It is about so many different parts of the Japan experience. It is about individuals in Japan from all walks of life finally standing up for themselves and discovering the power of the Internet to unleash their dreams. The individuals in Japan's Internet dream are in full flight. Many see the potential of the Internet as their chance to change Japan, to fix its problems, to turn their own lives on their head, to get rich. Its social system can be incredibly rigid.
Companies can be bureaucratic and hidebound.
Politics are weighed down by interest groups and an old guard determined to maintain its grip on power. Schools are only beginning to grasp the education needs of the 21st century. In short, these problems, and many more, have tied the nation in knots, as it heaves this way and that, trying to find new equations for economic growth without throwing out the old. And so while Japan remains the world's second-largest economy, the country has languished, mired in the impossibility of breaking away from old habits. But after years of economic stagnation following the collapse of the real estate and financial bubble of the 1980s, and after decades of its citizens being squeezed to fit the economic growth model proscribed by Japan's masters, there is an intense energy flowing through thousands of Japanese individuals who want change.