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Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

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Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#61

Post by em-bee »

coldtea wrote: post #52
rowanG077 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get a notification if they have chosen to receive notifications. It's not like the sender forces themselves upon someone else.

Now on top of annoying them, now you're dictating their phone settings too? What if they don't want to stop notifications? What if they don't know how to do it? What if they want to still get one from the child or partner or friend who's travelling if anything happens to them? Should they turn it on and off for your convenience, lest you have to forego sending a non-essential text at night?

my phone allows me to set who i get notifications from. (my settings are to silence everyone except immediate family)

if they don't know how, the first time they bring up this issue, i'll help them change their settings.

yes, there are always corner cases, and there may be a situation where it is necessary to avoid sending messages at certain times. but this can be communicated. what bothers me is people getting upset if they receive a message at the wrong time as if it was the senders fault.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#62

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #50

This feels very similar to namorar in Brazilian culture, which is a verb that is basically means "become/be an exclusive couple". If you've started going on dates, then at some point someone will ask the other to namorar . It's a very explicit ask, e.g. "let's be boyfriend/girlfriend". While in the US it's not unusual to just organically become a couple and never actually discuss it "officially", the official ask is…

[deleted]

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#64

Post by bmoxb »

bluepizza wrote: post #30
theogravity wrote: post #2

I read carefully the first half of the article then scanned the rest, so I may have missed it; it didn't seem to also mention "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?", which is a poetic way of saying I love you as well: https://www.tsuki.world/world/the-moon-is-beautiful-isnt-it https://www.wikihow.com/The-Moon-Is-Beautiful-Isn%27t-It

That's extremely archaic and specific, and most people wouldn't know about it. I suspect that, if explained, most people would find it off putting.

Based on my (somewhat limited) experience, most people are familiar with the phrase but wouldn't use it in any serious context.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#65

Post by imbnwa »

crazygringo wrote: post #53
imbnwa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream American culture conceives of amorous relationships as fundamentally a fantasy of fortunate spontaneity, "the stars and planets coming into alignment", rather than something explicitly worked at formally; formalism, explicit terms, these are antagonistic and disrupt this fantasy of things 'just happening', and so have to be carefully approached, if at all. This is not exhaustive, America is a big place, bu…

It seems very clear which version you prefer, but why do you call it a "fantasy" of spontaneity? Because it happens all the time, it's no fantasy at all. You might not like it, but it very much exists. It's not just something from the movies, it's how basically everyone I know who's married got started. You're right that arranged marriage is very much anathema to mainstream American culture, since arguably the most c…

>It seems very clear which version you prefer, but why do you call it a "fantasy" of spontaneity?

I should've been clearer: 'fantasy' doesn't mean 'false' here. More like 'embellishment', an additive, framing, to reality that makes it more palatable and exchangeable (symbolically). The point of bringing up arranged marriage demonstrates spontaneity itself is more radical than is framed in the case of mainstream rhetoric around amorous relationships rather than a partisan approval.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#66

Post by franciscop »

crazygringo wrote: post #60

> Is it like or is it love? It's definitely just like. Sure, we say "I loved that donut" or "I love her personality!" but you'd never just straight-up say "I love you" with that meaning because it would be completely misunderstood. So this whole article seems premised on a mistranslation that the author brings up but never actually admits.

Coming from Spain we have a similar difference between like and love that you don't in English so it might be difficult to grasp. Basically we have a middle-level between both of them:

1. I like you. Me gustas. Suki-desu -> very early in the relationship, or to start off

2. [blank]. Te quiero. Daisuki-desu -> formal couple, to express feelings of love

2.5 I love you -> formal couple after long time dating I believe, a bit stronger than those two terms above

3. [blank]. Te amo. Aishiteru -> poetic, life-partners, basically we can get married

The "I love you" in English sits somewhere between those two in Spanish/Japanese. If forced to put it in a group, probably the second one would be better and I'd say there's no 3rd one equivalent, since it's really not as strong as the 3rd one, but stronger than the 2nd one.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#67

Post by dfxm12 »

blown_gasket wrote: post #7
scubbo wrote: post #4

> it was kind of rude to send a text to people while they are probably sleeping Not the point of the article, but this is a personal bugbear of mine - no it wasn't. Text-based communication is asynchronous. It's rude to _expect_ that someone is present and available if you message them out of the blue (or, rather - rude to get upset if they don't immediately reply), but it's not rude to send the message in the first…

I hold the opposite opinion to most of this. Text messaging, yes is asynchronous - but you don't know what the settings of the persons device are. They could have forgotten or not have quite hours set and now it is very much a synchronous notification even if it's not synchronous communication. Sending delayed - again things happen. I would rather send a delayed message when I am in full control of the situation rath…

but you don't know what the settings of the persons device are. They could have forgotten or not have quite hours set

FWIW, this is the prevailing opinion of almost everyone I know. The only question is what is the appropriate window when you should text. 8-22? 10-22?

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#68

Post by gryson »

crazygringo wrote: post #60

> Is it like or is it love? It's definitely just like. Sure, we say "I loved that donut" or "I love her personality!" but you'd never just straight-up say "I love you" with that meaning because it would be completely misunderstood. So this whole article seems premised on a mistranslation that the author brings up but never actually admits.

Agreed. The author's interpretation is unconventional. 好きです (suki desu) is clearly closer to the English "I like you" than "I love you" in this context.

Japanese people would be just as put off by someone confessing with the loftier 愛している (ai siteiru) "I love you" as someone saying "I love you" in English.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#69

Post by smallnix »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #28
lb4r wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's up to the individual whether they find something rude or not. It's not an objective truth, and it certainly varies between cultures. On top of that, different forms of communication have different conventions and practices. Slack is different from normal texts, which are different from emails, and so on, and they permeate your life to various degrees.

It's rather meaningless to let the receiver decide. It means that the only safe-not-to-be-rude option is to adhere to the strictest interpretation of rudeness. At the extreme sensitivity, you basically can't communicate with anyone unless you ask their preferences beforehand over a confirmed-not-rude channel. Following this direction puts the default for each medium, regardless of its properties, into "it's rude to a…

I perceive it as rude to get messages in the middle of the night.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#70

Post by bluepizza »

coldtea wrote: post #54
bluepizza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western culture is not an unified blob, as it encompasses wildly different languages, customs, and peoples, ranging from Sweden to Mexico. And just the same, Japanese people are not one unified blob and each have their own preferences regarding texting, just like the rest of us.

Doesn't matter, we can still talk about Western culture (meaning mostly Anglosaxon in this context, and including Europe in others) and Japanese culture. It's about defaults and majority/average preferences, not about "every single one does this" and it gets tiring to remind people otherwise, as if they don't know.

It does matter, because the conversation is inaccurate at best when one tries to generalize their own personal experiences as the whole Western spectrum. Dating in Alabama is quite different from Rhode Island. We don't hold enough information to understand "defaults" or "majorities". Heck, we are at Hacker News, hardly the epicenter of social butterflies.

So even if there was such a thing as default, we wouldn't know it. Let alone from a foreign country that most natives don't speak a foreign language. How many Japanese relationships did you have to form such knowledge on the majority?

Last, but not least, it is not tiring to remind people to reframe the conversation. It is healthy and constructive.

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