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Well I’m back from Japan and I have a bunch to think and write about.

But for now I’ll confine myself to what I think is my largest-scale takeaway thought: The size of the country coupled with the ready access to quick transportation is very well suited to a “creative economy.”

In most “creative economy” industries value is created in the exchange of thoughts and ideas. While email, teleconferences, and other synchronous and asynchronous communication methods are great, none of them have the bandwidth that a live face-to-face meeting. A face-to-face will almost always provide the means for greater value than an email conversation.

Japan as a country is about the size of California. It has a population of about 127 million.

Say you’re a creative and live in the city of Nagoya, population about 2 million. You have an international airport and a great nightlife. You have a business relationship with a production company based in Tokyo, population about 12 million.

You get a call in the morning about a project you’re working on and realize that you can make the most progress with a live face-to-face meeting.

For about 120 bucks you can hop on a Shinkansen, travel the 366km and be in Tokyo in two hours.

The entire country is well serviced by rail and it didn’t seem to me that you really need much in the way of reservations and so forth. There are also smaller airlines you can take if you want to do bigger hops quickly (like, say, Tokyo to Sapporo). A meeting with any of the 127 million inhabitants of Japan could be arranged and executed pretty much at any time with relatively little hassle (you, know, 4 oz of liquid and taking off your shoes and all that).

That’s what went through my mind while zooming along the Shinkansen. More about Japan in the coming days I’m sure.