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Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

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Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#151

Post by jmillikin »

dkarl wrote: post #118
jmillikin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Very interesting suggestions, thanks! I'll certainly check out Monster and maybe some of the others. It's interesting that sci-fi and fantasy still predominate (and a couple of your suggestions do actually involve robots.) Personally, I have no problem with genre fiction, but I'm partial to mysteries (of the protagonist-solves-the-crime variety) and historical adventures (such as the Horatio Hornblower novels.) Do yo…

"Robot" is an awfully broad category; none of my suggestions involve the giant, piloted, super-powered robots. Monster is very good, but at 72 episodes, is unusually long for a mature series. You may want to look at Tokyo Godfathers or Planetes first, to see if your interests match mine.

"xxxHolic" is a weird Japan-glish word; you can read it as "____-aholic". I've not seen the series and can't recommend either way, but from the Wikipedia article it looks like something you'd not enjoy.

Online recommendation engines seem to break when dealing with Japan-related topics; I don't know why, but it could be that some people will watch anything if it's 1) animated 2) from Japan, so the engines build false associations between wildly different works. This happens in music also -- I once listened to an orchestral re-imagining of some soundtrack by the Tokyo Philharmonic, and now Last.FM won't stop recommending awful j-pop.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#152

Post by Vivtek »

ytinas wrote: post #136
quant18 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ---…

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?

Yeah, really. Ever had a stern talking to because the political bumper sticker on your car didn't align with the company image? That's uniquely American.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#153

Post by Vivtek »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #148
Vivtek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. This has been my story ever since I was born. One nice thing about not fitting in is that you become friends with others who don't fit in, who tend to be the most interest…

Point. I've read about this, too - especially people who've grown up multicultural tend to glom together as a "international ethnicity". One of the real attractions of living somewhere other than "your country" is being one of the expat crowd and love/hate dissing the local culture.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#154

Post by barrkel »

ciupicri wrote: post #146
barrkel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find it funny that you talk about plane crashes given the fact that the Japanese army used kamikazes in WWII, although in that case there was not a mistake. Lack of formality does not necessarily imply practical problems, it's mostly about respect. As for rules in general, let's also look at HN where you can't complain about a submission, you can only flag it. I think you'll agree with me when I say that this rule…

I'm not sure I could agree with you that kamikaze pilots were not a mistake. There are worse things than losing wars - losing your humanity, for one.

Reddit, on the other hand, does not fare well in a comparison with HN, for my money. But I don't necessarily see a strong connection between formality and civility. One can be most uncivil even in the most stilted of tones.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#155

Post by rick888 »

plinkplonk wrote: post #129
rick888 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

" 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 Dum…

"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."

I agree with you there. I now only work for small companies for that very same reason.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#156

Post by plinkplonk »

weeksie wrote: post #145
plinkplonk wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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 drinki…

"Booze and meat can be found in Bangalore, much the same way that vegetarian food can be found in Japan."

From what I understand from the article under discussion , purely vegetarian food hardly exists in japan. I have no idea if that is true, but the situation wrt meat is hardly the same in South India, so your comparison above is demonstrably false.

"The point was to illustrate that Southern India is a culture inclined to vegetarian food and not drinking."

Rubbish.

Your stay in Bangalore doesn't lead you to correct generalizations about South India. In Kerala for instance, (one of the four states in South India), practically everyone is a non vegetarian. Hyderabad(in Andhra Pradesh) is famous for its nonvegetarian food, specially Biriyani. You have no idea about the amount of liquor consumed either. Extremely large quantities of liquor are consumed in South India. There is a thriving illegal liquor mafia which would be very interested in your discuvery that South India is "not inclined" to liquor. The people you interacted with during your stay here may have been largely vegetarian, but South India is hardly "inclined" to either vegetarianism or abstinence from alcohol, the way the OP describes Japan as being "inclined to " non vegetarianism.Show me any locality in Bangalore and I'll find you a couple of dozen non vegetarian restaurants in a 5 km radius. And lots of liquor shops.

I've lived here 35+ years. I should know.

I'll grant you that you may not get a steak done the way you want it, but hey I can't get a Masala Dosa in the average restaurant in Arizona. That hardly means Westerners don't "incline" to potatoes (the major filling in a Masala Dosa.

Most South Indian non vegetarians eat Chicken or Lamb (and not primarily Pork or Beef as in the United States). Beef is slightly rarer (but again not in Kerala). You need to distinguish "meat" from the "exact dish I eat in New York". I was saying there was plenty of meat In Bangalore, not sausages made Chicago Style (or whatever). Meat does not dominate the menu as much as in the West, but it is easily available almost everywhere.

Some communities of people, e.g Brahmins or Jains or Buddhists are vegetarians. These are minorities. Large chunks of Hindus, Muslims and Christians are meat eaters (and alcohol drinkers). Apart from these minority communities, People who don't regularly eat meat do so because of economic reasons not any "inclination" to vegetarianism.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#157

Post by GFischer »

sailormoon wrote: post #42

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 .

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

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#158

Post by jcl »

xiaoma wrote: post #31

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.

I figure he must really, really like video games.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#159

Post by jstraszheim »

Vivtek wrote: post #150
unwind wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, not to be a complete jerk or anything, but do you realize that your comment is far easier to understand if you actually mention where you're from? Now it's like reading half of a joke.

Indiana. I probably would have said that before I moved back, but there's something about the isolation of the American heartland that makes the rest of the world feel a little like a dream you once had. Sorry.

That was a very odd and wonderful comment. Thank you :)

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#160

Post by Semiapies »

dkarl wrote: post #105
jmillikin wrote: post #10

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…

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 wit…

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.

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