Weekend at the neighbors provides food for thought

I recently spent four days visiting relatives in the Greater Tokyo area, a quick wink-and-a-few-nods flight from Beijing.

My extended weekend sojourn surprisingly received markedly less press coverage - other than this memorable memo - than the upcoming trip to China by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The lack of media exposure given to my visit is even more anomalous given that it remarkably coincided with the milestone 1,411th anniversary of the first recorded communication between the Middle Kingdom and the Land of the Rising Sun.