By Rakiya Washington

When reading chapter 5 in the wonderful Geek in Japan, provided by the Japanese Plus Program, the most interesting topic that I learned about was pertaining to how the Japanese create a keiretsu in business. I thought this was interesting because it reminded me of other partnerships that had similar obligations, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. They seemed related to me because in the passage, the keiretsu was an alliance that was responsible for the economic success of other businesses and similarly, the League of Nations and United Nations were created in order to create equal opportunity for success for each country involved. Another similarity that I noticed was how the United States was involved in both. In Japan, the United States’s role was to aid the MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) control the entire Japanese industry and similarly, the United States played a leading role in the United Nations.

I am glad I was able to learn about something like this and without this program, I would not have been as knowledgeable on topics like this. I enjoy learning new things about Japanese culture and their daily lives.