Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 The only thing I knew about Japan was the movie, uh, Godzilla and a Jerry Lewis movie called geisha. Boy
Speaker 2 00:00:22 Hello, I'm Joseph shawls. And welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. This is a podcast for people who move between different cultural worlds. We talk about intercultural experiences and we dig into the science and the psychology of culture and mind today, we have a special treat on the deep culture podcast. I had a conversation with Bob Whiting, the best-selling author, who has made a career of finding cross-cultural insight in unexpected places like baseball and the Japanese mafia, his first book, the chrysanthemum and the bat was a best seller. And it accomplished something that was really remarkable. It was a cross-cultural exploration of Japanese culture through the supposedly all American sport of baseball. So let me read something from the forward. At first glance, baseball in Japan appears to be the same as the U S version, but it isn't the Japanese view of life.
Speaker 2 00:01:36 Stressing group identity, cooperation, hard work respect for agents in your city and face has permeated nearly every aspect of the sport, giving it a distinct character of its own. His book. You got to have war earned, a Pulitzer prize nomination. It's a must read in Japanese studies departments. His book, Tokyo underworld explores the darker side of Japanese society. After world war two corruption and organized crime. I have known Bob for many years and he had mentioned to me that he was writing his memoir and now it's out. And it was a perfect excuse to talk. So we sat down in a conference room at the foreign correspondence club in Tokyo. You'll hear the sound has a bit of an echo, and there were even some sirens in the background. Sometimes the title of his memoir is Tokyo junkie, 60 years of bright lights and back alleys and baseball.
Speaker 2 00:02:41 Now I knew he had a remarkable life. He grew up in a small town, went off to see the world. He arrived in Japan in 1962, started a 60 year love affair with Tokyo, but he has also spent time living all over the world. His is a UN diplomat, and I found out that he had gotten a handwritten note of congratulations on his memoir from president George W. Bush. I get the feeling however that despite all of this Bob still considers himself a, something of a small town boy. And so I was just thrilled to sit down with him and learn a little bit about his journey. I started off by asking him about the title of his memoir, Tokyo junkie, Bob. It is an honor to welcome you to the deep culture podcast. Boko junkie. Is this an addiction? So what is, what is the addiction?
Speaker 0 00:03:52 Well, it occurred to me that that was a really apropos title because I do seem to be addicted to this country. I tried to leave once I swore I'd never come back and here I am,
Speaker 2 00:04:03 But I think that a lot of the listeners on this podcast will really understand how you can get hooked on it. And I was looking the other day at Facebook and saw this note that was posted from George W. Bush to you congratulating you on your memoir. Could you, could you read this
Speaker 0 00:04:27 Written letter, dear Robert? I just finished Tokyo junkie. I liked the book a lot. The stirrings were excellent. The descriptions vivid. Thanks for the shout out. I'm sure. Bill number 42 and through parenthesis will appreciate this as well. I'm a little surprised you did not include a little paragraph on Barbie V Bobby Valentine, that baseball manager, after all, there was a beer name for him in Japan. And you seem to like there, keep writing that totally floored me to get that. It's great. He's even got words crossed out at the, uh, so you know what I need to think.
Speaker 2 00:05:10 You've really had an amazing journey. You started in a small town in Northern California and you have gone through so much and witnessed so much. What was that small town like? How were you at that time?
Speaker 0 00:05:27 Well, Eureka, I don't think anybody in Eureka and ever seen a subway. It was a town of 35,000 on the coast fishing and logging town, right in the heart of the redwoods. You were really isolated from civilization was the feeling that you got. If you like to go fishing in the mountains or hiking in the redwoods, it was a great place. You know, I was having problems. I graduated from high school. I graduated at a very young age, 17 and, uh, went to university and I just waited until I was 18 so that I could join the military, get out because I just had to not delete.
Speaker 2 00:06:05 So were you one of these people who just wanted to get out who wanted to go see the world? Or what was, what was your motivation?
Speaker 0 00:06:13 I had a very strained home wife. My mother was, she grew up in New Jersey and when she was 12 years old, her parents just left, just left him there. Her father was a racetrack junkier mother was a barroom floozy, a drug addict. And when she was 16, she had to go down to the local Morgan identifier, her mother's body, and she never got over it. She just had so much anger inside her that she just never knew how to deal with it. My father was a mechanic, very good with his hands. He could make cameras out of nothing, but he spent as much time as humanly possible away from the house. She was always yelling at him. So I just had to get out. I mean, I felt sorry for her because she really had a miserable life, but I just couldn't stand it. So I just, we had a big blow out one day. So I just got in the car, drove to San Francisco and joined you. Then I had to drive back to Eureka and park the car, get on a bus and go to
Speaker 2 00:07:20 Well. So it was not some dream of seeing the world. It was to get out of where you were.
Speaker 0 00:07:27 Well, yeah, it was to get out. Once I got in the air force, they, uh, you know, they give you all these tests. They put me in this electronic surveillance school for, uh, analyzing the data from surveillance flights. And that's what I wound up doing in Japan. I went to basic training in Lackland air force, base, Texas, outside San Antonio. And then they sent me to Biloxi, Mississippi. And I went to a tech school there for several months and they said, where do you want to go? Sergeant called me in at the end of the, this particular semester. I said, I want to go to Berlin because that's where all the spy action was. And he said, okay, sure, no problem. Zone 10. I get this assignment to Japan. I didn't even know where Japan was. I thought it was somewhere near Hong Kong. And the only thing I knew about Japan was the movie, uh, Godzilla and a Jerry Lewis movie called geisha boy.
Speaker 2 00:08:41 Uh, Bob arrived in Japan the year that I was born before computers or the internet. That was a time when stereotypes and racial slurs were common, especially for a country that was recently the enemy. Talk about culture shock. And then you arrive in, in Japan in 1962. Was it, you were 19.
Speaker 0 00:09:08 It's
Speaker 2 00:09:09 Hard to imagine the impact that that would make on this young man from Yreka. What were your first impressions?
Speaker 0 00:09:20 Well, the smell was the first date impression, you know, because they as human fertilizer on the rice patties and this was a fairly rural area. You're good, really nice. You have Mount Fuji. And that's when I started going down to, to Shinjuku and then to Tokyo station and other, what struck me was the crowds know just a sea of, uh, black hair and Tokyo station, you know, and, and it's certain hours of the day. It was so crowded. You know, they need the platform pushers to get people in the trench during the community of rush hour in the morning and evening. Uh, uh, it was, it was so polluted that you, on most days you could barely see Tokyo tower and this auto auto pollution and also industrial pollution. Uh, we were told, don't drink the tap water. You know, you get disease. They, uh, uh, brats everywhere. It was very, you know, wasn't very sanitary place. Plus there was a lot of crime
Speaker 2 00:10:26 And this is really different from the image that most people today have of modern Japan, modern Tokyo. How did all of this strike you as this young American? I mean, this was posted still post-war period.
Speaker 0 00:10:39 I mean, on the base, there were a lot of people who didn't like Japan, a lot of people in the military, you know, they had relatives who died in the war. They still remember that, you know, it was only 17 years since the war had ended. And they kind of looked down on the Japanese and there was a lot of, there were a lot of dumb people in the military.
Speaker 2 00:10:59 So what was different about you?
Speaker 0 00:11:04 The first time I went to Tokyo, I was just overwhelmed by the energy of the place. I mean, it was when I talk about the city being addictive, it wasn't addicted because this energy, it just suck you in. You know, I just like, just something came over you. I just said, I've gotta be here. There's just so much to see so much to do. You know, where do you begin? There were so many bars and restaurants and nightclubs that you couldn't go to them all. They were all coffee shops everywhere. Every coffee shop had a personality. There was one that's run by this French bell arena. There was another one where the, although the waitresses were wedding dresses or there was another one in Conda that just played nothing but classical musical day fives floors are these deep red carpets and velvet walls. And you can just sit by a book and just sit there and read it all day. Plus, there was a, I discovered the Yomiuri giants had a baseball team. They had this, a player named world, went on under sip to break the world home run record. Uh, it was just every day. It seemed there was an education. I learned something new
Speaker 2 00:12:17 At a certain point. You had to decide whether to stay with the military or to stay in Japan, I guess that was in 65, after three years. And I think this is something that a lot of expatriates face is it to do I leave or do I stay? So what was that decision like for you?
Speaker 0 00:12:37 I, it wasn't really all that hard. I got a hard time. Other people that I worked with, I was actually, I was offered a job by and NSA, the national security agency, but Tokyo had made such an impression that it'd become a high-tech megalopolis at a time that I was there, that they, the James Bond crew came and film. You only live twice in 1966. So it was such a buzz going on. The message from everyone in Tokyo is we're just getting started, are on our way, watch out world. And again, I just couldn't bring myself to leave. I wanted to see, I wanted to watch it. I couldn't understand why these other people didn't want the same thing I did, but they thought I was just as crazy as I thought they were,
Speaker 2 00:13:29 But it doesn't surprise me because especially I've been in Japan and seen plenty of expatriates who never learned Japanese, for example, who kind of hold themselves apart. And they take advantage of being a white foreigner. If they happen to be white and get, you know, get treated nicely all the time. And they don't want to give that up. But when you left the military, you became a student you were living in Camargo man. So that must've been a real shift from being on the base to living in this small apartment in Camargo man, much more local local experience.
Speaker 0 00:14:04 Well, that was one of the companies. I was teaching English that was towed a construction company, and there was a man named Kusama. Mr. spoke some English and he helped me find an apartment in that area. It was right across the street from the Toyota construction company dormitory. So sometimes I would go over there and use their dormitory bath. I made the public bathrooms just down the street, but everybody and his brother was a student watching you. And also, uh, I liked baseball and I would go to crocker and stadium and sit up in the jumbo stands. And you had this tremendous view of the city and the Juul line and there's distance at city Debarshi. And it was really quite nice. And the giants had a really strong team most nights that there would be a, uh, a giants baseball game on every night of the year, you know, telecast nationwide, and I'd watch, I couldn't speak Japanese very well, but, uh, half the words were in English, you know, home run, strike bowled to outdoor safe.
Speaker 0 00:15:08 And, uh, that was something to relate to. And so that's how I started, you know, picking up Kanji. I was studying Japanese at Sophia university, but I would go in the morning and pick up the Nikon sports and take my dictionary to a coffee shop. And I try to translate an article. And after a while you began to see the patterns and it made sense. And because I really wanted to know what was going on and they had all the pictures and all the interviews and, you know, all the in depth coverage. And, uh, I learned about these players and their personalities and you know, which Turkish path they went to the game. And, uh, it was really an education.
Speaker 2 00:15:56 You have wonderful description in your memoir about sitting in these cafes and studying the sports paper in Japanese. But at the same time you were studying politics at Sophia. You weren't just hanging out watching.
Speaker 0 00:16:11 Yeah. But I, I was really, really interested in baseball politics. I just did it because I had to study something, but in the beginning, that's what gave me the motivation to want to learn more
Speaker 2 00:16:39 Well, so you graduated from Sophia and you started working for encyclopedia Britannica among other things, I guess, your memoirs organized by section and the section that covers this part of your life is called the degenerate.
Speaker 0 00:16:54 Yes.
Speaker 2 00:16:55 So you're a, you're a self-described salary man. Uh, but it sounds like you were doing some hard drinking and exploring, exploring the underside of Tokyo a bit. You also tell the story of, uh, getting a knock on the door late at night, uh, with someone that was coming to collect a gambling debt. And this was your introduction to the underworld, the underworld. Can you tell that story?
Speaker 0 00:17:23 And I would usually go out after work, you know, a couple of key Joe and these other places, and I'd come back and I go to the snack across the street and they had a little baseball betting pool on, they had the game on TV. And so you could bet a thousand or 2000, you know, it was small amounts. And I remember, and that's what I used to do every night, go in there and have one beer. I crashed and I made this bit really a stupid bet. And I wound up losing 3000 yen and I didn't have it on it. So I just left. I told myself, I'll come back tomorrow. Then midnight, this knock on the door, this beefy little guy with scars over his eyes and a suede jacket and a buzz cut and ramrod posture. And this just the right glare, intimidating I've come to collect the sun man.
Speaker 0 00:18:23 And so I tell him, I had to got to go to the bank tomorrow and get it says, okay, don't make me come back here again. That's what he said. He showed me his bag. It said, Sumi, OCI gang. So I got the money and went back the next day. And I gave him my down to the, uh, the snack across the street, the boat go and gave it to him. And he said, oh yeah, you sit down, let me buy you a beer. And he started asking me where I was from, you know, what I was doing in Japan. And then he said, okay, here's the deal? So I'm Okinawa, Japanese. Don't like Okinawans, you're American and Japanese. Don't like Americans either. So let's be friends. And we embarked on this friendship, you know, I'd see him, you know, two or three times a week.
Speaker 0 00:19:07 And he would take me out to these different places and, you know, the Turkish bath or a new Pachinko shop opening up or a bar or some Korean restaurant. And, uh, he introduced me to his boss. Uh, they took me to this big gang reception. I don't know what the reason was for, but the boss gave a speech and he was there and it was a white silk hormonal. They got up and sang some songs and, uh, these old Japanese war songs. And then, uh, he made me get up and sing a song. I didn't know any songs. So I sang the star Spangled banner and they asked me to sing another one. So I sang Elvis Presley's, uh, I can't help falling in love with you. And I ended the first verse. And so then I was in after that. And, uh, I just, everybody knew me and this gang and he got shot in the corner and, uh, it was quite nice.
Speaker 0 00:20:08 And, uh, I learned a lot about that. You know, they said the gang, the gang boss found out that I had written my thesis, my graduation thesis, that severe university on the liberal democratic party and its factions. And I had interviewed Nakasone later, who became the prime minister later became the prime minister. And I told these guys that I had met Nakasone and they hold. That was really great. Hey, we're big fans of Nakasone, you know, we support the liberal democratic party, you know, whenever there's an election, we go corral people and make sure they vote. We make sure they vote through the LDT.
Speaker 2 00:20:51 I think it's hard for someone who hasn't lived in Japan for a long time to understand just how remarkable it is to be friend members of the Casa. And the fact that you were learning about this underside of Japanese politics in this way is something that's remarkable, not just for a foreigner, but would be remarkable for anybody and just kind of incredible really
Speaker 0 00:21:23 Well. You ha you have to be having an open mind and you also have to be a little stupid. And, uh, because if I had known a little more than what I did at the time, maybe I wouldn't have done it, but I was fairly open-minded.
Speaker 2 00:21:41 Well, it was really, um, there's a kind of romantic images associated with ya, but then also a pretty scary side as well. And I think it sounds like you've had some scary experiences.
Speaker 0 00:21:55 Well, this guy, you know, the guy who collected the 30,000, the guy who said, I'm Okinawa, let's be friends. Uh, we, you know, I had a very nice relationship and, uh, took me around, uh, one night. This was, you know, several months into our relationship, wherever, uh, in Coalinga outside, one of the Sumi OCI clubs, bill is a building where they had a couple of clubs and it was midnight. And you could never catch a, at midnight in Japan at those times and Tokyo, especially. And so, you know, you had to do then was hold up four fingers. I mean, I'll pay four times the meter rate and they'll pick you up. And the calves would come by. And the main drag, you know, at about 10 miles an hour, and to see who was willing to pay that, and this guy didn't want to pay four times.
Speaker 0 00:22:53 He just held up his hand like that. And the cab beverage didn't stop. So he kicked the side of the cab, where there by the gas tank, he just gave it a karate kick and put a big dent in it. And the cab driver slammed on the brakes, got out of the car and said, Carl Yaddo and this guy just jumped on him and Peter, holy living daylights out of it. I mean, on top of him elbow and a phase blood spurting, I had to pull him off. Cause I thought, you know, they was going to kill the guy and we'd wind up arrested in jail. So we, we went back to, he guys shouldn't have gotten, went back to the snack, the bulk, you know, and sat down and he was cooling off orders, a beer drinks. And he says, see, my son, I'm sorry. And he says, oh, what do I need again, cruiser, I'm just human trash. And he pulls up a switchblade in his pocket and he just slices his cheek, not real deeply, but he did it as a way of punishing himself for losing his temper. And I found out that most people in the Arkansas have real hair trigger tempers. He was like that. And so I thought after that, I think I'm getting a bit too close to these guys. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:24:11 You described this by saying that you had to pull out of a self-destructive tailspin into the dark heart of its seductions.
Speaker 0 00:24:19 I guess the turning point came when the I'd written this program, this language course for kids and it was very successful. And so they offered me the ex-pat package, you know, the really expensive Western style apartment. I was living in a little dump then and a big raise. And they said you're on track to be a vice president. And I almost said, yes, but this voice inside, if we're at a chance to say, as the voices came out and said, nah, I don't think so. I knew I had to get out because I was just killing myself with the lifestyle I was leading. And besides I'd never, I didn't know anything about the United States. I didn't know if I had what it took to make it in the United States. I didn't know my own country. So I moved to New York.
Speaker 2 00:25:11 Well, you had a cup, a couple of great turns of phrase. You said I had embarked on a voyage of self-discovery, but somewhere along the line, I switched to autopilot.
Speaker 0 00:25:22 That's right. And I, it just dawned on me one night, you know, what are you doing? I could just see myself on living this life for the next several years is winding up as a 40 year old. A nowhere man was a decent income.
Speaker 1 00:25:41 Um,
Speaker 2 00:25:47 It could be hard to go back to your home country. After many years abroad, it's hard to find your footing. And Bob had been living a pretty wild life in Tokyo. So how would he adjust to being back at the U S well, I was fascinated by the change that you went through when you went to New York, first of all, it must've been a big shock to go from Tokyo to New York, but then you had some friends there and you were talking about your experiences. And you said that they really liked to hear about baseball. They were interested in you about baseball.
Speaker 0 00:26:29 We'll talk about the liberal democratic party and you know, the labor unions and that put everybody to sleep. But then I, I, I talk about Sada huddle, oh, this great home run hitter for the hail Mary giants, who would practice every night with a summarized sword. It would swing at strips of paper suspended from the ceiling and sliced them into, which is very difficult to do because the sword is fairly heavy. And the force of the wind from the swing would knock the paper out of the way. So you had to snap your wrist and just the right time. And he could do this. And he got really strong wrists. And I would tell them about the, uh, how they, the Japanese had adopted the martial arts philosophy of endless training and development of spirit. And that's when the people around me kept pushing me to write a book. So
Speaker 2 00:27:24 When someone bet you $500 that you couldn't
Speaker 0 00:27:27 Well, the, I was intimidated by the idea of writing a book because I had never really written anything. And I was kind of scared that I wouldn't know how to do it, or it wouldn't be very good. So there's one guy Dwight that I'd worked with he one day, he just said, well, I guess you don't have what it takes. And I said, oh, I bet you, 500 bucks, I'll have a book. And it just pissed me off. I'll bet you, I can do it. I bet you 500 bucks. I do it. I have a book in a year and I finished it in a year. Surprise myself.
Speaker 2 00:28:01 Could you have written that if you had stayed in Tokyo and maybe not, I mean, being in New York, being back in the us, having this outsider's perspective, once again, to explain, was this a way for you to kind of digest and make sensors?
Speaker 0 00:28:19 Yeah. Through that very perceptive, the differences became really apparent New York. Jesus. I try myself, you know, pouring beer for somebody or, you know, bowing phone and people are looking at the hell is wrong with this guy. And so it just helped put everything into focus, moving where, uh, I don't think I was thinking about it that much, you know, this last years in Tokyo, but going back to New York, you know, it really became, uh, came into sharp focus. Then I, once I got the contract, I was turned down by 12 publishers in a row.
Speaker 2 00:29:03 First of all, to write a book about Japanese baseball at that time, uh, was something no one else was doing. And I mean, because everyone knows your work. Now, it seems the most normal thing in the world. But at the time it's hard to even think of what it must've seemed like for people to first come across this book about Japanese baseball and cultural differences. Right?
Speaker 0 00:29:30 Well, the, uh, Japan are just starting to get notice, you know, as an economic power, you know, so I could sell it as a way of looking at the character personality, a way of understanding, an easy way of understanding Japan without having to weigh to economic, political treatises.
Speaker 2 00:29:59 Your life was so different. When you came back to Tokyo the second time after you had found your place. I know one of the difficult things about living in a foreign country is how do you find a way to belong there? And you found a way to belong in Japan, even as you were belonging in the United States and in a way that reflected your interests and in a way which used your talents.
Speaker 0 00:30:28 And that's when I found my happiness, because it was stuff that I was writing was worthwhile. And just to doing this pursuit of excellence, which is this perfectionism that Jeff Japan has, uh, it makes life worthwhile. It, you can, because as a writer you can never write something that's completely perfect unless your name is Ernest Hemingway. Right? But, uh, it's that constant pursuit that gives meaning to your daily life. Well,
Speaker 2 00:31:03 And you were writing from a perspective that other people hadn't found and you were saying, okay, this very American game of baseball actually is a window to look deeply into another culture and not all the another culture, but very deep parts of Japanese culture, which are hard for outsiders to understand. And you tell stories through baseball that kind of illustrate these deeper parts of culture, which are very difficult to explain and express. And I think in the field of intercultural education, for example, one of the challenges is how do you talk about difference without trivializing, without stereotyping? How do you talk about deeper difference without losing the fact that we also share a common humanity? Uh, yet somehow you managed to find this reconciliation between things that we all share as human beings and these very deep differences between different societies and you did it through baseball. That's amazing.
Speaker 0 00:32:15 Yeah. It was a American sport that the Japanese, uh, adopted in, uh, 1872. It was introduced by an American professor right after the Meiji reformation and the Japanese liked baseball because it was their first group sport. All they had before were martial arts. So I gave them a chance to their group dynamics on an athletic field. There was a school called the first of school was Tokyo. That was where the movers and shakers of Japan as a prep school for students 18 to 22, who were going on to Imperial university. And these are the people that wind up running Japan and half of the students were from summarized families and they formed a baseball team of these people turn baseball into a martial art based on this samurai ethicists of total dedication. And since baseball is something that all Americans understand Sunday, all Japanese understand it's a perfect window. And it was just look dumb.
Speaker 2 00:33:31 Well, it was luck, but it was, it was insight and it was hard work. And it led to so many other things. Of course, you profiled American players in Japan and all of the many of the cultural differences and struggles that they sometimes went through, or Bobby Valentine, the manager who came to manage in Japan, the ups and downs that he had, but also baseball as a window into cultural change. The way that he, Dale NoMo affected American baseball or how American perceptions of Japan changed because of someone like you, Cheetos's Zuki. So there's so much, uh, richness in that you have been mining from that. It's really remarkable.
Speaker 2 00:34:30 Bob has written about more than baseball. His book, Tokyo underworld explored a side of post-war Japan through the eyes of an American gangster, Nick petty, who was part of a corrupt underworld of black markets, organized crime, dirty politics. It was a book that only Bob could write. I've been taking a lot of your time, but we have to mention Tokyo underworld. This was the story of the, kind of the dark side of the American occupation.
Speaker 0 00:35:03 Then I'm at Nixa petty. And it just, uh, his story was so colorful. It just blew everything else out of the water. He had such a colorful way of saying things and he would say anything. He got deported for black marketeering. He got out of the army and worked for the, as a civil servant. And he was running beer. And the black market is working with the Sumi OCI gang. And he got arrested and deported, and he came back on a fake passport. I did about hours of interviews. And, but I didn't know a lot about the history of the gangs, the post-war history. I educated myself on post-war history of those events and it got really complicated. And when I was finished, it was quite an education. Yes,
Speaker 2 00:35:53 I know your work is on the one hand, quite optimistic. It really sheds light on differences that people might think are too big to overcome. And there's a real optimism to the insights that you bring. But also this dark side of saying, actually, there's this other stuff going on here. So where do you come out in the end on this optimism versus this interest you've got and kind of turning the rock over?
Speaker 0 00:36:23 I would say, I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. You know, I seen too much, uh, you know, the unpleasant side of human nature too. So I don't know the driving force of humanity is to survive. So I imagine we'll see.
Speaker 2 00:36:45 Well, last question then, what advice would you have given to your 19 year old self arriving in Tokyo?
Speaker 0 00:36:54 I would say to a 19 year old, you know, find some way to make her trip around the world and spend some time and in all these different countries and take a good look about it and then come back. Don't worry about being a foreigner. Just accept the fact that you're a foreigner. Don't worry about fitting in, learn the customs, learn the language, be polite, but I hear people complain about, you know, well, they never accept you. Well, that's okay. They don't have to live your own life. You know, you make your own little world, you've got your, you know, family and friends and professional associates. That's all you need.
Speaker 2 00:37:31 Well, and you have certainly found a place for yourself and a rich life. It's inspirational to see all that you have done. So it is, it is really great. And I really recommend your memoir, Tokyo junkie, 60 years of BrightBytes and back alleys and baseball, Robert Whiting. I want to thank you so much for taking this time to talk to me best of luck with your future.
Speaker 0 00:37:58 Oh, thank you very much. It's an honor to be on this program.
Speaker 2 00:38:06 A special thanks to Bob Whiting today. Let's meet up again soon at the foreign correspondents club and as always thank you to the podcast team. Yvonne Vanderpoel Robinson, Fritz Ishita Ray Zayna, Matar, Daniel glitz, and everyone at GII. The deep culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute. We are an educational NPO dedicated to intercultural education at research. I'm the director of GI. If you want to support this podcast, why don't you become a member of GI it's only $45 a year. In addition to this podcast, GII offers the brain mind and culture masterclass. It's a blended learning course, webinar podcast, online learning facilitated by Yvonne Vanderpoel and me, and it introduces the latest insights of culture, brain, and mind sciences to those living and working interculturally. You will gain a deeper understanding of the psychology of intercultural experiences. We have a great learning community. Jai also sponsors a learning circle throughout the year to find out more, just do a web search for the Japan intercultural Institute, or send me an email at DC podcast at Japan, intercultural.org, sign up for GIS mailing list. You'll get our newsletter. It will keep you up on everything we're doing, or just come back next month for another episode of the deep culture podcast.
