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Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

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Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#71

Post by neilk »

starkfist wrote: post #36

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…

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.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#72

Post by itistoday »

bh23ha wrote: post #41

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…

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

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#73

Post by jdminhbg »

bh23ha wrote: post #41

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…

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

Uh...

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#74

Post by houseabsolute »

dschobel wrote: post #66
houseabsolute wrote: post #58

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 ment…

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 comm…

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.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#75

Post by bh23ha »

jdminhbg wrote: post #73
bh23ha wrote: post #41

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…

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

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.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#76

Post by yashodhan »

weeksie wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#78

Post by araneae »

houseabsolute wrote: post #58

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 ment…

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.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#80

Post by Alex3917 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14
cmelbye wrote: post #13

Did anyone actually read this novel?

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…

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.
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