When Timothy Carr arrived in Japan in 2003, the punctuality and caution he saw people investing in the maintenance of order immediately struck him as fascinating.
One of the first things his colleagues at The American School in Japan presented to Carr, the new headmaster, was a 364-day plan for building the school's new cafeteria.
"In this plan they articulated what was going to happen exactly on that 364th day," Carr recalled in an interview. "Coming from Latin America, I just started laughing and said, 'What is this piece of fiction' "