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Japan's Paper Culture

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Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#151

Post by supperburg »

Freak_NL wrote: post #86
Ma8ee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Sweden those stickers only stop the unaddressed leaflets or catalogs they put in the mailbox. If someone printed your name and address on it, the junk will still be delivered.

In the Netherlands too unfortunately, and this is being abused on a small scale by companies with bigger pockets to just purchase an advertising package from the privatised Dutch post (PostNL they are called nowadays), and have them deliver spam with your address and 'to the residents' on it. It's a spam loophole politicians so far have refused to close, and which PostNL defends as being perfectly legal and part of t…

I was shocked to read that the Netherlands has a private post service. How could the Dutch people ever have let that happen?

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#152

Post by elzbardico »

chupy wrote: post #140
criddell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to alarm you, but changes in handwriting are something that's worth discussing with your doctor, especially as you age. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111954448...

Is it not also true that if you do not practice at all this skill you lose it?

That too, that's why it is not cause for panic but still a sign that should not be ignored

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#153

Post by [deleted] »

harlanji wrote: post #120
maeln wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bring back memory of middle school. I grew up in one of the poorest overseas territory of France, and if you left anything on your table while the teacher was calling you to the board, you had a 50/50% chance of having them stolen before you came back to your seat. Therefore, we all got into the habit of picking our pencil case with us when we went to the board. Then I moved back to metropolitan France and all t…

This is me bringing my backpack and laptop to the bathroom with me at cafes. Nothing has happened to make me do that, except knowing how fast things can happen. I leave something like a mouse or charger cable behind to show that the seat is not abandoned, and that's easier to replace. Most people just get up and leave it there. Being homeless, losing anything expensive is going to ruin my year. It's the little things…

[deleted]

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#154

Post by 5eb03cb8 »

whoevercares wrote: post #139
eru wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted it was the olden times, so there were more things to be discovered, but it seemed like China back in the day was on a roll (off the top of my head, movable type, paper, matcha, bonsai, porcelain, celadon, silk, gunpowder) You seem to be throwing together all of pre-PRC China into one big blender? There have been lots of different dynasties and long stretches when China was not unified. Many of these dynasti…

Well even in PRC it’s widely recognized that we saw a boom of high quality cultural work in early 90s - peak of Chinese rock band, movies from the fifth generation Chinese directors, mainland/HK/Taiwan music. This time coincide with the time CCP’s control is loosen

I am glad I grew up when I did and got to see that. Since 2010 it's war movies and tepid hip-hop and fifteen remakes of the same historical dramas.

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#155

Post by feffe »

dan-robertson wrote: post #85

For a slightly contrarian opinion: I just use printer-paper (for a laser printer). It works fine with ballpoint or fountain pens (some notebook papers don’t work well with fountain pens and people think they need special expensive paper). Obviously it doesn’t come in a neat book. I just used plastic document sleeves for the first level of organisation (one could then view more than two pages at once too) and box file…

My experience with laser printer paper is that it does not work well with most fountain pen inks. Although I acknowledge that there may be some that do, there are lots of paper manufacturers after all.. I've found plenty of cheap spiral bound notepad paper that does work well though. You just have to try it out and see what works. Paper can't be to absorbent or the ink will spread out.

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#156

Post by rayiner »

forgingahead wrote: post #150
rayiner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So was Afghanistan. But a short duration of military dominance and writing words in paper can’t change the culture of the people. Colonization, as with Hong Kong, or a generation of top-down rule over a small population, as with Taiwan and Singapore, can. Again, read Yew. He was deliberate and methodical about all this, and has written and spoken widely about what he did to transform Singapore.

Great comments, though one small nitpick: For Chinese names, the surname goes first, so for "Lee Kuan Yew", his last name is "Lee", not "Yew". He's often abbreviated as "LKY" for locals though. Interestingly, LKY was known as "Harry Lee" until he became active in politics, upon which he went by "Lee Kuan Yew" to apparently help endear himself to the local Chinese population. He took Mandarin lessons well into his old…

Thank you.

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#157

Post by Freak_NL »

supperburg wrote: post #151
Freak_NL wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands too unfortunately, and this is being abused on a small scale by companies with bigger pockets to just purchase an advertising package from the privatised Dutch post (PostNL they are called nowadays), and have them deliver spam with your address and 'to the residents' on it. It's a spam loophole politicians so far have refused to close, and which PostNL defends as being perfectly legal and part of t…

I was shocked to read that the Netherlands has a private post service. How could the Dutch people ever have let that happen?

Market liberalization in the nineties. It happened all over the globe in various degrees; it was the trendy thing to do. Not all of it was bad, but a lot of harm was done as well.

With postage, letters still get delivered reliably, and postal workers seem fairly paid, but the parcel market is a cluster fuck of a small number of international parcel companies (some home grown from our former national postal service) that have done exactly what economic laws permitted them to do. They are somewhat regulated and high profile, so they came up with a system where subcontractors hire the actual delivery guys and own the vans and stuff (all in the parcel company's livery of course), and the parcel company pays them for each package delivered. Gradually the pay got worse due to competition, and those subcontractors that can survive either get paid too little under increasing pressure (due to covid leading to more packages ordered), or, as happened in Belgium this year, they hire illegal aliens and underpay them.

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#158

Post by [deleted] »

JohnBooty wrote: post #31
sombremesa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan is, of course, just a place. You allude to this later in your comment, but it really isn't when it comes to paper (and to some extent, cardboard). The irony in your comment re:fetishizing is that TFA talks of traditions whereas you say things like: > She had supernaturally neat handwriting

When writing that sentence, I had hoped it would be clear that I (a) was describing my naive childhood perspective and (b) was employing some lighthearted hyperbole. I also hoped that the second paragraph would really drive that home, sans subtlety. ("Maybe they'll even think it's funny," I dreamed) I therefore chose not to insult the reader by further clarifying that she was a pretty regular-ass person, not some kin…

[deleted]

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#159

Post by alexjm »

hstaab wrote: post #2

I often want to reteach myself handwriting to be able to write like this. Has anyone here had success in doing this? How did you go about it?

I used the book "The Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting" by Fred Eager. The italic method, in contrast to printing or cursive, seemed to have enough connected letters to write quickly, but without insisting on connecting everything like cursive, even when it made writing awkward. I also followed some of the movement drills from a manual for the Palmer method, a cursive pre-typewriter "business" handwriting style from the early 1900s that was meant to be written quickly and legibly all day, but which some folks think looks too old-fashioned today.

Re: Japan's Paper Culture

#160

Post by rowanG077 »

yoz-y wrote: post #73

I always loved the look of notebooks in pen and paper ads. Neat text here, nice drawing there… however, does anybody actually take notes like this? My notes always look like trash, and back in school it was the same for everyone. It almost looks like if you want to take notes this way you have to plan ahead to be sure to have space?

I once had a fellow physics student show me his notes about some topic. It look like good himself dictated the formulas and placements. My and most of my friends notes like complete trash. But there are some weird people that really can take exceptional notes.
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