LOS ANGELES -- Sometimes the only explanation for it is that there are two Americas. The East Coast America, with its dark cynicism and worldly seen-it-all sangfroid, sees Asia as mostly a problem and a threat. But West Coast America, soaking up its proximity to Asia and reveling in local Asian ethnicities -- and characteristically looking for the sunny side of things -- sees Asia mostly as an opportunity and an ally. It's usually that way.
Take the admitted riddle of Japan, the world's second largest economy with the potential to send the global economy into depression. Go to the East Coast, and it's hard to find experts with positive words about it. There, in the land of self-indulgent pessimism, Japan is a psychotic basket case, all serial syndromes of debt, political paralysis, aging demographics -- forget about it.
But on the West Coast, where people somehow manage to overlook even earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides, they've not lost faith with Japan. How could they? From Vancouver on down through Seattle, San Francisco, Honolulu and Los Angeles, more Japanese-Americans live here than anywhere outside of Japan; more people fly to Japan from here than from anywhere else; we mutually trade and touch base as if Japan were no farther away than, say, Cuba from Miami. For the West Coast, Japan is not "the other," as on the East Coast; rather, Japan is us.