Diet

DIET
Having something to investigate, I went to the Diet Library. In English it sounds to the Japanese like a library for people wishing to cut down on their calories. But in Japanese it is 国会図書館, which instead you would think is for politicians, but actually it is for all of us who want to know more about anything, and it boasts about 2 million books.
This visit was perhaps the first time in 20 years and I wondered if it had been so troublesome to get to a book I needed. First you need to get a plastic card for entry by tapping on a screen to input some information about yourself. Then you are requested by a guard to leave your bag and all in a coin locker by inserting a 100yen coin, which to my relief was going to get back to me but I forgot to retrieve anyway, into a slot to take off the key. Passing the card over a scanner, finally you can get through a gate. It was just like you do at a ticket gate.
For people like me who have no idea whatsoever about the library, there is a reception desk. You should tell one of the ladies what you want in the library. She will tell you where to go and what to do. "Where" is an array of computers and "what" is to look for the book you want to read, using one of the computers and your card, with the assistance from a clerk standing by who also instructed me to take my chewing gum out of my mouth. After you input your request of the books, you have to go to a waiting section to wait for ten minutes or so until your card number appears on a big screen in front of the counter, the sign "it's ready". You get the books, flip the pages through, and if you want to xerox pages, then you have to go down stairs. You must fill in an application form including which part of the book you want to have copied. Then wait for some time long enough to doze off on a sofa.
What's all this? You have to ask someone whatever you want to do there. The only thing they don't do is read the books for you.
If you investigate something, you yourself may want to go to the bookshelf, pick up a book, scan it through, put it back if it's not what you want, keep it if you like and then you pick up another, sometimes you just read the table of contents, sometimes captions or summary. If you want to xerox you do it by yourself during which process you may want to copy other parts of the book. Research is more or less this kind of process. If you leave any step of this process to someone, the total flow of your thought is marred and stops there.
I wondered how many people were working there; receptionists, assistants, librarians, guards, receptionists at the book-handout-handin counter and the copy counter, the people retrieving books from shelves and the people who xerox books, their managers.... What a waste of money just to impede our research! It's not hard to guess there are many other such kind of national organizations. We have a long way to go before we streamline all the redundant system in this country. Step by step we must go.
What it really needs is "diet".