Jetlag is keeping me up. It is 4am in Tokyo. I am still on Los Angeles time. Yesterday, the first American Feng Shui Institute seminar in Japan was held. With more than 100 people attending and an active question and answer session (in multiple languages!), it was a great time for all. Afterwards, a special seminar for business leaders was held. These people came from all sorts of backgrounds; garden designers, city planners, entertainment executives and even stock brokers.

There were two things that struck me as interesting about Japan and “fu sui” (Feng Shui). First was that the questions were very similar to those of first time Americans to a Feng Shui seminar. Questions such as “If the husband and wife are of different group directions, how do we make this work?” and “How effective is color in Feng Shui?” I was pleased to find how people’s concern for their well being, environment, and prosperity was the same in Asia as well as in the US. I thought that Master Sang addressed everyone’s questions well, with his usual good natured and wonderfully illustrating way of presenting. Even with translation there were laughs and chuckles.

The second thing that I realized was how similar Japan and Feng Shui is to when the Institute first started back in the early 1990’s. In the US, traditional Feng Shui is commonly accepted now, but back then, it was something very strange. Black Hat Feng Shui was the only thing that people had heard of in the early 90’s in the US.

The same holds true for Japan now. There is a lot of misunderstanding of “fu sui” and there is very little concept of traditional Feng Shui.

Akiko Shimizu, our Japanese instructor did a great job enduring the entire day of constant translation for Master Sang. I could tell that this is quite difficult. At one point she got a break. There was a Cantonese speaking attendee who asked Master Sang questions in Chinese. Others also asked questions in English. But all-in-all, it was a Nihongo (Japanese language) day.

I better get back to bed now. We have an early class this morning. Overall, it was an exciting day. Another milestone for Feng Shui.

Oh yeah, the sushi is wonderful!

Chris

This entry was posted on Friday, September 9th, 2005 at 11:58 am and is filed under Feng Shui. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.