31–40 of 179 posts
It's almost as if he's drawn to frustration.
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.
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 o…
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.
It sounds like he's in this final stage. It sounds like its time to come home.
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.
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.
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…
The only ubiquitous US workplace social function is the holiday party.
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 "graphicall…
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.
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.
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…
I say this having the majority of my adult life living in a country far from where I grew up.
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.
Might not be a bad idea to relocate to Bangalore. It is the so-called Pub capital of India.