Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore?skyline=true&s=i

by jseliger • 16 years ago

261 175 16 years ago

> if a guy doesn't want to go to a party and get terribly drunk with everyone else in the company, then he obviously has some element of his outside life — a girlfriend, a hobby, et cetera — that is more important to him than the company

god...

wallflower• 16 years ago

I'm eagerly awaiting patio11's comments on the smoking/meat/Sararīman culture.

mootothemax• 16 years ago

Wow, this guy sounds like a lot of fun!

Estragon3• 16 years ago

Yeah, that was 20,000 words of relentless positivity.

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

You are completely justified in complaining about the article's negativity. It's not like he announced in the title or the first paragraph what it was going to be about.

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

I come to HN for the intelligent, relevant commentary. I stay for the ad hominem.

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

"When you buy Super Famicom games in used game shops, the gray plastic is very often stained deep, ugly yellow from existing in houses packed to bursting with cigarette smoke. Sometimes, the consoles themselves are so yellow."

That's actually due to the plastic used, it's not from smoke.

http://vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/189

dazzawazza• 16 years ago

The plastic goes yellow but there is often a film of brown sludge that stinks of cigarettes... it's not pleasant.

83457• 16 years ago

Reminds me of the time I bought a used Dreamcast at GameStop and it had a disc all scratched to hell in it and reeked of pot. Actually looked and smelled like someone cleaned their pipe and dumped it in the system.

weeksie5• 16 years ago

I can't imagine living in Japan as a vegetarian teetotaler. There's nothing wrong with that lifestyle but, man, pick your battles. Those things—the working, drinking, and meat eating—are part of the culture and it's not exactly a well kept secret.

I know that I love booze and meat so I'm not going to relocate to Bangalore any time soon.

hsuresh• 16 years ago

Might not be a bad idea to relocate to Bangalore. It is the so-called Pub capital of India.

weeksie5• 16 years ago

Mate, I've been to Bangalore and while there are more bars than elsewhere in India it's a far cry from, say, New York where I'm living in alcohol sodden bliss ;)

blogimus• 16 years ago

Add nonsmoker to the list.

rjurney3• 16 years ago

You can get by fine as a meat eating drinker in Bangalore - although the bars are a bit depressing :)

yashodhan• 16 years ago

The author comes across as a whiney and effeminate control freak. Japan has it right; meat is awesome. 80's music is awesome. The liberty to choose what drugs you inject into your body is again, awesome. Seems like he would fit well with hipsters in NYC or SF. Apologize for the condescension but he just rubbed my the wrong way.

I suggest he chills out and learns to go with the flow sometimes. But happiness is probably the last thing this guy wants, he's the type of guy who thrives on finding things at fault.

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

"I know that I love booze and meat so I'm not going to relocate to Bangalore any time soon."

Plenty of Booze and meat in Bangalore. Good Pubs, not so much.

weeksie5• 16 years ago

Booze and meat can be found in Bangalore, much the same way that vegetarian food can be found in Japan. And I've been to a few of the pubs there. Well. Yeah.

Not to say I didn't enjoy my stay, on the contrary I loved it; but I wouldn't move there and act indignant because I couldn't get good quality wine and steak.

The point was to illustrate that Southern India is a culture inclined to vegetarian food and not drinking. And while you _can_ find meat (and some semblance of wine) in Bangalore it's hardly the same as New York or Sydney (my two "homes") in that regard.

w00pla2• 16 years ago

> Those things—the working, drinking, and meat eating—

Meat is expensive in Japan. I buy a 400 gram steak and a Coke&brandy for $4.63 total.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

The problem with anime and animation becoming dumbed down and trashy is a global one.

(incidentally did anyone else struggle to read the start of this article - it didnt flow very well)

glhaynes• 16 years ago

The whole thing seemed amateurishly written. Left me thinking: does Kotaku not have editors? Why did he suddenly directly address the reader as "man" three times in one paragraph? Why did paragraphs seem rambly and disconnected? If one's going to take the "asshole" tone, one needs to be likable or at least amusing... maybe the author should read some Bukowski.

jmillikin3• 16 years ago

  Long ago, manga aspired to be like Dragon Ball Z: graphically iconic, with a story more coherent than it probably needed to be. Now there's the ADHD-addled Dragon-Ball-Z-inspired One Piece, a manga for the Twitter age if there ever was one.

Pop culture was best when you, the reader of this sentence, were 12: http://i46.tinypic.com/1625ims.gif

I remember watching DBZ after school, and while it is certainly "graphically iconic", there is no legitimate way to claim it has a coherent plot. It seems like the author is remembering his Saturday morning cartoons through some rose-tinted cokebottles.

I won't even touch "Anime is terrible. It used to be okay."

jayair• 16 years ago

Reading the article I felt that just like how he is comparing current Anime to DBZ (what he remembers) is the same way he is comparing his current feeling towards Japanese culture to what he thought it would be.

It feels like reality has settled in and his daily life has some deeper rooted problems than the stickers being placed on the barcode a certain a way.

Regardless he gives a view of the culture that you don't often hear about.

xenophanes• 16 years ago

What are you talking about? They have, e.g., 30 eps in a row of goku fighting frieza. it's an extremely slow plot, but every episode follows after the next. (except after a saga ends, then they just do a time skip to the next big fight)

itistoday2• 16 years ago

Man does this bring back memories from back when I was still a young hackling... Watching in eager anticipation what will happen next. For four straight episodes it was Goku with his hands in the air constipating, and somehow I loved every minute of it.

michaelcampbell• 16 years ago

Correct or not, your post reminded me of a recent Jon Stewart (Daily Show) deconstruction of Glenn Beck's and Sean Hannity's rant about how great "America used to be". The idea was that your own country is ALWAYS great TO YOU when you're 12.... BECAUSE YOU'RE 12!

noilly• 16 years ago

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-5-2010/even-be...

mtts• 16 years ago

I was in college when it hit over here. Couldn't make head nor tails of it. It seemed like crap to me.

Then again, I used to watch TMNT after school and to this day will maintain that it was actually quite funny, even though someone older than me will, with some justification, villify that as well.

Some of this article was worth reading. The complaints about how things used to be better, however, were not.

KirinDave• 16 years ago

While I wouldn't call DBZ's plot unique, it wasn't bad.

You might have experienced a bad, emasculated version which was aired in America, stripped down to nothing but fight scenes and completely devoid of anything involving adult life. That version really sucked.

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

No love for "Shikabane Hime" ? What is wrong with this guy?!

GFischer3• 16 years ago

I was looking for something to watch - I'll try Shikabane Hime then :) (not the author btw)

dkarl2• 16 years ago

I would like to check out some manga to see what it's like. I almost posted a request for manga recommendations on a LibraryThing manga forum, but I decided against it. I tried writing up a description of what I was looking for, but it devolved into rejection of a bunch of anime stereotypes:

- No ordinary schmoes who turn out to have amazing supernatural powers.

- Nothing that revolves around a series of contests with enemies of escalating power.

- No robots or exoskeletons.

- It would be nice if the central character was an adult. An adult whose love interest is not an adolescent.

- While I'm on that topic, nothing that will make people think I'm a pervert if they catch me reading it.

So, while I was wroting this up, I started checking out the lists of mangas that had been previously recommended in the forum, and I started to feel like I was shitting all over everything they loved, so I decided not to post my request. People talk quite a lot about manga being a serious art form for adults. Am I missing something?

jmillikin3• 16 years ago

The problem with forums about anime or manga is that they self-select for people who have been rejected from every other community. A solid science-fiction or horror story can find discussion in the appropriate forums, but nobody normal is interested in some high-school student's harem of magical girls.

Here are some manga / anime recommendations. Some have not been licensed for distribution in the US, or have been only partially released here, so you will need to hunt a bit for fansubs. I watch only the animated adaptations, as they're easier to hide, but feel free to order the original manga versions if you don't feel ashamed about reading comic books. Not all are adaptations -- the movies, and a few television series, are original animations.

- Monster < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29 >

- Planetes < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes >

- Mushishi < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushishi >

- Mononoke < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononoke_%28TV_series%29 >

- Tokyo Godfathers < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Godfathers >

If you're willing to relax your standards a bit, there are many outstanding series aimed at younger viewers.

- Denno Coil < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil >

- Yokohama Shopping Trip < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokohama_Kaidashi_Kik%C5%8D >

- Kino's Journey < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey >

- Cromartie High School < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromartie_High_School >

- My Neighbor Totoro < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro > , or almost anything else by Studio Ghibli < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli >

- The Girl Who Leapt Through Time < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time >

- Yotsuba&! < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsuba&! >

LogicHoleFlaw• 16 years ago

If you read one manga, read Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki. Yes, that's the same Miyazaki who is the famous animation director. It's after midnight and I'm not feeling particularly eloquent, but it will be worth your while.

Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausicaä_of_the_Valley_of_the_W...

Semiapies• 16 years ago

I'd make the same point I would to someone griping about all the psychics, aliens, vampires, and wizards in the paperback books they've tried out:

Well, that's the geek media.

Worse, it's the young-geek media - most of that stuff is marketed to teenage guys. Admittedly, it's really hard to find anything else in the US because young geeks have been the primary source of demand for Japanese animation and comics. We mostly get the Bleaches and the Hellsings and whatnot.

It's as if the rest of the world only got SF and Fantasy movies out of Hollywood. There's stuff to love there, to be sure, but it's a necessarily limited sampling.

gommm2• 16 years ago

I would heartily recommend you Distant Neighborhood (Haruka na Machi e) by Jiro Taniguchi

Actually most of the books by Jiro Taniguchi are really good, they are mostly simple touching story that give a good glimpse of japanese culture and the relationship between people.

http://www.amazon.com/DISTANT-NEIGHBORHOOD-Jiro-Taniguchi/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Neighborhood-2-Jiro-Taniguchi/...

DanielBMarkham2• 16 years ago

Good article, but about 3 or 4 times longer than it should have been.

cmelbye• 16 years ago

Did anyone actually read this novel?

DanielBMarkham2• 16 years ago

Started out reading, then scanning, finally skimming for section heads and interesting topics.

The problem is that the author didn't make a cogent point and back it up. Instead he started off with a lot of excuse-making, then went into a list, but kept deviating from the list to talk about video games (which, I guess, should have been the topic?)

It had the feeling of a long list of grievances strewn together, ranted about, and then tacked on to a couple of other conversations.

The strength of the article was in the negative first-person impressions of Japanese culture. He should have stuck with that, cut out the apologizing and made that just a sentence or two at the end. Then he should have tightened the hell out of the prose and tried to make some kind of thesis that his stories supported.

Other that that, the first-person stuff was good. But damn -- this guy is an editor? The structure is a mess.

At one point he even admits how bad it is -- and then continues on in the death march towards the end.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

this guy is an editor? The structure is a mess.

Aha it makes a little more sense now. Editors are usually poor writers/reporters - their skill set is different (which doesn't excuse the fact he clearly never copy-edited what he wrote)

Alex39172• 16 years ago

I read the whole thing and I actually liked the style. It's not like he's randomly reviewing video games in the middle of the article, he's using his examples of things he finds stupid to show how the arbitrary and nonsensical social conventions contribute to a lack of creativity in Japanese business.

Tichy• 16 years ago

Haven't finished yet, but I find it a surprisingly entertaining read.

DannoHung2• 16 years ago

Tim Rogers is a nutjob. But he's got a few interesting points buried in there regarding language.

Groxx4• 16 years ago

Only barely. English has plenty of similarly complicated words that are used frequently without people understanding their meaning. Learning about those meanings puts a bit of a shade on what people are actually saying, until you realize people don't actually mean it that way.

It's the same way with irrashaimase; it's a self-deprecating phrase (and Japanese does indeed have a lot of them), but it's a stock phrase, and that's how people use it. Similarly, a lot of our exclamations have origins in words, even if we've forgotten them. For instance, why do we say "ow" instead of "ai", or simply "aa"? "Ow" is significantly more complicated physically than simply "aa!"ing. Other cultures say different things for exclamations, even "spontaneous" things like pain, and that's normal. Getting uppity about it isn't.

DannoHung2• 16 years ago

I don't think that's a particularly good example unless you say "ow" in some very strange way.

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

Wait, your example from English is completely unrelated to Tim's point, which is that they use words with some meaning that may not apply to the current circumstances. Tim's argument is that that imposes a subliminal message, which, repeated often and widely enough, has a negative effect on the society. Maybe you have some argument against that, but you didn't make it in this comment.

gcv• 16 years ago

I only read about half that article before losing interest, but one argument jumped out at me: the mandatory office parties and drinking outings. This, IMO, is not a Japan-only phenomenon, although I'm sure the Japanese put their own cultural twists on this lovely concept.

After college, I went to work in a bank in New York. The in-crowd in my group went out for drinks, together, at least three times a week. I never saw any appeal in $10 martinis or $6 beers — especially with a bunch of people with whom I just spent 10 working hours. Needless to say, it did not take long before I was considered "not a team player." (My bosses liked me, so I did well enough before I realized I loathe corporate life and left, but my peers were not fans and caused considerable trouble.)

rick8882• 16 years ago

"I only read about half that article before losing interest, but one argument jumped out at me: the mandatory office parties and drinking outings. This, IMO, is not a Japan-only phenomenon, although I'm sure the Japanese put their own cultural twists on this lovely concept."

You are right about this. Pretty much any place I have worked (I'm from the US) has had office parties or other kind of outings. I almost always went because it does help you get to know your boss and co-workers (it was only about once-a-month). I don't really see a problem with it.

Your example of going out three times a week is a bit much (I wouldn't go out that many times a week), but you could have at least gone out with them once-in-awhile to show them that you don't completely hate your co-workers. If you do, you probably shouldn't be working there anyway.

You can't take the human nature/social aspect out of working. If you don't do these things, people will think you are weird/the outsider/don't like them.

Maybe you should run your own business?

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

" I almost always went because it does help you get to know your boss and co-workers (it was only about once-a-month). I don't really see a problem with it."

I made it a point never to go for one after my first experience. In Bangalore these take weird forms, usually wasting a holiday or a weekend, landing up in some god forsaken "resort", where you can do exciting things like play badminton or carroms, Quoits or Dumb Charades (I kid you not!), or quietly get drunk in a corner, with some of the really bad companies throwing in a few "mission and vision" style speeches from the powers that be.

Once I got a letter from a VP telling me to report to his office and explain why I didn't attend the "office party weekend + mission and vision session" over the previous weekend and I explained (quite diplomatically) that I didn't give a fuck about these things and had no intention of ever attending anything like this in the future either. He seemed completely shocked and speechless and was almost in tears when I left.

My immediate superior later gave me a veiled warning that my " career progress could be affected" by such "unorthodox attitudes" but, strangely enough, it wasn't. I got regular promotions and raises and was "on the leadership track" when I left because work was too boring. They didn't believe my reason for leaving either ("I am bored out of my skull"), because I was a "senior person" (I was 28!!) and was "poised on the leadership ladder" (yes they actually spoke like that!).

These were large companies though. Small (less than 20 people) company parties were often a lot of fun. I am so glad I don't have to work for large companies anymore.

danieldon• 16 years ago

That's only really the case in certain environments. In finance or consulting it's very common, particular for younger employees, but those are pretty much the only industries and demographic I've ever heard of it being widely expected.

The only ubiquitous US workplace social function is the holiday party.

pw0ncakes4• 16 years ago

Biglaw ("white shoe") firms are even worse.

pw0ncakes4• 16 years ago

This was the best and most interesting part. The rest were minor cultural gripes; but Japanese corporate culture, from everything I've heard, is severely broken even by our low standards.

American and Japanese corporate conformity seem to be different in one aspect. The Japanese-style conformity, as described by the OP, seems to be about seeming like a "team player" rather than standing out. American-style Wall Street conformity is about the "hungry" image.

The best predictor of who will succeed on Wall Street is commute time (as a negative correlate). This is not because of the long hours or stress, but because of the image one projects by one's choice of neighborhood. (This is also why Manhattan real estate is so expensive; there's a professional stake in one's location.) 40-year-old MDs with families are "allowed" to live in Jersey, but a 24-year-old who lives in Brooklyn is just weird; either he doesn't expect to be successful, or he's saving (gasp!) and might do something funny like launch a startup. No one will get fired for failing to show "hunger", but you definitely won't get promoted.

My experience, however, has shown that "hungry" people (i.e. those with empty or overtly material ambitions) are generally one-dimensional, sociopathic backstabbers with mediocre ideas and whose overall worth is less than nothing.

froo• 16 years ago

tl;dr

edit - that's not entirely true, I got about 1/10th of the way through and realised I could do more constructive things with my time.

cookiecaper3• 16 years ago

I think this is the kind of article that you scroll through until you find a paragraph with some interesting words, read until you get bored, and do that again until the end.

Agile_Cyborg• 16 years ago

Life would be an excruciating slog if I had enough time to write a fucking novel about the things I hate in a place I chose to live.

Groxx4• 16 years ago

I hadn't considered the meat part before, but he's right, nearly everything has meat in it. USA is getting pretty vegetarian-friendly, Japan not so much.

As to the other complaints: rose-tinted glasses looking back to "the good old days", plus a bit of culture shock. It's a frickin' different culture, of course you're not going to understand / go along with it perfectly.

I'll fully grant that some of the cultural habits are downright dangerous (not merely creepy), but every culture has that. Sounds like he's merely found out recently that Japan isn't some holy grail location like he seems to have thought it was, and is merely a location on Earth.

jmoiron2• 16 years ago

I'm actually very surprised this ended up here. For those who might not know Tim Rogers, him and a few other college-age gamers started a recently defunct site called 'insert credit' around 8 or 9 years ago to try to apply Hunter S. Thompson style "New Journalism" to video game journalism.

Their articles had a high incident of insight to them that was largely the result of repeated deconstruction and re-examination of the game design of various 80s-era classics. Quite often the articles (some of which read a lot like the linked article) were pretty entertaining.

Bringing personal experience into the essay or game review was always the point, and Tim in particular tended to go off on completely wild tangents and write in an almost incoherent and stream of consciousness style (perhaps, "style"); from memory, in one review he pauses to go cook a burrito, then describes the burrito cooking process, before resuming what he was writing about the actual game in question.

This article is pretty classic Tim Rogers: an extremely long exploration of an idea that touches on some interesting (if perhaps apocryphal) stories or facets of that idea, but may or may not have a coherent underlying vision or message.

cookiecaper3• 16 years ago

I've always admired the writing on Insert Credit, and I'm sad to learn that they're gone now.

thristian• 16 years ago

After Insert Credit imploded, the forums moved to selectbutton.net but without any "main content" (the front-page stories are just selected forum threads). Soon afterward, Tim started up actionbutton.net to host game reviews by himself and other like-minded folks; they're generally just as good as the old Insert Credit material, and of course more up-to-date.

xiaoma2• 16 years ago

Insisting on a way of life completely at odds with where you live can be stressful. I'm kind of curious how he ended up deciding to live in Japan. I know wouldn't if I were a strict vegetarian, tee-totaling, non-conformist who didn't like anime, didn't like rigid company culture and couldn't even tolerate the existence of smoking sections at restaurants.

It's almost as if he's drawn to frustration.

rjurney3• 16 years ago

In my experience, the way it works is - at first everything in the foreign culture is great. Its all novel, the language and culture, and every idiosyncrasy is fascinating and every difference is a new challenge. In time you adapt, and then things seem normal again and you enjoy participating according to the rules of the new society. Once you're 'over it' though, you come to realize just how much work you're putting in just to function. It becomes extremely tiresome just getting by, and many little things irritate you.

It sounds like he's in this final stage. It sounds like its time to come home.

xiaoma2• 16 years ago

I agree that a trip home might be a good idea in his case. There is another possible step for someone living abroad, though-- adaptation. It doesn't have to be any harder than it was at home. People can change. It's possible to adjust to one's surroundings on a deeper level, in a way such that daily life is no longer a struggle.

I say this having the majority of my adult life living in a country far from where I grew up.

GFischer3• 16 years ago

And what if you're tired and irritated... of your home country?

I'm in my own mini-crisis myself, and I don't know what to do (emigrating is a bit drastic, but I'm considering it).

jcl2• 16 years ago

I figure he must really, really like video games.

clusterfu_k2• 16 years ago

I'm rather surprised by this article, mostly because I basically have the opposite opinion about Japan. My theory is that I was born in Japan and lived there for most of my life and so for me this is all just how life works. More importantly, from a Japanese perspective, this is how we enjoy life.

It externally seems that I should have a similar opinion of Japan as him because I am not Japanese and I seem to have had similar experiences. Yet my exposure to the culture from birth leaves me taking for granted a lot of what he fights.

When I first came to Canada to study in university I had grudges toward the culture and way of life and I hadn't noticed until now why that was. It was because my perception of "how things work" was challenged.

starkfist• 16 years ago

I lived in Japan in the early 2000s. I don't know anything about anime or videogames, but everything else in the article seemed accurate. Personally I loved it, but I left before things started to wear me down.

Much of this is a critique of salaryman culture. Salaryman culture is bananas, a bi-polar combination of Kafka-esque hallucinatory boredom during the day, and 'girls gone wild' at night. Except, it isn't girls going wild, it's 48 year old men. It's interesting for about 2 weeks, and then becomes completely tedious, and slightly scary if you care about your health at all. I'm astonished that the Japanese still top the life expectancy charts.

When I wasn't working, I hung out with artists, skaters and surfers. I visited small towns on weekends and spent a lot of time at the beach. Life outside of Tokyo and the salaryman grind is much more relaxed, fun, and "good" weird instead of "WTF" weird.

Whenever I have a friend interested in relocating to Japan I plead with them to NOT work at a Japanese office. Only go there to work if you're the best fixed-gear bike welder, or are a popular underground DJ, or some other sort of "big in japan" folk hero. Anything that keeps you out of salaryman-land.

neilk• 16 years ago

When it comes to entire countries, or even large cities, they usually have every possible lifestyle within them -- somewhere. It's never what you know about a place; it's who you know.

You may have to make different choices though. It's probably possible to be a teetotalling vegetarian in Japan, but you might have to go to a monastery or something. Whereas you could easily be a games developer with those traits in the USA.

nandemo• 16 years ago

I couldn't make myself read the whole thing, but I think it's far from accurate.

For instance, he seems to be able to communicate in Japanese but he still doesn't grasp that "otsukaresama" and "irasshaimase" are really only greetings. I wonder what would be his reaction if he heard that in some places it's usual to say "ohayou gozaimasu" (usually meaning "good morning") when you get to the office in the evening.

Mandatory parties aren't really mandatory, you see. Many Japanese do "escape" the parties. You just have to do it tactfully. And so on.

That said, I agree with you about avoiding working in a Japanese office. The usual English teaching path seems to work for a lot of people, though.

bh23ha2• 16 years ago

This poor person is suffering from culture shock. I'm an immigrant let me explain.

Culture shock is not OMG they eat X here. Culture shock develops slowly from the stress of being away from home and living in a strange land. You are long over people eating X or what ever, and then one day you're just sick of it all. Not exactly ALL of it, but you tend to fixate on the defects of the strange place you're in and you're in a perpetually bad mood, very similar to the stressed out shitty mood someone quiting smoking is always in.

Some of the points he makes are valid. There is lard in bread, I think that's MUCH better then the hydrogenated fats of margarine. Lard may not be good for you, but it is better then the alternatives.

And smoking is definitely bad for you. And as an European I feel that American corporate culture bleeds far too far into everyone's personal life, much like how the author feels about corporate partying in Japan.

The no-real friends thing also strikes me as something I can say about Americans, who from my perspective seem to have trouble forming deep adult friendships.

But the author and I have two options, get over it or go home.

The curious thing about culture shock is that it never strikes in the very first moments of awe when you just arrive. It takes a little while. But then you tend to get over it and then many months or some times years later it hits you again, and this time it is WORSE. And many immigrants/ex-pats never got over the second wave. They (we!) just end up pissed off at the host culture.

* EVERY JAPANESE POP SONG IS ABOUT THE SAME THING * Yeah, that's kind of every pop song period. And this attitude is a classing sign of culture shock.

intranation• 16 years ago

Culture shock to me, as someone who has visited 20-ish countries and lived in 2, is more that "things are almost normal and like what you're used to, but just not enough to be comfortable", and as a result you end up perpetually on edge and perpetually adjusting just outside your comfort zone. It's jarring and difficult, a little like the room in Orwell's 1984 where the corners aren't quite straight, and things are just out of focus.

I didn't get culture shock in Tokyo, because it's just so different to everywhere else I'd been that I completely stopped the usual comparisons and just gave up.

prawn• 16 years ago

A bit like a cultural uncanny valley. Sounds plausible to me.

Vivtek8• 16 years ago

I got that from Germany, after a month in Tokyo. I was fine in Tokyo, but in Germany I could read the signs, after all. In a month I was horribly homesick.

London, though - London just about killed me in one day.

I was a mess when I was younger.

itistoday2• 16 years ago

I wouldn't dismiss this article as simply culture shock. A university surveyed foreign students and tracked their progress as they adjusted to the new culture, they found that most people get over the culture shock after 2 semesters. [1]

This guy is writing this after living 5 years in Japan. I would therefore not dismiss this as simple culture shock, it's a genuine critique of a culture after he's become accustomed to it.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPfB6GIjM9Q

Vivtek8• 16 years ago

They get over the shallow culture shock. The real culture shock is knowing you're never going to fit in where you live -but because you've been there so long, you're never going to fit in anywhere else, either. You've become an ethnic group of one.

Puerto Rico did this to me over the course of about five years. I can't stay on-island for more than about a year or I flip out. Up here in the States proper has done this to my (Hungarian) wife over the course of about fifteen years. Her limit is about two years.

It doesn't go away.

iamelgringo• 16 years ago

I grew up as an expat in Central America for the first 14 years of my life. My parents worked for a religious NGO and part of their job was to help other incoming expats acclimate and adjust to the new culture. There's an entire branch of psychology devoted to culture shock, enculturation and acculturation. It's a pretty complex process. Becoming bicultural is a long, long process. A lot of monocultural people, by definition have little frame of reference, and it's hard to understand unless they've gone through it themselves.

Having been through it, and having watched hundreds of other people go through it during. I have no doubt that part of this rant is due to culture shock/enculturation difficulties.

As a rough generalization, there are several stages of enculturation (adapting to living in a different culture). The first stage is the actual culture shock. It generally takes 1-12 months to get over the initial, "OMG they eat Foo!" or figure out what end of the chopsticks to pick food out of the serving bowl with or how to buy groceries, or what side of the cheek to kiss as a greeting, or how low to bow to what people.

After the initial culture shock, there's generally a honey moon phase where everything is seen as wonderful an exciting and so much better than in the old country. That phase can last anywhere from 6 months to 3 years.

Frequently from year 2-6, post move, the honeymoon fades. The "flaws" in the new culture become increasingly apparent, and people get critical and frustrated at their adopted country. Cultural differences are seen as stupid, or backwards.

Slowly, after 4-6 years, people tend to get more accustomed to the new country. They start to adapt, and adopt the new culture as their own, and they feel a lot more at home. Some families I grew up with never made that transition.

I spent the first 14 years of my life living in Cost Rica and Honduras. I've been in the US for over 20 years. And, now, after being, "home" for 20 years, I'm finally starting to feel like I might belong in the US. Moving to the Bay Area, where there's a much bigger multi-cultural vibe helps. Had I stayed in the rural Midwest where my parents live, I would have gone apeshit. Still, after 20 years, some things about the US drive me crazy. I could have written a similar rant at many points the last 20 years.

I'm a lot of geek immigrants/expats could write a similar rant about their host country. Just ask your coworker engineer friends about the US immigration process. :) I know my parents ranted from time to time about life in Costa Rica or Honduras from time to time. They lived down there for 20 years. And, even though they got really pissed off from time to time, it didn't change their love of either country.

jdminhbg• 16 years ago

"...Americans, who from my perspective seem to have trouble forming deep adult friendships."

Uh...

bh23ha2• 16 years ago

I'm not the only one, I hear this from a lot of immigrants both from the old world and Latin America. I can't really explain it.

pw0ncakes4• 16 years ago

Seems very accurate. After 22, my experience is that social life gets very compartmentalized. Your work friends are great to discuss work-related topics with, but most are not people you'd talk about deep philosophical questions (whether there is an afterlife, why we exist) with. And who listens to your problems? A paid therapist. And while this isn't true of prostitution in general, when high-achieving men hire prostitutes they tend to ask for the "girlfriend experience"-- kissing, cuddling, and conversation with an educated woman, because they aren't looking for sex, but for the untarnished intimacy they were able to have in high school. Americans are now paying for emotional closeness that was free in a younger, more innocent age when the stakes of even the littlest things didn't seem so high.

The problem is that American society treats success and failure as proving signs of personal merit, so everyone has to create a veneer of uninterrupted and effortless success because to seem like anything other than a rockstar signals weakness and despondency. This makes real emotional intimacy impossible.

andrewcooke• 16 years ago

i've lived in a different culture for about 10 years, and i understand what you're saying. i'm not sure the right term is culture shock, though - see other replies, that associate that with something much more immediate.

for some people, living long-term in another culture is hard. i certainly find it so at times. and this is despite being completely aware of the issue, the validity of other belief / social systems, etc etc.

it's a malaise at a very deep level - not something that can be addressed by conscious platitudes. i don't have a solution, apart from just continuing.

[ps the way i see it, our subconscious is "programmed" at a very early stage in our development, and is much less adaptable than our conscious. what we're talking about here is the result of long-term attrition between those subconscious assumptions and an inconsistent (but, or course, completely valid) reality. in some ways, respecting the other culture makes it harder - you can't simply dismiss it (except for periods of anger - i would guess this article was written in such a time). i also sometimes wonder if those that don't suffer this are simply repressing / unconnected with their subconscious to such a degree that they are unaware... the alternative is that their subconscious somehow adapts.]

Vivtek8• 16 years ago

I think it might be likened to a long-term allergy. Small exposures won't bother you, but over time you go into anaphylaxis.

elblanco5• 16 years ago

A lot of the things you do in a host culture are things you have to memorize and "just do" rather than coming naturally from your growing up years. It's mentally exhausting to keep referring to your catalog of do's and don'ts all day, every day. It doesn't get put onto the back shelf for a great many years.

kentosi• 16 years ago

I have a Friench friend who, for years, has been critical about Australians. When i first met him he could continually rave on about how people in Paris are so much open with their emotions and how us Aussies are too closed by comparison. Or how the nightlife here sucked by comparison. Or how French music was better, the food tastier, the culture richer. The list went on...

The ironic part was that he would begridgingly list all the good points about living here too. In the end, he became a tangled mess. He disliked and liked being here, and also disliked and liked the idea of returning home. Sounds kindof the the same with the dude in this article. You feel like telling him to just pack his bags and return home, but you know that he won't because he'd miss the good parts of living in Tokyo and end up complaining about the US instead.

A major part of this is to do with always drawing comparisons to your original culture as a source of familiarity. The natives don't draw such comparisons. To them there is no "better" or "crappier" place. It's not Japanese work-life, it's just work-life. It's not Japanese food, it's food. Home is home, and that's just how things are.

After listening to my French friend, reading this article, and reading your comment, it seems to me that romantacising aspects of your home culture whenever you're pissed off about something in your host culture (and vice-versa), though inevitable, alomost never leads to happiness.

quant18• 16 years ago

And as an European I feel that American corporate culture bleeds far too far into everyone's personal life.

Huh, I had the opposite experience when I worked for a small Dutch company. The amount of enforced merry-making (not to mention all the emphasis on consensus-formation) really got on my nerves. Never saw anything like it when I was working for American companies. It did remind me of my brief career in Tokyo --- I'm not the only one to have noticed the superficial similarities between Dutch and Japanese corporate culture [1], though apparently if you dig deeper it's not as similar as it looks.

Of course, this may simply be a quirk of the industry I was in at the time (options trading). It may also be a consequence of me rubbing Dutch people the wrong way (when excusing myself from company bowling/drinking/whatever trips or expressing dissenting opinions), while knowing how not to rub American people the wrong way because I'm a lot more familiar with their culture.

[1] e.g. Joop Stam has done a lot of research on this: http://www.mb.utwente.nl/oohr/staff/professorate/stam/

ytinas• 16 years ago

You've never worked for an American company that tried to tell you what you could/couldn't do outside of work? Either you've had good luck or I've had bad because every place I worked for tried to impose their rules beyond the office parking lot. Maybe it was due to working in a "right to work" state?

aerique• 16 years ago

(disclaimer: I'm Dutch)

My experience working both for several companies and for myself outsourcing myself to companies is that there's a pretty wide range of corporate cultures here in the Netherlands. Going from the enforced merry-making (which is an awesome description, since it makes me retch!) to much, much more easy going environments.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

EVERY JAPANESE POP SONG IS ABOUT THE SAME THING

There seems to be a non-romance/love existential philosophy/angst genre of pop songs. The Japanese version seems to use a different set of pastoral imagery than the American one, and much more of it. Not sure what that means.

rend• 16 years ago

Speaking of host culture, this is an interesting blog I came across written by an American ex-pat working as a host in Osaka.

http://gaijinhostsabin.justin-klein.com/the-rules-of-the-gam...

kazuya2• 16 years ago

People tend to attribute problems around them to the culture, particularly when the culture isn't theirs. And everyone wants to think his/her situation is unique, as the indication of one's uniqueness.

But as some comments indicate, some (or most) of the author's problems are actually not idiosyncratic to Japan. Although he has valid points, his problems will just stay there in different shapes even if he leaves Japan.

elblanco5• 16 years ago

In the "Teach English in Korea" support crowd, they talk about culture shock settling in around the 90-day mark, and letting up 6-12 months in.

sailormoon• 16 years ago

Man, this guy's list of reasons for hating Japan is pretty much identical to my list of reasons for loving Japan. Non-smoking, tee-totalling vegetarian? Sounds like a real fun guy.

Got to hand it to him on the comedy shows, though, they're awful.

GFischer3• 16 years ago

So, you can't enjoy Japan or be a fun guy if you're a non-smoker and teetotaler? (I'm both as well)

elblanco5• 16 years ago

Correct on both counts.

Until you can fight a live octopus down your throat between puffs on a cig, and wash it all down with a gallon of beer, you can't be fun.

MikeMacMan• 16 years ago

Oy, if I had a yen for every time a westerner made some off-base criticism that belied their understanding of Japanese language, Japanese culture, and Japanese psychology...

cookiecaper3• 16 years ago

Are people really so harsh to non-drinkers? That's sad. What about people who don't drink for religious purposes? Are they better tolerated?

archgoon• 16 years ago

Huh. Suddenly, I wonder much more about what life is like for Ruby's Matz.

cdavid• 16 years ago

I can only relate to my own experience (6 years in Japan now), but I have never been in a position where I had to drink. I have never been in a very big Japanese corporate company, but in both University, gvt labs and start up, there have always been people who do not drink, and that has never been an issue.

pwim2• 16 years ago

Japan is a very homogeneous society. Almost no one is religious here, so I think you'd still suffer if you don't drink because of religious reasons.

byrneseyeview• 16 years ago

Maybe I can sum up every little point I'm trying to make in this whole word-slab by saying I don't like that so many people agree to do things that they obviously hate doing.

This seems like a great description of the meat-free, booze-free, non-comformist working for a big Japanese corporation. Why didn't he leave the country 19,000 words ago?

andrewljohnson• 16 years ago

Someone should turn on the Patio11 signal and summon him to comment on this.

djcapelis• 16 years ago

Timezones. It's still pretty early in the morning there for a hacker. I imagine he'll be along within the next hour or two.

donw2• 16 years ago

I'm 'there'. It's way too early for a hacker, but just fine for a startup owner. :)

dmoney• 16 years ago

The "Pat Signal" for short.

ramchip2• 16 years ago

You know, he's not the only HN reader in Japan... ;)

I'm not sure what needs commenting. The article is quite in-depth and mostly fits with my experience. I can add an anecdote, perhaps, on this part: The Japanese are so serious about work that even work-related parties are mandatory. If you don't go to a company party, you're not part of the team. If you're not part of the team, it's possible you're not actually working at the company.

This is very real. I live in a university dorm and I'm friend with one of the Japanese assistants working here. He was nearly fired because he wasn't going to nomikai (drinking parties) with the other assistants and the manager often enough. He wasn't going because he had to study for exams and prepare a trip. He got a long email from one of his older colleagues saying that "maybe he wasn't cut out for the residence assistant lifestyle" and that as the youngest one it was his duty to do better to fit in the group. All that even though he was, as far as I could see, the only one to actually socialize with the foreign residents (that's supposed to be his job)...

Incidentally, my university keeps a fairly strict separation between foreign and local students. Exchange students live in the same building as the sports club members for my university (the teams are required to live together), but we're not allowed to go into their area or for them to come. People who learn Japanese here are rather encouraged to stay together and not mix with the Japanese students (except those who want to practice English). It's what they call tatemae/honne: the uni wants to give an air of internationalism, but it doesn't really matter to them if it's true or not - just that it looks like it.

I'm in a way lucky to be in engineering, so that I take all my classes with local students, but I've had to deal with many exceptions and needed special permission from all teachers I take a lesson under. I'm literally the only undergrad exchange student on my campus. To their credit however, I've always felt welcomed by teachers - I feel like a few have travelled and actually wish their students were more exposed to other countries.

I've also seen a professor say to his new undergrad students (unpaid interns) that "from now on, the laboratory lifestyle is going to be the main thing for you" (main in English). Life in Japan is defined by your group, and it mostly goes from school, to laboratory (or intern work), then to the company. At each point people are expected to dedicate a lot of time to being with their group.

derefr• 16 years ago

For some reason, I'm getting an (obviously wrong) impression from this conversation that the only type of work you can get in Japan comes in the form of big-business cubicle farms. patio11's input would be interesting here because he's getting by without working at one of these.

patio112• 16 years ago

All appearances to the contrary, I do actually work for a living, and early morning on release Monday is a bad time to drop a thesis on my desk and ask me for comments.

somebear• 16 years ago

Yes, it really was a thesis. I don't know how interesting it is if you are actually experiencing these things on a daily basis. As a complete outsider, however, this small window into Japanese work culture was very interesting. Don't know how well I could handle working in such an environment.

clusterfu_k2• 16 years ago

just curious, what part of japan do you, or have you, live in?

Rauchg• 16 years ago

Anime is awesome.

rglovejoy• 16 years ago

Anime used to be awesome. For me, it stopped being cool sometime back in the late 1990s, when it went mainstream.

petercooper• 16 years ago

So, a list of problems some dude has with a country. You can come up with a similar list for every country on earth, especially if you're suffering from culture shock. Everywhere has its pros and cons.

brianmckenzie• 16 years ago

I'm not sure who's funnier - the author or the people he's criticizing. It's like a mobius strip of confusion.

askar_yu• 16 years ago

Completely agree that had it been short, it'd be much more interesting as there are a lot of people who have interest in Japan, and they would love to read about those experiences you have.

I doubt that the author is in any of the 'cultural shock' phases, as he starts the article by saying " I've lived in Japan for a long time ". Nevertheless, anybody living in foreign country with a different culture faces the trade-off between preserving their previous 'ways-of-doing' (cultural values, ways of behaving under various circumstances, etc.) and adjusting to the new culture (thus, changing yourself to some extent). So the office culture of Japan only seems to be one of these instances in the case of the author, and it also confirms what I've known about Japan.

<i> "Why not "Tim-san"? I'm required to put "san" on the end of their names. " </i>

From what I've heard (I've never been to Japan), Japanese don't attach '-san' to foreigners names'. But I have to say, I liked this :) - <i> " - ... This is just how we do things in Japan, Tim. - Well, [Name-removed]-san, you can try putting 'san' on the end of my fucking name from now on, then, you know, as practice. " </i>

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

I am really disappointed in the HN commentary on this one. A quarter of the commenters seem to have stopped reading when they saw the anime criticism. Half came in here to say that the guy sounds boring. And the remainder is split between talking about patio11 (what the fuck is that?) and how long the article was. Most of the criticism here seems to boil down to the same "you're not Japanese" bullshit the author mentions in the piece itself. Is that really the best we can do? This is probably the worst-commented article I've seen since I started at HN.

I agree with others that the anime point is probably off-target. Nostalgia is a big component of thinking things used to be better than they are.

The insights into Japanese company-culture are fascinating. American corporations do make people do some incredible bullshit, but nothing on the level of the official greeting he mentioned. The standing around on the street thing and yelling is entirely odd.

I also liked some of the points about the subliminal impact of self-deprecating language. From what I've read, and from the few movies I've seen that deal with Japanese culture, it _does_ seem like there's something about it that forces an distance between people that is hard to bridge. The host clubs and the separate master bedrooms are a fascinating symptom of this problem.

Alex39172• 16 years ago

"American corporations do make people do some incredible bullshit, but nothing on the level of the official greeting he mentioned."

Wal-Mart makes their employees do this every morning, and they are the largest private employer in the US. IIRC there is footage of this is The High Cost of Low Prices.

I agree with your comment in general though. This article should pretty much be required reading for everyone in the US, since at least to me it's pretty clear that in another 20 years life here is going to resemble either Idiocracy or Japan depending on your socio-economic status.

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

"Wal-Mart makes their employees do this every morning, and they are the largest private employer in the US. "

On my way to my office here in Bangalore, I once saw a team do the "Walmart cheer" ("Give me a W" ...) in the lobby of another office in the same building. All the offices in the building were sw dev companies I am not sure if they had a sw dev team here or outsourced some stuff (probably the latter) but it was quite early in the morning and most of the people looked half asleep and the rest acutely embarrassed. I'd rather quit then take part in such nonsense. Starting every work day feeling like an idiot must be quite draining.

dschobel• 16 years ago

Well since the audience here probably hasn't changed just for this story may I suggest that the lack of coherent commentary reflects the unfocussed and meandering style of the source article.

It does have some interesting snapshots of Japanese culture in there but they are bookended by too many personal rants based on the author's peculiarities so the result is part travelogue, part social criticism, part gaming commentary, part manifesto.

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

That could explain it. Another possibility is that this site has a higher than usual percentage of nippophile users, and that they react negatively to articles critical of that country, its culture, or its institutions. Either possibility doesn't put an end to my disappointment.

araneae• 16 years ago

Like most posts, the commentary reflects the content and tone of the article itself.

He starts off by saying the reason he doesn't like Japan is he doesn't like anime. How high brow did you think the responses would be?

Many of his complaints just sounds xenophobic. Sure, some of the things sounds absurd, but I'm sure plenty of US customs would sound equally absurd to the Japanese.

And many of his complaints seem pretty absurd to me. Like complaining that they put a piece of tape on his drink if he doesn't get it in a bag. They do that in US grocery stores too, for milk.

rdtsc2• 16 years ago

> The insights into Japanese company-culture are fascinating.

For me, the most fascinating part about the Japanese society is the pastiche of mannerisms, catchphrases, and behaviors -- all copied from somewhere and never coming from an individual. There is a constant checking and double-checking that one is acting accordingly. These clues, on how to act, what to say, how to say it and when, are provided by tradition (easy defaults), television show hosts, celebrities, everything and anything external except from within.

At first it might seem that yelling something is a subjective show of raw, emotions, something very personal and unique, a show of anger or excitement, but in reality it is just a formula that is repeated many times, probably accompanied by a total inner apathy.

> From what I've read, and from the few movies I've seen that deal with Japanese culture, it _does_ seem like there's something about it that forces an distance between people that is hard to bridge.

It seems that both parties know they are participating in a formality theater but nobody wants to be the first to say "ah, fuck it, this is ridiculous".

Because of this drinking and participation in drinking if _very_ important. That is the only time when formality is allowed to be suspended and some semblance of real thoughts and feeling come out. It is the only time when you might find out what your perspective client really thinks about your product, or how loyal your employee really is.

ciupicri2• 16 years ago

> American corporations do make people do some incredible bullshit, but nothing on the level of the official greeting he mentioned.

While I agree that the way they shout good morning might be a bit strange, it does make sense. It makes everyone more polite, instead of rude. And speaking of politeness, Americans are way too informal compared to other cultures. As for greetings, I hate the "How do you do?" question which I think is pretty stupid/useless as this video shows - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p8u2LSyEwc

barrkel3• 16 years ago

What pathology do you ascribe to lack of formality? What practical problems does it cause, outside of seeming odd / stupid / useless to those less familiar with it?

Excessive formality, on the other hand, has been implicated in e.g. plane crashes, where inferiors hesitate to criticize their superiors when they may have made a mistake.

caffeine• 16 years ago

He should move back to the U.S. for a while. I bet he lasts two weeks before he's screaming for Chokukuro.

barrkel3• 16 years ago

I was wondering what the difference between this "chocolate croissant" and a pain au chocolat was. (I have seen pains au chocolat described as chocolate croissants in the northern CA area.)

donw2• 16 years ago

ARTICLE SUMMARY:

I'm a vegetarian non-smoker living in a country where nearly everybody smokes and all the native cusine has meat. I also don't like all the word-dancing involved in office-level Japanese, not to mention the office politics, and I especially can't stand the sheer pile of pointless (to me) social protocol.

Because I don't participate in most of what the natives do, I've had a hard time making friends with said natives, and I'm lonely.

There's nothing wrong with me, of course. This is Japan's fault, and they should fix themselves to be more like California.

END ARTICLE SUMMARY

Begin my take:

I'm a native Californian, currently living in Tokyo. Admittedly, I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't smoke, and I agree that a lot of the stuff here can be maddeningly irritating... if you try and apply your own value systems.

But you can't. It's a different country, they do things differently. If you try and fight that, for the most part, you're just going to end up bitter and frustrated. If you're going to live somewhere where the value systems are different, you need to figure out what you need to compromise on in order to keep both yourself and the natives happy.

The one nice thing about being a foreigner, is that because you're a foreigner, you can get away with flaunting a lot of social protocol already. If you even make a solid attempt at observing social niceties, you can totally cock them up, and the Japanese will still be pretty happy that you bothered in the first place.

Patio11-aka-Patrick, please feel to correct me where I'm wrong here. :)

teyc• 16 years ago

writer is suffering from ennui. Just like yoga - any single posture held over a long time becomes stressful.

jason_tko2• 16 years ago

9 years in Japan.

Whenever someone criticises Japan, I'm always reminded of a comment I heard years ago that stuck with me.

"If Japan changed to be exactly what you want, you wouldn't have come here in the first place."

jason_tko2• 16 years ago

Although I was not actually aware there is lard in the bread, and I wish I was not aware of that.

Vivtek8• 16 years ago

Twenty years married to a Hungarian has taught me that lard is good. It's liquefied bacon. What's not to love?

mburney• 16 years ago

This article makes me want to move to Japan.

kimfuh• 16 years ago

Japan's quirkiness is what makes me love it so much. It's just so totally different. You can find normal anywhere.

kazuya2• 16 years ago

The article is a bit amusing even for a native Japanese, but too lengthy for me to read it through.

I happened to work at a big-business cubicle farm (or kind of) in Tokyo, but there is no such obligatory parties. I have heard of that kind of stories but they are almost caricaturized and exaggerated. If any, he was just unlucky about it.

However I agree about smoking. That's so pervasive and annoying. But I found our situation better than some of south European countries, and smoking in public space is being illegalized.

It's totally okay for him to moan as he likes, but of course, don't take it as he writes.

gommm2• 16 years ago

From my friends working in the game industry in Kyoto, it doesn't surprise me that he had this kind of experience...

But, yes, on my end, working in a small company in Kyoto, it was not as extreme. There were of course a few parties, but not much more than in Europe or the US...

One thing though, when I first started work there, the thing that chocked me is that nobody left work at 7pm (our official work time was 10am to 7pm). They just kept on working as if being the first one out was a bad thing (and indeed I've had comments from my coworkers to that effect later on when I started to make an habit of leaving on time).

For the rest of his rant, I understand where he's coming from and I've sometimes had the same criticisms as him. But now that I don't live in Japan anymore, I miss it and want to eventually move there again... Go figure :-)

maxwin• 16 years ago

It is all about cultural relativity. This blogger grows up in Western culture so it is so natural for him to perceive things or norms that are different from his norms/culture as being weird.

For example, he complained a lot about the Japanese greeting "You're tired". About how it doesn't make sense.

However, to many Japanese, it is just a way of saying "hi".

Dude, a Japanese coming to US will complain about the greeting "What's up" being so freaking weird and rude.

Yeah, the sky is up!

jrockway• 16 years ago

Yeah, Asia is different from the US. Different people, different cultural values.

I went to high school in Japan for a year, so I disagree with some of the author's points. Nobody tried to isolate me from the "real" students, for example. Nobody really cared that I was different from them; there was too much other stuff to worry about (exams, extracurricular activities, etc.) I think a lot of people think that they are going to get special treatment for being white, and then don't, and then call it racism. (And admittedly, there is a little of that from normal people, and it is usually cleared up when you are able to explain your situation in Japanese. Same as any culture -- until you speak their language, you are considered retarded. We do it in the US, too.)

Anyway, I know a lot of people in Japan that are software developers, and they opt out of the whole "salaryman" thing too. In the end, it's your choice how to spend your life. There is the easy path of least resistance, but if you don't like that, then you can do something else. Just like everywhere else in the world.

The only thing I don't like about Japan is the political and criminal justice system. This is beginning to annoy Japanese people, too, though, so the era of their third-world criminal justice system is probably coming to an end. Maybe they will get rid of the rich career politicians too, although even the US can't figure that one out :)

(Looks like they finally have the concept of a "trial by peers" now, although it's not quite like the common-law system. Better than "you're guilty because some judge thinks so", however.)

c00p3r• 16 years ago

Just one remark - "hostess club" in Kathmandu are called dance bars. Same idea - pay, talk and go away. Prices are ten times higher than on street. Juice will cost you 10 bucks. And a men returns to buy even more dreams. Lots of Indians, Germans (of course) and Russians. =)

prewett• 16 years ago

I'd recommend the book "Polite Fictions" to this guy. (I have a summary at http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~prewett/writings/BookRevi...) I felt like I understand Japanese culture a lot better (the little bit I see from here in the U.S.) because of it.

elblanco5• 16 years ago

Funny I was reading this while on a trip to Korea. Different country, but some of what he describes applies here as well.

But my final thought was "really, he's a vegetarian and he picked Japan as his place to go?" I was talking this article over tonight with some friends over a bowl of Sujabi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujebi, which could be vegetarian-ish, but like most things in Asia, never really are. It had clams in it, and the broth was boiled out of cow bones or sardines or something. I've yet to encounter some food in East Asia that didn't have some kind of animal product in it.

hkuo• 16 years ago

The title should really be renamed "Tokyo: It's Not Funny Anymore". For anyone that hasn't bothered to think about it, Japan is much richer and has more breadth than this single city. It's unfair to critique an entire country based on the experience of one place.

Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

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