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Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

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Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#41

Post by chucksmash »

sesutton wrote: post #13
hkmurakami wrote: post #3

> And then there’s the view. Whether it’s the outskirts of Queens on the way from New York’s JFK airport, or the fringes of the Los Angeles highway off-ramps by LAX, everything seems a bit run down and decrepit. Even on the train from Narita Airport to Tokyo, you'll pass plenty of comparatively run down "commerce areas" adjacent to small train stops. The buildings are old, and made of nondescript concrete that have b…

The whole thing mostly boils down to: I've been to the nice parts of Tokyo and its awesome.

Here's an article from The Economist (Feb 7, 2015) that usefully counterbalances the "everything is awesome!" outlook in the submitted link.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21642216-rebuilding-north...

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#42

Post by kazinator »

mlmonkey wrote: post #27
jayfuerstenberg wrote: post #11

Herbivore men in Japanese is not "soshoku danshi", it's "soshoku KEI danshi". Just sayin'.

Does this apply to vegetarian Japanese men? Does this mean vegetarianism is considered a negative (at least among men)?

I don't think it's literal; it just uses meat eating as a metaphor for aggressivity and drive. Just like in English we have "carnal act" for sex, referring to the flesh. Or whatever.

It's not even a word denoting vegetarians, but rather herbivores. A vegetarian is called 菜食主義者 (saishoku shugisha), not "soushoku" anything. "soushoku danshi" comes from "soushoku doubutsu", or "herbivore".

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#43

Post by semi-extrinsic »

throwaway344 wrote: post #29
drpgq wrote: post #19

I think when comparing Japan's growth versus other countries one has to remember the differences between GDP growth and GDP growth per capita (as the article alluded to). I live in Ontario, which basically has been sub 2% GDP growth since the 90s, but has had around 1.1% population growth. So most of the GDP growth has been from population increases rather than people individually becoming richer. Sometimes I thing t…

For anyone who is interested in Ontario's GDP numbers, I found some data. Excel so beware. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/ecaccts/oea_hist.xls

You can read Excel in Pandas and in R.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#44

Post by jpatokal »

jayfuerstenberg wrote: post #11

Herbivore men in Japanese is not "soshoku danshi", it's "soshoku KEI danshi". Just sayin'.

"Soshoku danshi" is literally "grass-eating (herbivore) man". "Soshoku-kei danshi" is "grass-eating-group man". The latter is slightly more correct, but both are in common use.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#45

Post by jpatokal »

lovemenot wrote: post #24

Such cultural aspects of Japan are indeed attractive and I hope they will endure. However, the current economic model is not sustainable for a country of 120M, or even 80 - 90% of that (after shrinkage of human assets). Ironically, from the perspective of the country as a whole, sustainable agriculture / craft industries are very far from being so. I believe, Japan needs to find a way to attract economically stimulat…

The interesting difference to eg. the Meiji revolution, and what makes this really uncharted territory, is that the extreme aging of Japan makes both democratic and violent upheaval near-impossible. You can't vote out the bastards, because the pensioner vote outweighs the youth, and any violent students/revolutionaries will not be able to get the majority of the population on their side.

As a practical example, my father-in-law was a salaryman with a rock-solid pension and amazing health care (a month in a hospital costs $50, etc). His generation has no incentive to change the system that has worked for them -- even though it imposes an increasingly unsustainable burden on the ever-shrinking working generations paying for it.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#46

Post by thret »

LukeHoersten wrote: post #39

'"Do rich societies really need to get richer and richer indefinitely?" he asks.' They do if they are going to pay off their mega-debt. The real fear is when the GDP drops below the yearly interest payments. I feel the same when I go to nice European countries. "Wow everything is so nice" and then I remind myself that Germany is paying for it all. It's not sustainable. Look at some of the Scandinavian countries for n…

Does anyone actually think the USA will ever pay off its debt?

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#47

Post by adsofhoads »

aikinai wrote: post #26
jayfuerstenberg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the kanji uses "kei" too.

A Google fight (excluding Chinese) turns up 549,000 results for 草食系男子 and 571,000 for 草食男子. Much closer than I expected, but the 'kei' is definitely not required.

I think they meant that http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-three/images/DeskHe... has the 系 but then the translation the article gives below it is missing the "kei".

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#48

Post by [deleted] »

hkmurakami wrote: post #35
RachelF wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see plenty of industrial areas from the limousine busses, and a few homeless people under bridges. However, if Africa is third world and the US first world, then Japan is one better, in most respects, perhaps, zero'th world.

The reason I brought up the areas surrounding train station stops is because those areas are the prime commerce locations where things are supposed to be at their best. Things like homelessness exist everywhere in the shadows of society. To have buildings that contrast sharply with the glittering skyscrapes that symbolize Tokyo exist adjacent to train stations is a signal that not all is well everywhere in the countr…

[deleted]

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#49

Post by pikachu_is_cool »

serve_yay wrote: post #8
Bognar wrote: post #7

This site has this line in bookstrap.css: /* Use responsive pixels */ font-size: 1px; Since Firefox uses the font size to determine scroll distance, this page scrolls really slowly in FF.

Seems OK for me with FF 33 and 36 on Mac.

He's talking about the click wheel scrolling that goes line by line. Not the two-finger magic scrolling in OS X.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#50

Post by gnaritas »

thret wrote: post #46
LukeHoersten wrote: post #39

'"Do rich societies really need to get richer and richer indefinitely?" he asks.' They do if they are going to pay off their mega-debt. The real fear is when the GDP drops below the yearly interest payments. I feel the same when I go to nice European countries. "Wow everything is so nice" and then I remind myself that Germany is paying for it all. It's not sustainable. Look at some of the Scandinavian countries for n…

Does anyone actually think the USA will ever pay off its debt?

Public debt is private savings, you don't ever want to pay it off. Debt is to be serviced, not paid off.
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