What it says on the label: facts and details about Japan, in lots of different categories like Japanese customs, history, religion, and even an article on those cool snow monkeys.

Isn't business a lot like Monty Python's search for the Holy Grail? Think about it. We have Arthur as the celebrity CEO, searching for best talent to fill his leadership team. Then the next thing they do is embark on the quest for the elusive strategic objective, I mean, the Holy Grail.

On the quest, they bring in a consultant, Tim the Enchanter, encounter some nasty competition (the French), decentralize and then re-centralize, and eventually get rounded up for fiscal irresponsibility. Isn't the scene where they determine the woman is witch by weighing her with a duck a lot like the way we make decisions in corporations? We'll rationalize anything to justify what we want to do. What about the guards in Swamp Castle who can't quite understand what they are supposed to guard?

Haven't you had conversations and emails just like that?

I have been living in Japan for close to 20 years. I hold an M.A. in Japanese Language and Society from Sheffield University and I have attained Level II of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Still, because my face doesn't fit, waiters and waitresses in shops and restaurants look to my Japanese wife for confirmation of what I have asked for, in spite of the fact they have already complimented me on my language ability. In addition, I am told in all seriousness by people who have known me for years that I use chopsticks well and am asked whether or not I can eat Japanese food.

Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear engineer who currently heads the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, says that the industry is dominated by a closely-knit nuclear establishment. Those who graduate from universities and graduate from schools with degrees in nuclear power engineering go on to work at power companies, energy-related manufacturers, or municipalities that host nuclear power stations. Everything comes down to personal networks, and who the graduating students go on to work for is largely influenced by the connections and interests of the students' professors. Regardless of whether the employers are public or private organizations, the newly inducted engineers are raised to become full-fledged members of the nuclear establishment.

Recently I came upon a fascinating study by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. Wiseman surveyed a number of people and, through a series of questionnaires and interviews, determined which of them considered themselves lucky—or unlucky. He then performed an intriguing experiment: He gave both the “lucky” and the “unlucky” people a newspaper and asked them to look through it and tell him how many photographs were inside. He found that on average the unlucky people took two minutes to count all the photographs, whereas the lucky ones determined the number in a few seconds.

How could the “lucky” people do this? Because they found a message on the second page that read, “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” So why didn’t the unlucky people see it? Because they were so intent on counting all the photographs that they missed the message.

Two days before Japan suffered its record earthquake and a devastating tsunami on March 11, Prime Minister Naoto Kan appointed [Takayoshi] Igarashi as a Cabinet adviser on coping with Japan’s population decline and rural-region decay. Igarashi says the disaster has made clear the nation must reduce the role of its capital city to avert an even greater catastrophe.

“I told the prime minister that nationwide dispersal is the first thing we need to do as we rebuild,” Igarashi, a professor at Hosei University in Tokyo, said in an interview after meeting with Kan last week. “We have no idea when the big one’s going to hit Tokyo, but when it does, it’s going to annihilate the entire country because everything is here.”

Billionaires, even low on the Forbes list, have more money than they can spend. Lex's Sarah O'Connor and Edward Hadas discuss why they still strive to increase their fortunes.

Non-myth #4: Programming is asocial.

Yes, but it depends what you mean by asocial. It is true that a programmer spends long hours by herself in front of a computer screen, although there are also meetings with team members and customers. There certainly are “social” professions where you are in constant contact with other people. The problem is that in most cases the human contact is superficial and asymmetrical, because you don't “chat” with your “clients.” You may not even want to develop a warm relationship with your clients, for example, if you are a police detective interrogating hardened criminals.

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It is reasonable for Tiffany to choose to become a social worker because she likes helping people directly, but she must remember that she will not become a friend to her clients.

There's a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner.

Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.