Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride–and then some

God knows I’ve tried, but it’s been pretty darned hard to find any vaguely amusing or mildly quirky news coming out of Japan these days. Japan – which has been such a wonderful source of blog fodder over the years: robots teaching classes, young men dating stuffed dolls, firms that rent out wedding guests…

But it’s hard to find the bright side – other than admiration for the stoic and plucky populace – out of the recent catastrophes. Like everyone else with a flat screen TV and a channel cruiser, I’ve logged plenty of time in a slack-jawed shock and awe, gasping as the scenes of the tsunami played over and over. Hoping that the little old lady would find her husband, the nice young man would find his aunt.

The news from Japan has been absolutely riveting.

Sure, we’d seen the black, debris-filled waters roiling through the streets of Banda Aceh, but those towns and villages were pretty poor to begin with. The swath of destruction in Japan cuts closer to home. The victims may be Japanese, but they have flat screen TV’s and smartphones, they play video games (and them some), they gave the world Hello, Kitty. In other words, thousands of miles of ocean and thousands of years of culture and history aside, the Japanese lifestyle is a lot closer to ours than that of the average Indonesian subsistence fisherman. And for a lot of Japanese, that lifestyle – and many times the life itself – was swept away.

Then there was the nuclear plant problem that turned bad to worse to worser.

Still, there was some good news (sorta).

We were heartened to read about plucky survivors, the brave kamikaze nuclear plant technicians who chose what they well knew might be a slow and painful death to save the day. Even the Kirin Beer plant six-pack looters gave us a bit of cold comfort: They really are just like us. They even loot (a bit, and only when they’re thirsty).

In truth, most of my after-shock thought about the trifecta tragedies in Japan has been an internal debate over whether it’s compassionate or sucker-ish to donate to a relief fund for the third largest economy on earth (even if that economy has been miserably stunted and flailing of late, as it slip-slid from number two to number three).

Then there was the news that, as a by-product of the quake, Tokyo Disneyland’s parking lot had been the victim of ground liquefaction, and had turned into a quicksand like slurry that had swallowed up 30 cars.

Certainly terrible for the owners of those 30 cars, but at least something that could put a smile on a blogger’s face (as long as no one was in those cars).

Mr. Toad’s flivver, you’ll be pleased to know, was spared: the park itself was built on “deep reinforced foundations”, its designers presumably having heeded the warnings from Disney’s classic Depression-era cartoon, The Three Little Pigs. Huff and puff as you will, it takes a lot to blow down amusement rides built on 49 foot deep, highly reinforced foundation.

In fact, Japan’s buildings and infrastructure – nuclear plants aside (an admittedly big aside) – have certainly come off as remarkable. Watching skyscrapers sway like palm trees in a tropical breeze was absolutely amazing. These guys – nuclear plants apparently aside – do know how to build.

Even when it comes to something that really is not all that important for national survival, such as Tokyo Disneyland.

Tokyo Disneyland. Paris Disneyland. Dubai Disneyland.

There may be damned little else that we’re Number One at, but our low-brow cultural exports still seem to do the trick. Not that I don’t love Disneyland. One of the high points of my young adult life was getting to ride the Flying Dumbo and swirl in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Teacups. So what if I was twenty-two. At long last, I had realized The Dream and was at Disneyland.

And that first trip to Disneyland was able to provide me with one of the signal, recurring metaphors of my business career.

In Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, you have your hands on the wheel of the flivver. You are nominally in control, steering your course. But you’re really not. You’re careening out of control, screeching bats are zooming in at your head, and you never know what’s behind the next (thankfully swinging) door. Then  - wheeee – no matter what happens, you do come out safe on the other side. Which is what pretty much happened every where I worked, even as the companies I worked for exploded or imploded.

Which is what will no doubt happen with the Japanese, as well. They are, after all, remarkably plucky, stoic, and hardworking. Difficult to imagine their populace sitting around, knocking back sake after sake in a national pity party. Resilience, I suspect, ‘R Us (or them).

Note to self: get on the Red Cross site for Japan and donate something.