CAMBRIDGE, England -- I have just come back from a trip to Africa, my first in several years. I used to visit there frequently before my work became specialized on East Asia. This trip, to Botswana, was purely for a holiday.

I was surprised at how much more developed, cultured and civilized Botswana is compared to other countries south of the Sahara. The physical and social infrastructure was much better developed, at least in the eastern provinces we visited, than I had expected. It made me realize how ignorant we often are about how our fellow human beings living in parts of the world we do not visit. This ignorance is the source of much prejudice and even hostility.

Just as our perceptions of conditions in Africa can be wide of the mark, so can theirs of ours. There was only one reference to Japan in Botswana's very lively free press (currently threatened by a proposal for a Draconian press law for no apparent reason) in the two weeks we were there. This was a story about how Japanese housewives are now selling their bodies in order to pay for their addiction to pachinko; offering sex in the stairwell for one scoop of balls or in a hotel for three.