going on that eventually find there way to the U.S. A simple one is cell phones where the Japanese seem to be two years ahead of us. On my last trip two things dazzled. First, the ubiquity of teenagers watching movies on their phones. The second, and I don’t expect to see this one here, was a corner store in Akihabara, the electronics neighborhood, dedicated to smokers. You walk in and light up next to a vent that sucks your smoke out of the building. Drinks and snacks are sold. Imagine a larger corner space with 20 cigarette smoking men all standing in silence doing deep inhaling.

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One of my favorites is talking paper.