Over to you, Robert, um, for digging in on a country, um, that has a lot of very interesting companies in the Geo 500, Japan.

Thanks so much, uh, Will.

That's, um, that's a, a really interesting rundown.

I'm gonna, uh, necessarily have a much more, uh, Japan-focused, um, uh, take on this.

Uh, first though, I wanted to, uh, reflect on how the SpaceX IPO today, um, might have actually, uh, impacted folks in Japan.

Um, uh, SpaceX actually agreed earlier this week to allocate m-many more of its shares to Japanese retail investors for IPO day today, uh, increasing from what was originally only $500 million to, um, increasing that multiple times and most recently this week to $2.5 billion.

Uh, there's a huge surge in demand, uh, from Japanese retail investors and one thing that, um, uh, your readers and listeners, uh, may not be aware of is Japanese, uh, households have $15 trillion in, uh, savings and assets, almost 50% of which, uh, more than $7 trillion, uh, at the beginning of the year anyway, is in cash.

[laughs] So...

Tell us a bit more about who you are and, uh, also about this newsletter.

I ran a geospatial software engineering consultancy called Azavia for about, uh, 25 years and, um, grew that company, uh, to a little over 50 people and then, uh, sold the company a couple years ago.

And, uh, after that, uh, while I went...

I decided to go out on my own and, and continue to do, um, research and strategy consulting, uh, under the Abaca Labs, um, moniker.

Uh, I also took it as a chance to reconnect with an earlier part of my career.

Prior to getting involved in geospatial technology, uh, I had, uh, studied Japanese and lived in Japan for four years working in local government.

And, um, uh, after some travel and spending time in Japan, uh, after I sold my company, I felt like it was really...

So what are the big five Japanese trading houses?