431–440 of 512 posts
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> no foreigners It's such a contrast to USA, where I doubt that such a thing would even be legal. And also the bit about no tattoos. That's lawsuit city.
You have to protect your culture. USA has a 250 year history while Japan has 10x of that.
I felt awful about being in Kyoto last year. Had I known how bad it was for the locals I would never have went. I can’t imagine how frustrated and angry if my home town was the same. The infrastructure can’t support the number of tourists unlike Tokyo. Locals can’t even get a bus without them being completely full to the brim all the day long. It’s 100% social media. It’s the most vapid thing in the entire world. It…
Kyoto, a city that literally almost went bankrupt during COVID due to lack of tourism.
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Completely different. American culture is immigrant centric. I am an American, and I refuse the biblical indoctrination that some wish would represent "our" culture. Why should conservatives get to dictate what America's culture is? As far as I am concerned, we are a nation of immigrants, and no one should assimilate to certain ideas. In particular, because these ideas can be weaponized. The Church can mangle with th…
> Free speech can exclude criticism of foreign nations (like Isra-l)... So I reject this culture claim that you are defending and do not accept that these conservatives have America's best interests in their heart. Do not pretend like liberals were on a different page than conservatives on that issue before the election. Support for Israel was happening under Biden and would have continued under Harris; Trump's the o…
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> But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that. I think this is an important point that I am struggling to articulate. I actually like the fact that they "prefer to do things their way". When I was traveling there, it is clear that I stand out from my behavior. We might share the same skin…
My home country, the UK, has already been through this cultural erosion which is why I respect Japan's right to defend its own. London in particular has become a place for everybody and at the same time for nobody. It's a city of people of different values and wavelengths with very little shared strata compared with Tokyo.
The rest is just nostalgia, and that's fine. But realistically, a big piece of Japanese culture will be well preserved in the new culture that will emerge. As it is, we've stopped lamenting the arrival of Buddhist influence on the island, so too will other immigration influences.
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My home country, the UK, has already been through this cultural erosion which is why I respect Japan's right to defend its own. London in particular has become a place for everybody and at the same time for nobody. It's a city of people of different values and wavelengths with very little shared strata compared with Tokyo.
This is such a weird notion. Waves of immigrants have created some of the biggest most economically productive cities the world has ever seen. If Tokyo goes this route, only greatness lays in its future. The rest is just nostalgia, and that's fine. But realistically, a big piece of Japanese culture will be well preserved in the new culture that will emerge. As it is, we've stopped lamenting the arrival of Buddhist in…
some things are more important than just making line go up
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> And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that. But isn't that why Japan ended up like this? Every country needs either immigration or babies, and Japan chose option C: neither. And now the decision has been made for them, a very high dose of immigration is required. It's like ignoring a cavity and eventually needing a root canal. Xenophobia is simply an unworkable idea, like eugenics and other discredited belief…
> Xenophobia is simply an unworkable idea Xenophobia was the default for nearly all of human history and core to nearly all successful societies. How is it unworkable? At its core it’s the same idea as “trust is earned, not given”.
In an advanced society where the threat is depopulation rather than invasion, xenophobia is harmful unless you can find a way to convince people to have more children than is rational for them to have.
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> There's also Google Maps and Yelp vs. Japan's local version (pretty much any review on the former two are useless, and hopelessly biased by clueless tourists). I do not understand why one would even look at tourist reviews for "authentic Japanese jalapeños" or whatever on Gmaps. But people do so what do I know.
Interestingly, Apple Maps is integrated with Tabelog. So using Apple Maps to search for restaurants in Japan can be an effective strategy.
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This is such a weird notion. Waves of immigrants have created some of the biggest most economically productive cities the world has ever seen. If Tokyo goes this route, only greatness lays in its future. The rest is just nostalgia, and that's fine. But realistically, a big piece of Japanese culture will be well preserved in the new culture that will emerge. As it is, we've stopped lamenting the arrival of Buddhist in…
many “economically productive” cities are giant shitholes some things are more important than just making line go up