Andrew Gallimore

I was told, I'm not sure if this is true, but it's kind of a, I don't know if it's a myth, but Japan is very mountainous.

And so back in the old days, villages were isolated.

So when you lived in a village, to get to the next village,

You have to climb a mountain, right?

So you're trapped in your village.

And so you have to learn to get along with the people around you.

You can't run away.

And so the Japanese culture has developed in the sense that you always have to be aware of the people around you.

And that's been passed down into the modern age, that the culture is always one of...

thinking about others and respect from an early age.

And they are really concerned about that.

When I first arrived in Japan like 10 years ago, I worked at a university and I was stood on campus outside just talking to someone.

And I saw a couple of high school students, probably on a campus visit, out of the corner of my eye, Japanese high school students.

And they caught my eye.

They saw that I was looking at them.

And as soon as that happened, they both, like on a dime, stopped and

bowed to me and I thought, wow, we're not in Kansas anymore.

You know, and that having that teaching children about respect from a very and training them, you know, the idea of respect your elders.

This is, you know, we have this in the West as well, but we kind of lost it a little bit.

And it's kind of drilled into them about respecting the people around you and respecting people who are older than you.