They say travel is broadening. So here’s a brief list of some of what I learned after three weeks in Japan and Korea. Will add more as I think of it.

1. toilet seats are highly engineered and if you can’t read the Korean or Japanese instructions, just push some random buttons

2. but be prepared for a jolt in a kind of personal area

3. QR codes are everywhere for everything.

4. Some blogger said that anything in Japan that might conceivably require a reservation, does. True! You needed a reservation (and a QR Code) to enter certain stores, for instance.

5. The SUICA card system for paying for travel - and some convenience store items - in Japan via the wallet app on your phone is pretty impressive

6. Until it doesn’t work on your wife’s phone and nobody can figure out why

7. Despite SUICA and QR Codes, be prepared to carry multiple small pieces of paper that represent - separately - your train reservation, your actual train ticket, your seat assignment, and your receipt, and they may be different sizes, and only one of them goes in the machine.

8.) In Canada you wouldn’t dream of taking a bus to the airport and hoping to make a four minute connection to a different bus in a different location. In Japan or Korea - hey, why wouldn’t that work, everything is exactly on time, as it should be.

9. Public transit is so advanced here, in speed, frequency, coverage, even signage, that it makes you wonder what Japanese visiting Canada think of the TTC, GO Transit and Via. (Westjet ads were in heavy rotation on the Narita Express train.)

10. I actually like the TTC and GO Transit and VIA, who do a good job with limited resources, and I just wish we could get a move on in building more frequent and reliable service.

11. Japanese ballpark hot dogs come with a dual ketchup/mustard packet, and you can carefully fold and squeeze it to dispense beautiful parallel lines of red and yellow onto your hot dog. Or in my case, onto my shirt.

12. Japanese baseball is an amazing experience. Congrats to the Yomiuri Giants, who beat the I’m-not-sure-exactly-I-think-it-was-the Dragons 8-1 last night. The organized sections of fans, chanting contiuously, loudly, and assisted by trumpets and drums meant that there was essentially no time (or need) for the sort of loud audio interruptions we’re used to at North American games.

13. Japanese may say “Ohayo” (“good morning”) to you but the correct response is not, unfortunately, “Ontario.”

14. Let’s remember how incredibly fortunate we are in North America that we can visit faraway lands, and still, most signs are subtitled in English, and everyone is eager to help you even if they have to pull up a translation app on their cell phones.

Very interesting article in the Atlantic about the effects the tariffs are having, on one farmer in particular in New York, who was surprised to learn that HE was responsible for paying the tariff, not his Canadian supplier.

I am sorry that people like this farmer are getting caught up in this insanity, but I hope everybody quickly realizes who pays tariffs. It’s not the foreign supplier. It’s the American purchaser.

Excerpt -

Last month , Nicholas Gilbert received a delivery of grain for the 1,400 cows he tends at his dairy farm in Potsdam, New York, 20 miles from the Ontario border. The feed came with a surprise tariff of $2,200 tacked on.

“We have small margins,” he told me. “I had a contracted price on that grain delivered to my barn. It was supposed to be so much per ton. And they added that tariff right on top because it comes from a Canadian feed mill.”

Gilbert cannot increase the price of the milk he sells, which is set by the local co-op. He cannot feed his cows less food. He cannot buy feed from another supplier; there aren’t any nearby, and getting it from farther away would be more expensive.

When he got the delivery, he stared at the tariff for a while. Shouldn’t his Canadian supplier have been responsible for paying it?

“I’m not even sure it’s legal! We contracted for the price on delivery! If your price of fuel goes up or your truck breaks down, that’s not my problem! That’s what the contract’s for.”

But the tariff was legal, and it was Gilbert’s responsibility.

apple.news/AA5h2HxJ7…

I signed up for a paid Wired subscription - because they’re doing some good reporting lately - and to my surprise, they sent me a sheet of laptop stickers.

I cannot personally imagine any circumstance where I’d put one of these stickers on my laptop, but the thought was nice.