Remember the accident involving a bullet train near Osaka three years ago? The train was running only one-and-a-half minutes late, but the driver thought it was dishonourable. Desperate to make up, he put on speed and the train jumped the tracks while turning a curve and hurtled into a nearby apartment building, killing at least 94 people.
At one level of judgment, for sure, it was a meaningless obsession with the value of punctuality. At another and perhaps more important level, it revealed an utmost concern for the value of time. There