GMM-TV just announced their new line-up of Thai shows for next year, including a remake of the Japanese “My Love Mix Up.” Some netizens worry that the actor in the Thai trailer doesn’t get the Japanese “ehhh?” right. This may seem esoteric, but it’s not.
If you go online, the Japanese “eh?” is often equated to the English, “huh?”. Not so in the Japanese tv series I’ve watched. There, the elongated “ehhh?” can mean wtf? or really! This difference between a simple, huh?, and the incredulous, what?!, finds a parallel in public policy and management.
As a start, I don’t think I’ve heard “ehhh?” pronounced, let alone expressed as the Japanese do, in the other Asian tv series I’ve watched. More, there is something of the German komish in that “ehhh?”: funny but now responding to something also strange or weird.
I think a good number of us, wherever we are, respond this many formal policy pronouncements today. “Ehhh?”
Think: The New Weirder as a policy regime.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 
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