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Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

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Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#111

Post by gcheong »

patio11 wrote: post #109
derefr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, I'm getting an (obviously wrong) impression from this conversation that the only type of work you can get in Japan comes in the form of big-business cubicle farms. patio11's input would be interesting here because he's getting by without working at one of these.

Big-business cubicle farms and salarymanhood are only about a third of the Japanese economy/labor force. Wave me down someday when I have more free time and I'll gladly talk about this, or you can just look out your door in the US at someone working and ask "Do they have that sort of job in Japan?" and I'll tell you, right now, the answer is yes. We have people selling food out of carts, bored DMV clerks who punch ou…

"quirky musicians who made stuff for the App Store (my town has multiple App Store millionaires)"

Examples?

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#112

Post by nandemo »

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…

I couldn't make myself read the whole thing, but I think it's far from accurate.

For instance, he seems to be able to communicate in Japanese but he still doesn't grasp that "otsukaresama" and "irasshaimase" are really only greetings. I wonder what would be his reaction if he heard that in some places it's usual to say "ohayou gozaimasu" (usually meaning "good morning") when you get to the office in the evening.

Mandatory parties aren't really mandatory, you see. Many Japanese do "escape" the parties. You just have to do it tactfully. And so on.

That said, I agree with you about avoiding working in a Japanese office. The usual English teaching path seems to work for a lot of people, though.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#113

Post by jmillikin »

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…

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 only partially released here, so you will need to hunt a bit for fansubs. I watch only the animated adaptations, as they're easier to hide, but feel free to order the original manga versions if you don't feel ashamed about reading comic books. Not all are adaptations -- the movies, and a few television series, are original animations.

- Monster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29 >

- Planetes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes >

- Mushishi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushishi >

- Mononoke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononoke_%28TV_series%29 >

- Tokyo Godfathers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Godfathers >

If you're willing to relax your standards a bit, there are many outstanding series aimed at younger viewers.

- Denno Coil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil >

- Yokohama Shopping Trip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokohama_Kaidashi_Kik%C5%8D >

- Kino's Journey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey >

- Cromartie High School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromartie_High_School >

- My Neighbor Totoro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro > , or almost anything else by Studio Ghibli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli >

- The Girl Who Leapt Through Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time >

- Yotsuba&! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsuba&! >

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#114

Post by stcredzero »

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…

EVERY JAPANESE POP SONG IS ABOUT THE SAME THING

There seems to be a non-romance/love existential philosophy/angst genre of pop songs. The Japanese version seems to use a different set of pastoral imagery than the American one, and much more of it. Not sure what that means.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#115

Post by Vivtek »

itistoday wrote: post #72
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…

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 to my (Hungarian) wife over the course of about fifteen years. Her limit is about two years.

It doesn't go away.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#116

Post by Vivtek »

intranation wrote: post #48
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…

Culture shock to me, as someone who has visited 20-ish countries and lived in 2, is more that "things are almost normal and like what you're used to, but just not enough to be comfortable", and as a result you end up perpetually on edge and perpetually adjusting just outside your comfort zone. It's jarring and difficult, a little like the room in Orwell's 1984 where the corners aren't quite straight, and things are j…

I got that from Germany, after a month in Tokyo. I was fine in Tokyo, but in Germany I could read the signs, after all. In a month I was horribly homesick.

London, though - London just about killed me in one day.

I was a mess when I was younger.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#117

Post by Vivtek »

andrewcooke wrote: post #88
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've lived in a different culture for about 10 years, and i understand what you're saying. i'm not sure the right term is culture shock , though - see other replies, that associate that with something much more immediate. for some people, living long-term in another culture is hard. i certainly find it so at times. and this is despite being completely aware of the issue, the validity of other belief / social systems,…

I think it might be likened to a long-term allergy. Small exposures won't bother you, but over time you go into anaphylaxis.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#118

Post by dkarl »

jmillikin wrote: post #113
dkarl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 you have any suggestions along those lines?

P.S. I just added "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" to my Netflix queue, and Netflix suggested something called "Xxxholic" for me. Well... I won't prejudge, but that kind of thing certainly doesn't help dispel stereotypes.

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#119

Post by Groxx »

jmillikin wrote: post #113
dkarl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is quite good. All in all, you've got a pretty "traditional" list, though I've only seen about half. * adds to list *

My personal all-time favorite, though, goes to The Twelve Kingdoms. http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=26

I've recently seen "Beyond the Clouds", which was also very good: http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=469

Re: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore

#120

Post by Vivtek »

jason_tko wrote: post #91
jason_tko wrote: post #90

9 years in Japan. Whenever someone criticises Japan, I'm always reminded of a comment I heard years ago that stuck with me. "If Japan changed to be exactly what you want, you wouldn't have come here in the first place."

Although I was not actually aware there is lard in the bread, and I wish I was not aware of that.

Twenty years married to a Hungarian has taught me that lard is good. It's liquefied bacon. What's not to love?
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