[Alberta's Child]

That story about the orderly conduct of the Japanese victims of the Kobe earthquake does not surprise me. The Japanese have always had a reputation for their orderly, disciplined public conduct.

Any soccer fans out there might remember the Japanese fans who cheered their team on at the World Cup a few years back. They stayed around at the end of the game and picked up all their trash from the stands before leaving.

[Thud]

The Japanese response to disaster was plain weird after the Kobe earthquake. All the ganjin followed pre-existing instructions and evacuated to pre-arranged shelters and assembly points. Few if any Japanese did. Instead they stayed in place, which included damaged and dangerously buckling apartment complexes, until the police came and ordered them to evacuate.

And shoddy Japanese building standards were revealed. They ignore their building codes. This was attributed to bribery of building inspectors.