"Learning this skill won’t necessarily make you a better software engineer, or entrepreneur, but it can get information from people that are otherwise not willing to reveal it."
Pfft, every successful entrepreneur I've met from the Kansai area of Japan does this. The first step is knowing the price of everything, isn't it?
So little looting? Hate to burst your bubble, but the Japanese news is full of scammers pocketing money "for earthquake victims", people stealing from charity boxes, and looting.
Yes, looting. I can't find many news articles other than in Japanese, but here we go. Just use Google translate (http://translate.google.com/).
Since the earthquake, there were over 250 cases of looting in Sendai alone.
Pfft, every successful entrepreneur I've met from the Kansai area of Japan does this. The first step is knowing the price of everything, isn't it?