Oops!
“In the Nov. 18 issue, you mentioned the government’s $37 trillion budget deficit. It is actually debt – and while you were in Japan, the number jumped to $38 trillion. The budget deficit in fiscal year 2025 will probably come in at $2 trillion.” – BS
My Response: Thank you! I want to think AI made the error, but I looked at my original draft and it was me. That’s embarrassing!
No, they are not actually dancing to Steely Dan’s music. But Pete Roberts, who compiled these classic movie clips, makes it look that way.
Today, I wrap up this incredibly successful – from both a business and a personal perspective – trip to Japan. In addition to sharing some of the highlights of the past few days with you, I get back to issues concerning the US economy with excerpts from a very interesting interview with Doug Casey.
This Is What Happens When Japanese Culture Takes On American Baseball
AV, a friend and colleague of mine at Rancho Santana and a self-proclaimed “super fan” of Japanese superstar pitcher Shohei Ohtani, sent me the following article:
Shohei Ohtani: If He Had Been Born in the United States, They Would Have Ruined His Future”
In a town of 120,000 people, surrounded by rice fields and steel factories, a boy named Shohei Ohtani threw baseballs with his father after work, while everyone else watched cartoons. What began as a pastime in Iwate Prefecture became a prophecy: an athlete destined not just to dominate the game, but to reinvent it. What looked like a kid with a glove ended up being a storm that shook the foundations of modern baseball.
From a young age, Ohtani was a genetic and emotional anomaly. His father, Toru, a former amateur baseball player, and his mother, Kayoko, a former national badminton athlete, instilled in him an obsession with excellence. In high school, he was already throwing at 100 mph, but he didn’t brag: He measured, recorded, analyzed. In Japan, he learned that perfection is not pursued for applause, but for respect. There, young Shohei forged his mind of steel.
And here’s the crucial point: If Ohtani had been born in the United States, he would never have become Ohtani.
The American development system would have turned him into a product, not a person. Scouts would have classified him as a pitcher or slugger and forced him to choose. In the United States, baseball is run like a factory: talent packaged, tasks assigned, dreams trimmed.
In contrast, Japan gave him freedom, not labels. It allowed him to explore, fail, learn, and become the impossible player that every other system would have killed before he was born.
When he arrived in the Major Leagues with the Los Angeles Angels, the world discovered the myth was real. In Anaheim, he won his first MVP awards, challenged metrics and reporters, and forced statisticians to invent new categories to describe him. He threw 100 miles per hour and the next day hit two home runs.
It was as if Babe Ruth had been reincarnated with a Japanese chip. And when it seemed he couldn’t grow any more, he arrived at the Dodgers… and turned his talent into a global enterprise. His $700 million contract, with deferred payments and a commercial machinery connecting Asia and America, was not just a sports move: It was a business merger between human talent and financial engineering. In a year, Ohtani generated more money than he cost. In a single uniform, the Dodgers found their gold mine and baseball found its new economic model. But the human body is not a stock.
Surgeries, demands, and media pressure are ticking time bombs. And the real risk lies in deification: When an entire sport depends on one man, the myth can become a prison. If Ohtani gets injured, all of baseball trembles. It’s the paradox of genius: What elevates the game also makes it fragile.
Even so, no one in history has had such a colossal projection. If he maintains his health and pace, Shohei Ohtani could monopolize the MVP for the next decade. No one else has the talent, duality, or cultural impact to compete with him. If he succeeds, he will shatter all existing records for the award and redefine what it means to be “the best player in the world.”
Ohtani didn’t just change baseball: He rewrote it in two languages. And if time proves him right, we won’t be seeing the new Babe Ruth… but the first Ohtani. Because while others aspire to glory, he is managing it for the long term.
A Bit of Geisha History Curated by Nigel (My Very Bright AI English Butler)
Origins and Evolution
* Male entertainers called taikomochi or hōkan emerged in Japan around the 13th century as attendants to feudal lords. They performed as jesters, musicians, and storytellers.
* In the 1750s, females began to appear with the men as dancers and musicians.
* By the 1800s, women had largely taken over the profession, which led to gradual changes and adaptations that became the modern geisha tradition.
Training and Profession
* Geisha are much more than pretty waitresses in face paint and kimonos. They are rigorously trained tea ceremony performers, traditional dancers and musicians, and highly skilled conversationalists.
* Their role is not merely to entertain guests with traditional music and dance, but to provide an experience of intelligent and irresistible pampering that one can get nowhere else in the world.
* The training to become a geisha usually begins at a young age, lasts for years, and is taught by accomplished, older geisha in the confines of an okiya (geisha house).
Decline and Modern Status
* The number of working geisha reached a high of around 80,000 in the 1920s.
* After Japan’s loss in World War II, the entire industry of culture and entertainment diminished considerably in Japan, and that included the number of geisha establishments and professional geisha. Today, fewer than 2,000 geisha remain, concentrated in cities like Tokyo and Kyoto.
* Kyoto remains the best-known center for geisha culture, with specific districts like Gion and Pontocho having some of the best schools and houses. But Tokyo has several that are as good as Kyoto’s best.
It’s quite possible that the tequila I had with Professor Fuji before dinner had something to do with my mood. Or it could have been the dozen small glasses of beer that I enjoyed with my meal. But the dancing we saw that night at the geisha house in Tokyo was as brilliant as it was other-worldly.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
From RG: “Do I have what it takes to be a writer?”
“I’m a college sophomore. I’ve been reading your blog for about a year now, and I’ve read two of your books (Great Leads and The Power of Persuasion). I like the way you write. Whatever the topic, you make your ideas and opinions easy to understand. It feels like writing comes easily for you. I want to be a professional writer someday, but I’m just starting out and worry sometimes that I just don’t have the talent. I wonder if you ever felt that way.”
My Response: The answer is yes. More importantly, many writers, much better than I, have had the same doubts. Here’s a sampling, from Letters of Note, that might give you hope:
“I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything.” – Charles Darwin, letter to Charles Lyell, Oct. 1, 1861
“No one really takes very much interest, why should they, in my scribblings. Do you think I shall ever write a really good book?” – Virginia Woolf, letter to Violet Dickinson, Oct. 1, 1905
“My god it is hard for anybody to write. I never start a damn thing without knowing 200 times I can’t write – never will be able to write a line – can’t go on – can’t get started – stuff is rotten – can’t say what I mean – know there is a whole fine complete thing and all I get of it is the bacon rinds. You would write better than anybody but the minute it becomes impossible you stop. That is the time you have to go on through and then it gets easier. It always gets utterly and completely impossible. Thank God it does – otherwise everybody would write and I would starve to death.” – Ernest Hemingway, letter to Waldo Pierce, Oct. 1, 1928
Orson Welles: He Was Fat, but He Was Fabulous
I like this very short clip from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show for two reasons:
1. It’s Orson Welles.
2. Welles is paraphrasing a famous rejoinder by Winston Churchill. The story (which may be apocryphal) is that a clearly intoxicated Churchill was reproached by the British politician Bessie Braddock. “Sir,” she said, “you are drunk.” To which Churchill replied, “And you, Bessie, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly.”
So Little Time… So Many Enticing Ways to Waste It
Many years ago, I wrote a series of essays in Early to Rise about the many activities that compete for our spare time.
I began with the obvious point: Since the hours of genuine “free time” we have each day are so limited, it would be foolish to fill them with whatever random diversion happens to appear. Having squandered so much of my own time in the past, I resolved not to let chance – or worse, habit – determine the value of those hours. They were mine, a precious resource, and I had both the ability and the responsibility to choose wisely.
To deal with this challenge, I developed a theory and a method for optimizing the value and pleasure of my spare time.
It began with a simple realization: After any given activity, I would almost always feel one of three ways.
* I felt good about how I’d spent the time.
* I felt nothing at all.
* I felt bad about it.
It didn’t take long to see the obvious conclusion: I needed a system to select spare-time activities that would leave me feeling good and never feeling bad. The next step was to figure out the qualities or characteristics of the activates that left me feeling one way or the other.
That wasn’t difficult either. I kept a simple ledger of what I was doing and how it felt. Within a month, the pattern was clear.
Among the activities that left me feeling good were these:
* Writing books and essays
* Exercising – strength training and hard cardio
* Giving speeches to large audiences
* Running workshops for sharp, ambitious people
* Mentoring young professionals in my industry
* Reading a good book
* Watching a great film
* Watching an edifying documentary
* Developing Paradise Palms, my botanical garden
* Running Fun Limón, our family’s community center in Nicaragua
* Expanding my collection of Central American modern art
* Planning a museum for that art
* Spending time in museums – especially art museums
* Having stimulating conversations
* Learning about art, music, or any subject I cared about
* Practicing jiu jitsu
* Listening to good music
* Enjoying food and drink
* Spending time with my kids and grandkids
Among the activities that left me feeling bad were these:
* Watching bad or mediocre movies or TV
* Reading mediocre books
* Eating junk food or overeating
* Getting drunk
* Playing solitaire
* Gossiping
* Giving unsolicited advice
* Consuming salacious or depressing news
From there, I sorted my spare-time activities into three categories:
* Those that improved me
* Those that damaged me
* Those that did neither but left me with the hollow sense that I’d wasted my time
I then gave names to the three categories: Golden Choices, Vaporous Choices, and Acidic Choices. Mixed metaphors though they were, I felt they captured the essence of why some options leave us nourished, others leave us empty, and still others corrode us from within.
As I laid all this out again recently, it struck me how closely this hierarchy mirrored one I had already developed for my working hours. In earlier essays and in one of my books, I had argued that the best way to maximize the value of your work is to discipline yourself to spend the first hours of the day on the highest-value, most difficult tasks – the ones that move you forward – and push the lower-value, routine tasks to later in the day when your focus and energy are diminished.
I realized the same principle applies to leisure. If I wanted to get the most satisfaction from my spare hours, I needed to rank activities by the value they brought me, and then commit to choosing the higher-value, higher-pleasure options whenever I had a choice.
My Golden Choices
My best experiences come from activities that are both intellectually challenging and emotionally engaging – the work that I believe is truly necessary and important. That includes writing books, producing films, and building my nonprofit foundations. It also means investing in and sustaining strong personal relationships.
These are the things that matter most to me – the things I think of when someone asks, “How do you want to be remembered?” But they are rarely easy. They demand focus, discipline, and energy. When I’m tired, I tend to avoid them. I have to push myself to begin.
Yet once I start, the resistance fades. Progress breeds hope. I begin to feel the worth of the effort and the value it will have when it’s complete. The work itself becomes energizing. Even inspiring. And when I finally step away at the end of the day, I feel satisfied, not just with what I accomplished but with how I chose to spend my time.
My Vaporous Choices
Welcome to the Vapor Zone. This is where I go when I don’t feel like working hard, but I don’t feel like completely wasting my time either.
Vaporous activities are easy to slip into. They’re also easy to spend hours doing. These are the activities that feel like fun while you’re in them and leave you feeling sort of okay when you’re done and move on to something else. Not good. Not bad either. Just… okay.
We treat them as acceptable choices when we don’t feel like making choices at all – e.g., the neutral, happy world of poker, sitcoms, and gossip.
When I’m ready for some relaxation, my first impulse is to reach for a Vaporous activity. Having “worked hard all day,” I want something simple and mindless so I can gear down. Getting into the Vapor Zone is easy. Staying there is easier still.
The problem with Vaporous activities – and this is a very big problem for me – is that they leave me feeling enervated rather than energized. And empty. Like Vaporous foods (comfort foods), they fill me up, but they wear me out.
My Acidic Choices
Everybody has vices. And while I haven’t had all of them, I’ve done plenty to destroy, reduce, or disable myself.
Why I do these things, I can only guess. Sometimes I think I need the challenge of surviving self-imposed obstacles. Whatever the reason, the result is almost always the same.
I get a dull pleasure, tinged with a faint trace of pain. Even when the pleasure feels intense, it comes through a foggy brain. It feels like I’m having a great time… but I’m never quite sure. And if the experience of Acidic activities is muddled, the feeling afterward is anything but. It is bad.
The interesting thing about Acidic activities is how seductive they are. Nobody would claim they’re good choices. We pick them because we’re too weak to pick anything else, and then we use what little mind we have left to rationalize our own self-destruction.
A Closer Look at the Three Categories
As a rule, the easiest choices are rarely the best ones. Bad habits (Acidic choices) are easy precisely because they’re habits. Vaporous choices are easy, too, because they require no fortitude and almost no energy. It’s the Golden choices that are hardest, because they demand effort and focus.
When we are at our best – confident, rested, full of energy – we can easily choose Golden activities. When we’re just okay, we usually have the strength to reject Acidic temptations, but not quite enough to reach for Golden. And when we’re at our worst – tired, discouraged, doubtful – that’s when Acidic choices look most appealing.
I’ve also been thinking about these categories from another angle: through the lens of what I call sustainable pleasures.
Sustainable pleasures are activities that give us genuine satisfaction every time we do them – no matter how many times we repeat them. And, as with spare time, there’s a hierarchy here, too.
In my early writing on this, I broke it down into three sustainable pleasures:
* Working on something you care about
* Learning something you believe has value
* Sharing the benefits of what you’ve gained from that work and learning
Underneath those distinctions is a simple truth: The more importance you attach to the work or learning itself, the deeper and longer-lasting the pleasure you get from it.
You may not agree with every item on my list. And that’s fine. Think of it as a template, a way to establish your own hierarchy of choices.
In creating your list, consider the following:
The Characteristics of Golden Experiences…
* The activity/experience is intellectually challenging. It teaches you something worth knowing or develops a skill worth having.
* It is emotionally deepening. It helps you understand something you hadn’t understood before and/or makes you sympathetic to situations you had previously closed yourself off to.
* It is energizing. The experience itself charges you spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. You have greater strength and more endurance because of it.
* It leaves you happy with your choice. During the experience and afterward, you have a strong sense that you are doing the right thing.
* It builds confidence. Because you know that you are improving yourself, choosing Golden activities makes you feel better able to make wise choices in the future.
The Characteristics of Vaporous Experiences…
* The activity/experience is intellectually and emotionally easy. It feels comfortable and comfortably enjoyable. You’ve done it before, it amused you, and you expect it will amuse you again.
* It is usually passive rather than active. It is watching TV rather than going to a stage play. It is getting a massage rather than practicing yoga. It is chugging a brewsky rather than savoring a good wine.
* It tends to be habit forming. Because it feels good (in a medium-energy sort of way) and is so easy to do, you find yourself doing it again and again.
* Whether it’s eating starch and fat or sitting on the couch and staring at the TV screen, a little doesn’t hurt. But too much leaves you with the unpleasant feeling that you’ve wasted your time.
The Characteristics of Acidic Experiences…
* The activity/experience is physically or mentally damaging. Often, it kills brain cells. Sometimes, it gives you cancer.
* Although it is bad for you, it is alluring. There is something about the way the experience takes you out of yourself that you find attractive.
* It attracts bad company. Since most healthy people don’t approve, you end up doing it with a different set of friends. Eventually, you reject the ones who don’t “get it.” They’re too straitlaced or lame to understand, so you figure you don’t need them in your life.
* It disables you intellectually, emotionally, and physically. In the moment, you are less capable of performing complex skills or handling complex issues. If you engage in acidic activities often, your overall capacity for peak performance declines.
* It has an ever-rising threshold. What excites you at first is never enough later. You fall into the mistaken belief that more is always better.
Applying the Formula to Your Spare Time
If you’d like to apply this formula to improve your own experiences of your own spare time, here are some suggestions to help you do it:
1. Don’t let your spare time happen by happenstance.
Unless you take a few extra minutes each day to consider your options, you’ll keep ending up with the same bland – or negative – feelings about how you used your hours.
2. Plan your spare time.
It may seem finicky, and maybe it is, but I’ve found that my leisure is always better when I plan it in advance. After I block out my workday – by the hour or half-hour – I look at what’s left: my spare-time hours.
3. Review your options.
You don’t need to list your Vaporous or Acidic choices. They’re always right there, clamoring for attention. Focus on your higher-value options. Go for the Gold!
Don’t worry about your privilege. Worry about yourself.
I dipped into an ongoing Facebook conversation – something I never do – in response to someone confessing to being “privileged.” I did so, against my better judgement, because it gave me an opportunity to set down some thoughts I’ve recently had on the subject of privilege in the context of succeeding in the world of wealth building (and in every competitive arena I can think of).
Here is what I wrote:
“So long as you worry about these economic issues as social problems, you will do nothing to solve them. The solution – the only solution whether you like it or not – is to think of them as your problems.
“Don’t ask yourself what can be done to protect all those underprivileged people. Ask yourself, ‘Given these trends and accepting the fact that some of these predictions may prove out, how can I provide for the current and future living costs of myself and my family.’
“Stop wasting your time, endangering your dependents, and wasting the time of all the millions of underprivileged you don’t really give a shit about. Spend your time and energy on your #1 responsibility as a human being living in a community of human beings – and that is earning the income to pay for your own expenses and those of your dependents.
“You should do that not only because it is the right thing to do ethically, but also because you understand that you can never achieve much for ‘others’ by trying to solve macro-economic and political problems socially and politically.
“Do the hard thing instead. The moral thing. Pay the full price of your own burden to society and the burden of your dependents. After you have done that, if you have money left, then you should extend beyond your immediate family. Not by throwing money at political and social organizations. They are naturally and inevitably corrupt and inefficient. Instead, do the right thing – which is, again, the hard thing.
“Take responsibility for saving one person at a time. When you do that, you will immediately feel the quicksand that social and political programs are built on: that money alone is insufficient to help anyone move above the swamp of poverty. It is nearly a full-time job. Just like the job of trying to make responsible, independent people of your own children.”