Cultural Differences

When my wife and I came for the interview here last year we saw a funny picture:

Yeah, a bumper sticker of a pot leaf that says, "DRUGS" oh those wacky teenaged Japanese!

But then when we moved here I saw it everywhere:



and then even in one of the conference rooms here at the Institute!

I started asking around and learned that the Japanese like this shape, they associate it with American "Cool Stuff." But they don't know what it means. Kinda like those Americans that get "Kanji" tattoos, where they think it says something like "Vicious" or "Fast" but it really says "Sushi."