japan is fucked up!

http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore

lol:

Maybe you know the story about how Gran Turismo got started because Kazunori Yamauchi, on his first day in the Sony Computer Entertainment offices, wrote out a sample game design idea consisting only of the words "I want to drive my car on my television."

OK so the guy rants about the fact everythng has meat in it and everyone smokes. What a pussy.

I feel like I only post when Japan comes up, but that article is depressing. Guy has spent 5 years in Japan but somehow only managed to learn only the most basic stereotypes about Japanese culture.

What a pussy.

He actually sounds like he's one of the many who come to Japan looking for exactly that, put 0 effort into learning the culture, and then start complaining about what a bewildering, impossible place it is once they realize they're not going to get any.

I feel like I only post when Japan comes up, but that article is depressing. Guy has spent 5 years in Japan but somehow only managed to learn only the most basic stereotypes about Japanese culture.

― adamj, Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:16 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

now, now, don't be so hard on momus.

He's complaining that catering to pervs is a new thing in anime? That was the joke about it in the late '80s (when I first encountered it being sold in the comic book chain my mom ran) - the only people who came in to buy it were beyond skeevy.

yeah that's been a meme since 1970s.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh188/vicose88/Lost_in_Translation_.jpg

"Fact: I have never seen anyone playing Tekken 6 without also smoking a cigarette."

Guy has spent 5 years in Japan but somehow only managed to learn only the most basic stereotypes about Japanese culture.

I've only been overseas a couple years (and I'm about to move back) but, from what I've seen, this is pretty common for expats. Not even expats, I can think of Kenyan-born white people here that have said the most ridiculous shit. Or hell, everyone in Los Angeles re: cultures that are not theirs.

I guess we have higher expectations for expats, that they should approach other cultures with deep interest and humility. But maybe this guy just thought "hey, job/money, and Japan is cool - I'll give it a shot!"

Note that I'm saying this shit is common, not excusable. Dude definitely deserves some mocking.

Yeah I don't disagree with you; it's very common and that's why I find it so abhorrent. But then again most people who have been in Japan over a year have more insightful things to say than "They work long hours AND THEN THEY GO TO WORK PARTIES? OMFGWTF!!"

I thought the article was very funny.

I don't want cigarette smoke near my organic vegetables! Hel-lo? That makes them pretty much not organic anymore! You might as well just be buying them from a hobo, at that point.

first world problems, etc, etc

lotta save-a-totally-in-no-way-how-could-you-even-think-that-weird-culture-ing itt

actually, i should say that I found it curiously tl;dr for some reason and did not read it because it was too long.

Maybe if I moved out to Osaka, things would be better. What things, though? Well, maybe the people wouldn't bother me so much.

So when I told a friend, "Oh, I'm going to go home tonight and write a column for Kotaku.com," he said, "Oh, so you're going to write about Japan?" For a second, I thought he had read my mind. Well, let's see.

I'm sure if I said I'd feel sorry for the kids, someone would point out how Japanese people seem to pretty much never get lung cancer — maybe because of all the green tea, or walking — so it's not so bad if the kids grow up to be smokers. Well, what about the people who, like me, simply find the smoke terrible?

So lately, they're trying to cut down on people smoking. By "trying", I mean they're putting up signs everywhere that say you'll be fined 2,000 yen if you smoke. I wrote about this before. Well, five months later, I've never seen or heard of anyone getting fined.

Many bread-makers substitute oils, butter, or — god help us — margarine. Well, I can now curiously report that, on a recent trip to a super market, I couldn't find a single loaf of white bread that didn't have lard in it. Hmm.

I have a lot of fun, lately, making up the weirdest fake reasons for not eating meat: My favorite one is saying that I don't eat meat because I wouldn't want to ingest an animal weak or dumb enough to enter a life of slavery under another species, that the only meat I would eat would be that of an animal which a human cannot actually kill. This explanation, recently, actually drew the serious response, "Well, if you can't kill the animal, you can't eat it!"

Well, these days, people have iPhones, which are more or less like Japanese cellular phones, only browsing the Internet doesn't cost six dollars a page load.

Occasionally, I'll be out eating dinner with friends, and young people at a nearby table will be talking about opening a business. This is really common: it seems like they have no idea what the company is going to be. Okay, this happens in the West, too — BioWare got started from the idea of making medical software. Well, sometimes, Japanese companies don't even start with that much vision. They're just companies.

So, one day, we got an email: "THIS FRIDAY AT SIX PM, EVERY EMPLOYEE IS REQUIRED TO REPORT TO THE CONFERENCE ROOM TO EAT PIZZA". Well, there you go.

Their lives, bodies, and souls belong to the company; the energy that resides in those bodies is all to the company's benefit. If you say it like that, it comes out as sensationalist and weird. Well, it's that kind of thing.

Lots of people who I meet as tourists seem enamored with the idea when they first encounter it. It's a different kind of culture. Well, no one likes it after a while, least of all the people who are doing it.

I seriously and portentously asked a question, then, which I thought was hilarious: "If we're the first one in the office in the morning, do we still have to scream 'Good Morning' and clap our hands to the sides of our legs?" Her answer was immediate, and humorless: "Yes." "Well, I mean, there's no one else around to hear it, right?"

"Well, [Name-removed]-san, you can try putting 'san' on the end of my fucking name from now on, then, you know, as practice."

I knew from the beginning that I would never "fit in" whether I wanted to or not; well, this was probably around when the rest of the world got the memo.

Western business gurus have been advising young up-and-comers for years to put "President and Founder" on their business card instead of "First and Only Employee." Well, Tokyo is a pedestrian culture, and on the ground, this advice translate into something terrifying.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe these things really don't bother other people so much. Japanese people always tell me, "Oh, it's just a Japanese thing. If you grew up here, maybe you'd be okay with all of it."Well, sure.

They made a lot of little pastries, you know, just flinging shit at the wall. Nothing stuck. Well, eventually, they made a croissant with a little bit of chocolate in it.

The old people are the majority, and they don't like us because we lack the drive they had. Well, they've done fucked up a whole lot of shit, financially speaking.

And you say, "Well, Halo 3 was made by a team of like six hundred people. We've got, uhh, about sixteen people." And then he pumps his fist and says, "We're just gonna hafta work overtime!" No we're not, asshole.

The reason for the tattoo hatred is, so the urban legend goes, to keep the yakuza out of the gym / bathing area. Well, what about a white guy with a tattoo?

When is something like Nintendo's "Finance Diary" going to be implemented into ATMs? Well, cash will near-completely fade away, at some point in the future.

dude sounds like the type who would make a long list of complaints of wherever he lived tbh, but yeah, tl;dr zzzz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFy5B2NSHsg

c'mon, this is funny

I wonder what is the best/worst: complaining the whole time about the country you live in, or fully immersing yourself in its culture (and thus "alienating" yourself from your family who still resides in your home country)? Ideally (for all involved) it would be a middle ground, but rarely do I see/meet people who can do this (when living or having lived in Japan). Somehow everyone has a love and/or hate relationship with said country. Me, I fluctuate between these two emotions. lol

I mean, fuck, it's kinda sad for the guy. He's lived for so many years and at the end of it, he seems to bitter, y'know. But 1 it'll probably cool down once he moves away and 2 it's an article that is probably meant to be acidic.

this is a dick move:

So lately, they're trying to cut down on people smoking. By "trying", I mean they're putting up signs everywhere that say you'll be fined 2,000 yen if you smoke. I wrote about this before. Well, five months later, I've never seen or heard of anyone getting fined. I once pointed out, to a police officer, that someone was smoking in the no-smoking zone, and asked if he would fine him, and the cop simply asked me for my ID, passport, and visa papers. He looked them over, gave them back, and turned away.

A dicker move

well, yes

It's kind of a dick move. But on the other hand, why bother making the law if it's not going to be enforced?

the Japanese one, of course, not the train push.

but yeah, tl;dr zzzz

there is no one who isn't a dreadful, dreadful writer working for kotaku, but this piece takes the cake - i just scrolled through and through it, wondering, how long is this garbage going to ramble? i mean, who would read this much crap about whiney personal shit? i refuse to believe tom rogers even reread this through once, after its done.

kotaku = big black hole of gaming journalism.

as opposed to the high level of gaming journalism 2 be found elsewhere on the web

would much rather read gamesradar than kotaku badly rewriting something they found on some other website yeah

rockpapershotgun is pretty good

tl;rs,str (too long; read some, skimmed the rest)

My favorite moment of tone-deafness:

I think, in general, the Japanese seem to be comfortable stereotyping and being stereotyped.

His rant is right on most of the facts but lacks all perspective. A lot of his trouble seems to lie in the fact that he lives, works and plays in Tokyo despite admitting trouble dealing with noise, crowds and confusion. He really should move elsewhere, and not to Osaka either. Smaller (but still big) Japanese cities offer almost everything you can get in Tokyo (minus the bleeding edge cultural stuff) and are much more comfortable to deal with on a daily basis. He should look for a transfer to Sapporo or Kobe or Kyoto.

Most Westerners I met in Japan who had similar complaints were under the misapprehension that their home country was somehow welcoming to foreigners, or at least much easier for people coming from other cultures to get used to.

A major challenge to most Westerners living in Japan is dealing with the ongoing culture shock -- some of which can be overcome in a few months by learning a bit of the language and getting used to managing independently in new circumstances, but much of which persists as an irreconcilably different view of human nature and social interaction. Japanese culture is generally quite successful by Western standards (public transport, education, food and culture, commerce, etc) -- it's hard to see how American culture and habits taken as a whole would make life better on balance in a city the size of Tokyo. So it's hard to dismiss Japanese culture completely (despite the Kotaku writer's valiant attempt), which takes away the unhappy traveler's best defense -- believing that the locals are backward, benighted people who've yet to see the light of the American Way.

Every semi-naturalized gaijin has a long list of experiences that are psychologically jarring, whenever something Japanese strikes them as jarring or incongruous or intolerable on a personal level. Unless the matter can be written off completely as crazy or racist or stupid or "fucked up", the gaijin has to consider the unpleasant possibility that the problem is with his/her reaction to the situation, and not the cultural differences themselves.

Which leads to a lot of pointless ranting...

Long been recognized that cultural norms are widely divergent between cultures. Another thing to carry one set of norms inside oneself and live inside a completely different set. Gives some insight into sociopaths, I suppose.

maybe it's because i'm in a "punk" mood since this morning after watching "The Tomorrow Show: Punk & New Wave' trailer" on youtube but i found parts of article interesting . (not the parts that complain about meat and smoke, as it was noted, or not finishing soups or something.)

i lol'd at the assholish equation "the Japanese have distilled "social life" to a point where it is literally a part of work" = poor state of the economy/ low birth rate. keep on keeping society in check, punk rocker :-)

the screaming in circle thing was new to me. the way he puts it , it is sort of creepy.

also nu2me : screaming nonsense in a megaphone to give a certain overdrive ambiance in a store = lol'd.

"I once met a hardcore Japanese punk rock dude who brought up his own out-creeped-ness with the semantics of Japanese customary greetings completely independent of my input." would have liked to hear more from that guy.

... punk rawk!

would have liked to hear more from that guy.

Would have liked to hear more from any of the Japanese people the Kotaku author dealt with to see what they really think of him!

It's quite clear they thought he should smoke more and eat more bacon.

i can't believe tim rogers is still getting paid to write

Long been recognized that cultural norms are widely divergent between cultures. Another thing to carry one set of norms inside oneself and live inside a completely different set. Gives some insight into sociopaths, I suppose.

So fucking OTM

Kind of like people who stay on messageboards they vehemently complain about day in day out...

http://scarletjohanson.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lost_in_translation.jpg
ilx is fucked up

lol:

Maybe you know the story about how Gran Turismo got started because Kazunori Yamauchi, on his first day in the Sony Computer Entertainment offices, wrote out a sample game design idea consisting only of the words "I want to drive my car on my television."

― noted schloar (dyao), Thursday, 4 March 2010 05:06 (18 hours ago) Bookmark

this is one of the funniest things i've ever read. i don't know why.

http://singularityhub.com/2010/10/20/this-rocking-lead-singer-is-a-3d-hologram-video/

trippy vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhHo6CUq4-o

At first I assumed it was male, but now I'm not so sure.

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=03242005

i always feel a little sad now when i read earlier, funnier achewood

Communicate with Shiri? Is this going to be in the next iPhone?

"Shiri, where is the nearest train station?"
*left cheek twitches*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jun/14/eyeball-licking-fetish-japanese-teenagers-sick

Tokyo FAP Wednesday who's in

me!
wait i'm not in japan yet

No panty Shabu Shabu FTW

calstars u in japan?

Sadly, no. I only go there to see the wife's family for a week at a time every year.

You?

in october, waiting for working visa approval. will live in atsugi city.

Sadly, no. I only go there to see the wife's family for a week at a time every year.

You?

― calstars, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 2:17 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this will be me soonish

dylannn, i guess you'll be hitting up yokohama to keep yourself from getting bored?

supposedly tokyo is easier to reach on odawara line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaky%C5%AB_Odawara_Line
but yokohama is reached on same line + transfer at machida

or roughly same time from hon-atsugi to shinjuku as hon-atsugi to yokohama

Good idea to study up on getting around ahead of time

i dunno, hope so. before i moved to guangzhzou i thought i had carefully like researched it and knew what i needed to know about the city and getting around and then i basically started from scratch when i got there as i never had any idea where i was without baidu maps. but i managed a daily commute from the most distant suburb without much pain so i hope i can manage the same from kanagawa->shinjuku.

forgot if railway has english options for purchasing tickets.

regular trains within the city do, for sure. worst case, it'll be like matching up cards from the map up top to the bottom screen where you buy your fare

under the impression that: chinese literacy but will never figure out native readings of kanji + being able to read hiragana katakana + still developing c conversational japanese ... it'll be awkward but fine to get around

unlike my china experience though i have no particular fascination w or romantic vision? of the country and know maybe a bit about japan but not that much. i dunno.

kanji is such a bitch. you'll see romaji at train stations, but i'd probably carry with me the kanji of the stops i need with their equivalent romaji just in case. some of the train staff can guide you a bit if all else fails. just show them the kanji of the stop you need to go to and they should be able to point you to the right direction.

wouldn't hurt to learn stuff like hidari and migi. my girl taught me this silly mnemonic. "just think of H&M". hidari means left, migi means right.

now that i remember, when i took the osaka to tokyo shinkansen i saw no romaji for the most part

Yeah. Very limited romaji. Add in the truly labyrinthine maps hung on the wall above the ticket machines (bring your glasses if you wear them) and the throng of thousands of salary men and office ladies trying to get to work, and you've got one bewildering, overwhelming experience.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34581340

as my country voted for a more "hip" prime minister, i read this in the news today and think what the need is to involve fashion to attract supporters.

this is by no means a japan thing, but i've noticed it more in japan. there is a tendency to take on a western "style" of any type of art form, whether it's music, fashion, dance, or "attitude" and "fashionise" it -- i know that's not a word. they copy a style purely for its aesthetic reasons and on the rare occasion that they do delve into studying its meaning, they come up with the most vacuous and oversimplified things. a lot of it is due to their interpreting of individual western cultures as a huge, single oversimplified culture, and another is basing their opinions on hollywood/movie, advertising, etc., stereotypes that feed into their distorted view.

this happens with north americans' interpretation of japanese culture, as well, of course. but it seems like north americans are trying a little harder to break that barrier because we seem to favour open, blunt, honest discussions in classrooms and in open spaces readily. the japanese are surely adopting this stance but at a very slow rate. what makes this a little difficult is the whole tatemae/honne and an image-conscious society.

there are many things i love about japan, but this is not one of them. and in ways, it is contentious, because it's like arguing who the real punks were, where you have some that went against it as a fashion movement, and those who in 1977 were in the business of making punk a fashion "statement." it's tricky.

maybe i'm missing some key element or i'm misreading the protests don't seem vastly different in attempt at "attention to style, slick visual productions and media savvy" and attempt at a tidy overall aesthetic than umbrella movement protests in hong kong but compared to hong kong, japan has limited historical political turmoil and limited political engagement among young people... you end up with slick visual production and people milling around in shibuya while listening to records? again, maybe my lack of knowledge of contemporary japan is the issue but it just looks like a more low stakes version of the hk protests.

flying to tokyo tomorrow btw

nice! good luck and have fun, man! keep us posted.

i will, i will.
i'd still like to know what you think of character or more the aesthetic of umbrella movement vs. recent japan student protests. maybe i should go to shibuya and have a look.

food is good.

http://imgur.com/O1UddgK.jpg

that's where i live

Lovely! Where you at?

kanagawa, suburbs, forty minutes from shibuya

shinjuku i mean, on odakyu line

Very nice
What are you doing there?

i will, i will.
i'd still like to know what you think of character or more the aesthetic of umbrella movement vs. recent japan student protests. maybe i should go to shibuya and have a look.

― dylannn, Friday, October 23, 2015 11:55 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just read this.

i didn't know what umbrella movement was but had a quick read on the web.

i don't know anything about hk. does it have a history of large political demonstrations?

from what i understand, japan doesn't usually have major political protests, and nothing big since i've been following their politics loosely in the last few years. after ww2, the anpo opposition movement was, i want to say, the largest demonstration.

there was a point after the protests where passiveness became a kind of hallmark of japanese "activism," which actually was a reaction to ww2, from what i've read. this shifted to an apolitical attitude and a kind of "it is what it is" stance. and only recently has activism been increasing.

if you want a reference point, i would compare it to those hippies at vancouver protests that don't even know the details of what's going on, they just shout back phrases and are there to hang out and dance, and that's all they think they have to do. it's more of a party where people are not aware of the details of the cause/movement they're supporting. i think this is how i interpreted what went on at the protest i linked to above. obviously this is definitely not unique to japan. but i think foreigners are calling for a more active role in politics over there, and it is slowly changing. i've watched interviews of passersby over there, and they do seem to be interested in changing their politics, but they're not doing much to challenge the status quo.

if you go to shibuya, it's just a massive, super busy fashion center. when i got there i kind of wanted to leave soon. in that regard, i guess the protesters are trying to "disrupt" or "inconvenience" people, but i don't know if this will win people over.

i will go to shibuya to have a look maybe -- the news is covering four things today: 1 car flipped over in nagoya, a building in hokkaido is tilting or sinking, u.s. ships floated past an artificial island claimed by china, protests against a u.s. military base in okinawa reclaiming land.

and i'm not really doing anything here. my girlfriend is working and i am accompanying her.

i'm going to get off at yoyogi walk around towards harajuku... end in shibuya. i'll see what i can see. any other tips, friends?

the walk from yoyogi uehara station to yoyogi ... then yoyogi park is kind of adump

A dump.

Go to Shmbashi station (there's a nice little mini Tower Records in the basement concourse btw) walk up and out to the elevated walkways past the Ghibli clock and take the Yurikamome line to Odiaba, it's mostly all elevated so sit at up the front as the train is unmanned, it's like a gentle free rollercoaster.

Oops, that should read go to *Shiodome* tube station, then take the Yurikamome from the elevated Shimbashi station

thank you! that day, i went from yoyogi -> harajuku --> shinjuku ---> mejiro, then back to machida -> hon atsugo.
halloween in shibuya was pretty crazy yesterday.

Also Yanaka is a fantastic area for wandering, a fantastically huge cemetery and a high concentration of old buildings and temples/shrines, Nippori station is closest.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/02/01/music/akb48-members-penance-shows-flaws-in-idol-culture/

reading about yanaka -- this is fascinating:

The distinction between [Yamanote and Shitamachi] has been called "one of the most fundamental social, subcultural, and geographic demarcations in contemporary Tokyo." While the distinction has become "geographically fuzzy, or almost non-existent...it survives symbolically because it carries the historical meaning of class boundary, the samurai having been replaced by modern white collar commuters and professionals." Generally speaking, the term Yamanote has a connotation of "distant and cold, if rich and trendy", whereas "Shitamachi people are deemed honest, forthright and reliable". These differences encompass speech, community, profession and appearance. There is also an overarching difference based on notions of modernity and tradition The inhabitants of Yamanote were thought of as espousing modernising ideals for their country, based on Western models. The people of Shitamachi, on the other hand, came to be seen as representatives of the old order and defenders of traditional cultural forms.

Interesting stuff

And that idol story is sad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NcIGBKXMOE

Had a walk through Akihabara and suddenly walking down a road where loads of girls were standing around like in this video was very odd, I’d forgotten about it until watching that video.

Anyone recommend any golden gai bars?

https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/spike-hokkaido-2/lake-toya-the-billion-dollar-tower-of-bubble/

spikejapan maybe everyone knows it? but really fascinating exploration of the architecture and landscapes created by the bubble economy, giant empty hotels abandoned pachinko parlors in hokkaido and suburban tokyo

https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/amakusa-islands-of-dread/

Just read that first link, very interesting! Have been thinking about visting the north of Japan next year.

Wow, great find.
I suppose the phenomenon of ghost towns is common to any society that has gone through a global boom / bust cycle, but there's something about this in Japan that is somehow particularly sad and melancholy.

Reading the other article, fascinating stuff. Stayed in a hotel in the mountains, off season in the Naeba Ski Resort town, to go to the Labyrnith festival and there was a rather faded air about the place, great to get more context on that.

i went to okubo yesterday after coming across a reference somewhere to right wing sound trucks parked outside shin-okubo station calling for the expulsion or death of all koreans. it was an interesting neighborhood even if it will probaably become a place like yokohama chinatown where there are no actual chinese people living there -- i mean there are koreans there but clearly more recent waves of immigration have taken over maybe because rents are still impressively low. on rental agency signs that had text in chinese and vietnamese and english usually but not korean the average rent seemed to be around 60,000 a month. most of the side streets were clearly home to a large chinese community: lots of chinese dry goods and grocery stores, 2nd hand electronics, barbecue and quick takeaway joints, lots of massage places. language on the street was 50% southern-accented mandarin and southern dialects. barebones shoe stores and cheap clothes places with women from the indian subcontinent going through the racks beside chinese women speaking in fujianese. 2nd hand cellphone shops, moneychangers, low level sex industry. large muslim community also, it appeared. it was the closest thing to like the uncosmopolitan multicultural communities of guangzhou -- not quite taojin or xiaobei i guess but close. i have a mental picture of roppongi being a bit like this? but i should probably go see what it's like.

i also walked down toward shinjuku thinking about golden gai and calstars question and it was mostly an unappealing scene just as i had thought from my first walk through - maybe i saw the wrong part? i dunno? but i had good ramen at nagi and stumbled upon a festival at hanazono shrine for shichi-go-san and it was like a microcosm if that's the right word of shinjuku like foreign tourists and businessmen just off work eating chocobanana and cabaret girls in long cecil mcbee sweaters on their way to work and the dudes selling motsunabe wrists and necks covered in gold and folding dirty money into louis wallets. i saw a sideshow that the barker out front promised was one of a kind in japan and this was the only chance to see it before it was gone forever: a middle aged girl group that was backed up by a band that looked like dinosaur jr. but in period drama robes -- the highlights were: the host deepthroated a 20 inch long black balloon - energetic motown medley - a girl with a kappa baldspot wig put out candles on her tongue and drizzled wax on her face and then ate pieces of a wine bottle that an audience member was brought up to smash with a hammer.

your reporting is appreciated. sounds like an interesting time. how much longer do you have there?

couple more months at least. it's kind of an open ended thing at the moment.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/11/07/lifestyle/heart-darkness-nostalgic-tokyo-disappearing-amid-construction-boom/#.VksihnYrLIX

huh, can't quite picture a japanese xiaobei; trippy! how's yr conversational japanese going, dylannn? work/study/research/, or ...?

it's not exactly xiaobei--reallllly not even close. i guess glancing down the right alley at the right time, you get sort of the same feeling.

my japanese level is shit. i think it's easy to learn the sentence patterns to get through the day and easy enough to pick up the underlying structures that let you follow along with an overheard conversation, knowing sort of who/what is being discussed... "he went [probably a place name] to [unfamiliar verb] but [an explanation with a few familiar sentence particles in it]"... while still missing out on the majority of meaning. unlike china, there's limited opportunity to engage with strangers in the kind of chit-chat that quickly builds ability and confidence. extremely limited inquisitiveness on the part of the people i've met-- in china, after you went into the same store to buy a pack of cigarettes everyday, the guy behind the counter might ask if you live in the neighborhood, what you're doing there, blah blah blah-- and those that are interested often want to engage with me in english. apart from conversation, just day to day figuring things out is made much easier by being literate in chinese characters (this is of limited utility when trying to read something aloud as you can pick up on the japanese reading of chinese characters quickly but there are always numerous readings) and being able to usually decipher katakana, hiragana.

If you have a smartphone, there's a very good app called Kana Drills, just a simple multiple choice quiz thing, it might get you up to speed fairly quickly.

alright i got some kana drills app that is like choose between hiragana katakana, shows the character and has the full page of sounds to choose from. i find it useful.

you gotta go full rote on that otherwise you'll never remember i find

try http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

Also Yanaka is a fantastic area for wandering, a fantastically huge cemetery and a high concentration of old buildings and temples/shrines, Nippori station is closest. -- i've been around this neighborhood a few times now, walking from ueno to uguisudani to nippori, but i never took the extra trip over to yanaka ginza until today. the stretch from uguisudani to nippori is pretty TOKYO REALNESS, right below uguisudani station you cross over a kilometer across valley of rail lines and right below the steps to the south of the station are some smokey yakkitori places from 1964, grey condo towers with dirt courtyard parks below them, old ladies feeding cats, shitty little stores, couple blocks of love hotels with a few pink salons down narrow alleys. yanaka ginza was cute.

haha, yeah i mentioned that in one of the other threads of japan

that's yurakucho, it's below the tracks of yamanote line. we were hanging around there at 1am once and it gets kind of wild. probably the only japanese assholes you'll ever meet; drunken salarymen

Dylannn, reading your posts makes me wanna re-read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Japan-Journals-Donald-Richie/dp/1880656973

i followed a mainland chinese tour group through kabukicho a few nights ago. i caught up with them as i was walking back from golden gai. the leader of the tour was a humorless woman in a calflength lime green parka. she was stopping in front of, whatever, the big signs for host clubs and explaining: "in japan, many women are very lonely and seek companionship from these male prostitutes-- some of them spend thousands a month in these clubs and buying designer clothes for their favorite men," then, quieter, to several of the people directly beside her, "this is the type of men japanese women like, like women!" shouting at them at keep pace, she led them down a valley of love hotels to an intersection with several african touts working: "these black people come on fraudulent visas and engage in various illegal business in this area." the group she was leading looked incredibly bored, cameras stowed in bags, talking to each other and straggling along in groups of three or four. they looked relieved to be getting back on the bus.

what i mean is, i try to restrain myself from going beyond the simplest reporting of this is what i did and this is what i saw and maybe some of the more interesting things i've seen i'll keep it to myself because i don't want to look like the guy that says he never saw anyone play tekken without smoking a cigarette or like the woman in the lime green parka.

while blanket statements can reveal one's lack of experience and nuanced views, i won't sit through reading someone who doesn't think what s/he is writing is interesting. i mean, i'd feel like s/he's having us on.

personal experiences are always fun to read, though, because it shows the person's biases.

as an aside, it's such a canadian thing to "play it safe" and not say something controversial. in some ways, we, too, don't like to lose face

from my phone

http://imgur.com/kOI3tUC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jnePQ6r.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2dsGGUl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/I0fjKes.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gWOMWv1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8l76HOv.jpg

panty vending machines

LOVE HOTELS: dogenzaka in the first picture, just around the corner is STRIP LIVE THEATER which usually has a lineup by the time i check out from whatever love hotel i stayed in the night before-- the odakyu line ride into the city feels brisk and sometimes i'll even take the 各停 an hour and a half tour of east kanagawa into shinjuku but a) i can't handle taking the late train back into the city, b) everyone works late and everything happens late so things start to get going on even a weeknight around midnight. even if the plans are for the next day, asumi and i usually take the train to shinjuku when she gets off work, spend the night in a shibuya love hotel, or maybe kabukicho where golden gai which i've sort of warmed up to and i'm sort of into the memory lane 思い出横丁 alleys off shinjuku station, and in kabukicho i do like the spectacle which is actually quite unthreatening and wholesome compared to walking down the right street in dongguan or cruising the back alleys of luohu in shenzhen, and you can watch the tour groups of chinese unloaded from buses around where the godzilla peeking over the buildings statue is, and the love hotel stay rate is a good 1000 or 1500 yen cheaper than shibuya.

EASING MYSELF INTO MAKING BOLD SWEEPING STATEMENTS -- CHINESE PEOPLE IN TOKYO, MY OBSERVATIONS: in tokyo, if you only see areas around yamanote line stations, you can get the impression that the japanese economy is built on: selling bags to chinese tourists and salarymen rubdowns. the second item in a second but sometimes it feels like everyone around you on the street in shibuya is chinese. ride the yamanote line and look over a shoulder and someone is reading weibo or typing to a 福州人在东京 weixin group. i know a girl that works at shibuya 109 who unreliably estimates that 50% of their sales are to chinese customers. there are lots of americans in shibuya 109 but they just take the escalators up and down. like, all the kids in the 2nd hand stores in harajuku buying supreme backpacks are chinese. it's particularly interesting because japanese media on china seems to an outsider barely literate or fluent in the language to range from on one side internet rightwingers ranting about chinese to mainstream tv with reports about-- turned on the tv yesterday and saw two reports on the same newscast: * chinese with money but difficulty getting urban hukou are trying to invest in a new life in japan and the tone of the report suggested that we can expect a flood of not just uncouth billionaire 土豪 but middle class chinese burdened with a countryside hukou, * chinese in tokyo and osaka were running illegal boarding houses for chinese students and tourists and etc. and every day you're guaranteed to see a note about the chinese and american navies fucking around in the south china sea. even the whale meat restaurant near hachiko exit promises a chinese menu. and as i'm preparing a move back to guangzhou next year the topic of china sometimes comes up with people -- or usually it's a conversation reported back to me by asumi: "why would you go to china? it's so dirty and violent!" and even out here in the middle of nowhere suburban kanagawa, the chinese are a mostly invisible group. there are lots of chinese students going to the tokyo university of agriculture and a handful of other universities way out here but unless you pay attention, you'd scarcely notice their presence. shin-okubo is the only place i've seen a cluster of chinese businesses. one bonus is that the local suburban city library carries the latest copies of 十月, 收获 and 花城. THE CHINESE HATE THE JAPANESE BUT THEY AREN'T THAT SERIOUS ABOUT IT: the chinese hatred of the japanese... i mean, across most of china, you have people that lived through or were raised by people that experienced the japanese brutally occupy china and kill millions in brutal ways, including germ warfare, and go on to not be arguably not sufficiently contrite. the nationalist rhetoric in china that still sees the communist party as saving the people from 100 years of humiliation is often vile and silly and the party has stayed in power partly by manipulating anti-japanese sentiment and chinese popular media in recent years has produced lots of goofy violent portrayals of brave peasants chopping up hitler mustachioed jap infantry. but in my experience--and unlike where i'm coming from on japan, i am literate in chinese and have lived there for a number of years--the anti-japanese shit is mostly something that people separate from "this is what japanese people are like," ie. the fascist empire of the 30s and 40s is not japan today, even if the motherfuckers keep going to yasukuni shrine it's because they still don't get it and aren't willing to admit their mistakes but don't want to return to a cult of the emperor and occupying manchuria. the view of modern japan is more nuanced. far more chinese have visited or studied in japan than the other way around. it's understood that lots of advances in science and literature and the arts filtered into china through japan-- republican era literati half of them studied in japan, along with a good number of kmt and communist party elite. even in the age of xi jinping and tensions over artificial islands, average chinese are not virulent japan haters and will buy a camry and send their kids to study in tokyo. THE JAPANESE HATE THE CHINESE: i think. i forgive them less because japan is a democratic country with a free media. there seems to be quite a bit of treatment of the leadup to and events of world war ii even on mainstream tv programming (leaving aside the magazines you can get at family mart with like six glossy pages of 16 year old girls in bikinis and then an article entitled THE CRIMES OF FOREIGNERS beside revisionist history of the leadup to the second world war and right wing internet shit) and the tone seems to be about japan as a victim. the japanese in their own way seem to still see themselves as belonging to a superior race. the chinese are like a disease or an infestation but yes they used to be amazing a thousand years ago (i just went to see the terracotta warriors visiting the national museum in yoyogi park! the really amazing thing was the extensive look at qin dynasty plumbing).

I GOT DRUNK IN SHIBUYA: anyways, i think that picture is from yesterday morning. we went on a cruise of tokyo bay redeeming credit card points. asumi had her hair and eyelashes and makeup done and i met her at shinjuku station that afternoon after she went to get a face thinning massage which she swears made her eyes larger. she had her hair up and was in a tight dress and looked straight out of ageha magazine: big hair, fake lashes, short dress, heavy makeup. we cruised around the bay for a while and went under rainbow bridge and saw the big ferris wheel in yokohama. it's still warm enough on the right day in tokyo, was in the 20s again. there was free champagne and we were pretty lit. took the train back into shibuya with at least 5% of the passengers on the train wearing their own vomit and 80-90% visibly intoxicated. got back to shibuya and waited for a friend in a chain izakaya (we tried to go to hooters but it closed at 11:30) with the following groups: 1) a 50something salaryman type sitting across from clearly a kyabakura girl fast asleep drunk, he was trying to wake her up as midnight was approaching. i questioned her professionalism but asumi said it was his fault and she already got paid. 2) a group of 8 late 20s guys that looked like the sort of hip antidrug speech/breakdance team that should be speaking in a high school gym, exclusively wearing the following brands: avirex, rocawear, mecca, akademiks, southpole. 3) two guys and a girl with that wisconsin goth + silver skulls GHOST OF HARLEM style fashion, with guitars in cases. went to a club in shibuya where the dj played basically the mix ethan made for me in 2003 including what means the world to you rmx and smut peddlers. went back to love hotel. woke up in the morning and the lineup was already forming for STRIP LIVE THEATER (5000 yen entrance, 2000 yen for students, the elderly and women). then we went to ueno to eat oniony vinegary tsukemen at rokudaime keisuke's.

there's a noise board post about how japan killed teenage anglophilia in north america. in 2015, nobody gives a shit about japanese music--except ilx listens to YMO and occasional indie choices, i believe--or film or literature or even anime--again except 4chan bitch u ain't even kawaii nerds that are also heavily into DANDY niche av and weird cartoon porn-- or fashion--everyone wears uniqlo and harajuku style is now a few kids dressing like blossom or i dunno, michael alig on jenny jones, or wisconsin goths and hanging out at that corner of ometosando across from the park waiting for street fashion bloggers and shibuya is tight pink sweaters and black leggings all the way down. even if you go to trump room (this is my shorthand for a COOL TOKYO PLACE but i might be out of date here) it's kids dressing like it's 1999 basically and i think they're listening to YMO too. maybe europeans still care about japanese pop culture and fashion? maybe there's some kind of reciprocal trade agreement and that's why the japanese still think french things are cool and pledged to accept 50,000 european refugees in the wake of the paris attacks and creeping sharia.

everything should be okay but once you get into the narrative of japan as a country in terminal decline, economy and culturally and artistically bankrupt, slowly drawing in on itself.... nationalistic politics with no strong alternative. a disturbing obsession with youth as the country ages and the birthrate falls. population decline. unwilling to look to the outside world. barely tolerating even total assimilation on the part of the few temporary immigrants. right wing sound trucks calling for a new constitution. the oceans dead and poisonous, slowly starving and then submerging the coasts. i mean, it be okay but i do find that version of japan's present and future fascinating.

So to completely derail for a second.

I'm visiting Japan from Australia. Why is music so expensive? Like, literally everything involving music, gigs, cd's, merch, everything. I thought Australia was pricey but Japan is just next level.

Also, what should I do here? I'm in Tokyo for a couple more days. Already taken some suggestions from reading through this thread, but when it comes to live local music, where are the places to be?

http://www.tokyogigguide.com/gigs seems reliable and reasonably comprehensive

ilm favorite keiji haino on monday at heaven's door

Dylan your posts are great, really enjoying them

correction: the ferris wheel i saw was the one in odaiba not yokohama.

yeah, was gonna mention how'd you get to yokohama and back to tokyo in such a short time. sounds like you did a shit tonne of things in just a couple days.

dylannn you delivered. i've had similar thoughts and have talked extensively with my japanese girlfriend about art/culture in japan as just a slow death. but i did a lot of travelling in latin america and they share a similar thing: there's a handful of countries that think art/culture should mimic the usa. the more american something looks/sounds/feels, the better. the thing they don't understand is that 外人 are trying to get away from this americanisation/westernisation so opt for a more historical/japanese feel. it's why tokyo and osaka are no longer so popular amongst newly arrived migrants; a lot of them go off to kyoto

even momus moved to osaka.

dylannn this stuff is great, ty

in japan -- or... talking about tokyo, as someone raised in a boomtime for japanese pop culture and fashion and arriving in shibuya in 2015, i think we can say:

* there aren't actually enough kids to buy cool things anymore. back to 1950 levels, fewer kids than any country with a comparable population, consumers aging out of the market with no replacement. * all the kids in tokyo that had money to burn in the 90s and held onto their jobs grew out of engagement with pop culture/fashion + were lured by the appeal of discount shit as the economy kept circling the bowl * people actually use smartphones now and don't pay for cds or books anymore, if they can help it. * magazines were incredibly important for directing fashion and pop culture spending in a few directions and now nobody cares and the magazine rack is ageha, other gyaru subculture magazines and magazines for old people and porn. * kids stopped going to art school. * the economy is just shit, even if you live off the yamanote line.

so, you've got most people shopping at uniqlo and not buying music or books. and the consumers that shape the shibuya you see in 2015 or any hip district in the country are-- look at the magazine rack: ageha girls and gyaru subculture types, girls in kanagawa who work at kyabakura or dress like they do and have yankii boyfriends who dress like foxconn workers on their one day off a month. they have disposable income, maybe? you can still get a decent job in manufacturing or construction? but either way, the girls especially are still among the few people who define themselves by fashion and still take the train into the city to go shopping at shibuya 109, where the stores are 100% gyaru subculture/yankii shit, and they still read magazines (and romance novels on their phone and buy apps where they date princes of the edo or something and )! ///// on the culture side... i'm not really sure but i guess the above trends have sort of gotten rid of a huge market and those cultural elite artschool types that found jobs making cool stuff for a huge market whether it was fashion or anime or games are dead and gone. culture driven by the type of anime and idol shit that otaku are into according to 2ch aggregators.

that thin crust of hip tokyo consumers still shopping are still buying avant garde cool fashion/culture but it's not riding a wave of cool japan out of the country and nobody is threatening to open branches in manhattan or l.a. -- as i said, i think the reciprocal trade agreement with france that still sees japanese excited about the lamest euro shit... there must be some europeans still buying it-- they were really into the comme des garçons x frozen collab.

i don't think it's a lot to do with americanisation except like... japan following the american model of discount retail and fast fashion appealing in a shit economy? maybe??

add something here about korea, too. korean tv and music and fashion hit so big in china because they were very good at something the chinese with their conservative pop culture were almost completely lacking. i guess same with japan, which has become just as conservative, with a pop culture/fashion hollowed out by age/economic decline/feeding deeply conservative subcultures. i think the chinese caught up in a way? like, they took the momentum and it fed down into chinese fashion and music and it got more interesting?? (i'm not 100% on that statement) at the very leasst, the chinese were good at copying certain aspects of korean pop culture in a way that japan hasn't. if you go to geo or tsutaya it's still like half of the racks are still capped with [韓國].

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/25/experience-i-mine-for-denim

These podcasts are a few years old but there's some interesting discussion about Japan's slow decline, consumer culture, the upsurge of Gyaru/Yaanki culture and other bits and pieces.

http://neojaponisme.com/category-projects/podcasts/

Oops *yanki*

http://flashbak.com/tokyo-subway-manners-posters-1976-1982-46545/

nah, there's definitely more at play than american model of discount retail and fast fashion. even levis guy in your linke notes how much japanese will pay for symbolic americana. there's a tendency to romanticise and idealise american forms and even incorporate it in an updated form in their own culture.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-american-culture-and-made-it-better-180950189/

The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over. A long-standing obsession with things American has led not just to a bigger and better market for blockbuster movies or Budweiser, but also to some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan. It has also made the exchange of Americana a two-way street: Earlier this year, Osaka-based Suntory, a Japanese conglomerate best known for its whiskey holdings, announced that it was buying Beam Inc., thus acquiring the iconic American bourbon brands Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.

i've talked about this to a few japanese and they have mixed feelings about it. but they have bluntly told me they don't understand why i like the things i like about japan. i feel like every person i've talked to over there doesn't really like japanese movies, for example. i recall one woman, but she studied film and was into really old stuff, which i also agree is the best. but i sense that people who like new japanese movies are those girls who gush over the so-called jack-of-all-trades stud fukuyama masaharu finally getting married, reading gossip columns, but a lot of outwardly looking japanese people i've met want to go away from that attitude. yet in the west, we nominate like father, like son for a palme d'or. there's a definite disconnect.

korean dramas and music was getting big in japan like...i wanna say 10 years ago? and there are more koreans and zainichi shown in a better or at least neutral light in the public eye in japan lately; this without getting into the whole racism and cultural clashes between the two countries. when you hang with zainichi you kind of get to see another side of japanese people, which is not a very fair one. unfortunately the stereotypes of them working at pachinkos and being takumi-gumi's henchmen have not died out.

japan had a cd rental industry where piracy was a known aspect and cd rental shops actually paid a cut to copyright holders. not sure how that's transferred into our current digital world, but it was part of why compact discs were so expensive, and also the reason why japan releases tended to have bonus tracks where other countries would not.

This just came out a few days ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Ametora-Japan-Saved-American-Style/dp/0465059732

but they have bluntly told me they don't understand why i like the things i like about japan.

what do you like about japan?

i had never heard the term 'zainichi' before, that was an interesting one to google. woah that i. koreans in japan are the largest ethnic minority ii. the largest ethnic minority is less than a million people

the zainichi story is fascinating ... especially, the chongryon's links to north korea, including a bimonthly ship running between niigata and wonsan (which definitely carried currency and cognac and possibly parts for missile guidance systems).

akutagawa, ninkyo eiga (kawaita hana, koroshi no rakuin, tokyo nagaremono, etc), chong, zainichi north korean culture, japanese accents, the taste and smell of natto.

i used to like kurosawa’s films. i remember reading an essay that said he was mostly targeting foreigners, so he ended up not being very popular in japan, and remained mostly misunderstood (understandably). i think his fame only lasted a few years over there. in his autobiography he mentions the japanese consider their own culture unimpressive, until they notice westerners appreciating it, which i think still goes on. i’ve definitely seen it happen in other countries, such as other artists/writers in argentina a few decades ago, to give a random example.

dylannn, are you going to visit places outside of tokyo/kanto region?

this thread is on all cylinders.

rad posts dyl

dylan how long wil you be in japan for? i may go in january

nishino kana, right wing sound trucks (no more special treatment for koreans, scrap the constitution, defend japanese territory from chinese encroachment), 1000 all you can drink deals and 3 bucks for a pack of lucky strike, love hotels, yanki culture, mentaiko mayo.

i'll be here in january.

yes, i will leave tokyo and its suburbs. not really anywhere exciting... but i plan to visit sapporo in the new year and i want to visit a friend that lives in aomori. and i have vague plans for osaka, kyoto.

speaking of sound trucks, the space in front of the local odakyu line stop is usually monopolized by 幸福の科学/幸福実現党.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Science / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_Realization_Party

The party advocates a nuclear deterrent for Japan, denies that the Nanking Massacre occurred and has called for China to be expelled from the United Nations Security Council.

Okawa claims to channel the spirits of Muhammad, Christ, Buddha and Confucius (among many other beings) and claims to be the incarnation of the supreme spiritual being called El Cantare. ... Okawa also claims to have direct communication with the "Guardian Spirits" of political figures, with whom he conducts interviews published in the organization's newsletter The Liberty and in book form. (See, for example, Okawa's book The Next President: Spiritual Interviews with the Guardian Spirits of Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney vs. Rick Santorum, 2012.)

woah that i. koreans in japan are the largest ethnic minority ii. the largest ethnic minority is less than a million people

Didn't know these facts but having seen all those Oshima films abt it its not entirely surprising. 'japan is fucked up!' old style.

it's an island nation with strong policies blocking immigration and a history of intense xenophobia connected to that. the only countries reasonably close by water are south korea and russia (a pretty underpopulated part of Russia, at that) that both have historical enmity with the japanese.

not really surprising they've successfully kept immigration low

yeah I love this thread, going to Tokyo next month and super excited about it, in part b/c I know next to nothing about Japan

one of my closest friends has been living/working in Tokyo for the past 3 years. it seems p deeply alienating to be gaijin, just from the anecdotal evidence of his experience and other friends' who have spent time there (including a Japanese-American friend who went there to "find his roots" and a Filipino friend who thought it was weird that everyone thought she was on her way somewhere to commit suicide because she was traveling alone).

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/events/flyer/2015/12/jp-1209-773888-front.jpg

love this poster for TOKYO NO. 1 EDM PARTY

Lol @ Yo and Shawty

Wednesdays at womb lounge

ナンバウアンイジェムパ－テぃ！！！

add japangrish to my list

bouncing between all you can drink izakaya until that club opp pens

i was in japan for my first time ever in, i think, march? i was sent to fukuoka to get a visa. i googled it and found a guardian article calling it, i think, 'the liverpool of japan', and cried a little

fukuoka looks gorgeous

dylannn my stepfather is in Japan right now and I sent him some of your posts in an email, great writing here as usual

https://freedom.press/blog/2015/12/preparation-join-us-wars-japan-dismantles-freedom-press

i'm in hk for a couple days. i never made it to womb and ended up blackout drunk in a suburban izakaya.

the same day, i walked over to sumida ku for the first time. i'd been nearby before, on my first day in tokyo even. i arrived in nippori which was actually impressive arriving at midnight from narita, a first look at tokyo, and we stayed in a love hotel somewhere nearby and walked to ueno and then asakusa, looked at senso-ji, walked along the river, saw the skytree and the asahi building with the giant gold tadpole on top. i went over to the other side of the river, sumida-ku, for the first time yesterday after following some borderline clickbait THE MOST DANGEROUS NEIGHBORHOOD IN TOKYO or something similar link. the most dangerous neighborhood in tokyo is kyojima, just east of the skytree. unlike most of tokyo: -- it's built on soil deposited from the sumida which will turn to liquid when the next big quake hits, -- serious fire risk as it's full of old wooden structures built close together, -- just above sea level. there wasn't anything significant there to destroy in 1923 and it escaped destruction by american bombs.

i'd never taken the metro to asakusa, first of all, and the ekimise building above asakusa station, some showa department store reclaimed for by developers for the chinese tourists, it's really impressive. walking across the bridge toward the skytree, the vibe was more shitamachi realness than i felt in most of east tokyo. except the solamachi development at the bottom of the skytree, the area around the skytree is still industrial/green space/shrines along the river and gridded new development with veins of vintage shitamachi running through it with well maintained shotengai a bit like yanaka ginza without the tourists with a mixture of kissaten, soba restaurants, one product shops and then clear signs of new arrivals, bike shops and coffee shops and combination bike/coffee shops. walking further east, toward kyojima, there seem to have been some significant changes to the area since most of the articles on it were written, quite a few narrow narrow brand new houses and not as much wood as i expected-- it looked a bit like the villages on the edge of these suburbs and real rural territories, where there are the shacky plywood/corrugated tin structures beside beautiful homes owned by retirees from or commuters to the special wards. in those villages, the rice paddies and canals are still there, but they've been buried in kyojima. it's really peaceful. sumida ku. i walked through mukojima too on the way back -- hatonomachi the best preserved shotengai in the area -- and you can follow nagai kafu's strolls through geisha district, if that's your thing -- and one way or another, redevelopment or earthquake, it will all be gone soon.

i've also added the tobacco and salt museum to my list of places to visit, also just below the skytree.

http://40.media.tumblr.com/0cfeb9ec0c223208c4eb6dd17c984dc2/tumblr_nzmqy0kQOm1qdzsozo3_400.jpg

lol

:D

eatery

Momus:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic2.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20120406135132%2Fsimpsons%2Fimages%2F5%2F54%2FMatt_Groening_2.jpg&f=1

just shut the fuck up momus ffs

they let any gaijin buffoon write in japan times these days

i mean the article above it explains what daikon is. so. i support it.

yeah, it's hit or miss

i still go to it sometimes, but i go to that site that translates japanese news written for a japanese audience more (so different from japanese news written for foreigners)

christmas in tokyo is fairly intense. i'm just north of shibuya crossing, tragic clogged by sound trucks advertising e-girls' christmas single, a million girls in puffy white sweaters, every shop blasting christmas music.

traffic clogged, sorry

currently crouched under an overpass near meiji dori chainsmoking.

e-girls truck has crashed through a crowd of tourists from shandong. blood everywhere. kyabajo in santa costumes assisting with crowd control.

18 wheeler billboard truck for spontini's pizza has rolled over a sidewalk barker from a nearby karaoke place who stepped in to drag the wounded from the intersection.

the police have arrived and are beating a group of austrian tourists, who were not among those in the crowd temporarily distracted by a surprise concert in front of shibuya 109 by several third tier members of exile.

the shibuya santa festival is underway now. so far it's fifteen year old girls dancing provocatively in santa costumes. waiting to bring you any developments.

dylannn ... ru ... ok?

yes.

hey i have a question for you -- can you point me in the direction of any particularly informed takes in english on the recent news on reparations and apologies over comfort women?

most of what i've seen seems to stop at 'so, this kinda came out of nowhere'

i'm sure someone else has a more informed opinion about this but here we go:

it doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere! abe's relationship with park has gotten a lot of play in japanese media. they met for the first time in november. there's been a lot made of the promise of building economic links with korea. (CHINA: japan's economy is probably too linked to china's and it would be nice to have those economic links and anyways having a good friend in south korea isn't a bad idea).

i guess it's pragmatism mostly. abe doesn't care much about the issue and he's only used these kind of issues in the past to play to his conservative base. 1) he has the conservative credit to get away with this. 2) he gets the issue off the table, mostly. it gets limited play in the japanese media. he can still tell his nationalist "patriotic" base that there were still conditions attached and he doesn't lend legitimacy to any dissenting claims about japanese war crimes. 3) the issue can be spun either way: he bought off those whiny broads / he is working toward reconciliation and lasting peace in the region.

it looks good for park and when abe came calling she probably pressed hard on this as she has less to lose pressing the issue than abe does by addressing it?

a quick browse of chinese editorials, mostly unanimous on: america is trying to consolidate power in east asia with pivot to asia doctrine and this is part of it! they also point out the remaining 20 comfort women in the prc and the 4 in roc are being ignored.

iirc there's no organisation that represents the comfort women that's not constrained by national boundaries, right? not that on a moral level that should preclude abe extending any apology towards survivors in other countries, but i mean there's no representation in korea that's going to refuse reparations on those grounds

but yeah ty, that helps

right. the chinese editorials point that out to show abe's lack of interest in reconciliation and the decision as mostly an attempt to build japan-korea links, prompted by an american push for more cooperation between its two client states.

are they going to remove that statue?

i've no idea! i've seen news stories on 'but will moving That Statue be the sticking point for this deal' being shared but they all seem to be by people who don't actually really know anything about anything? this seems the best of them -- http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/724279.html

The group Jeongdaehyeop released a statement on Dec. 30 urging the governments of South Korea and Japan to “immediately cancel this hastily reached agreement and listen to the demands of the victims so they can resolve the comfort issue in a proper way that is acceptable to the victims.”

so jeongdaehyeop is the umbrella organisation of various women's groups in SK devoted to the issue. they ostracised survivors who accepted the terms of the 1995 deal (which seemed more ... whole-hearted? than what's being offered now, on some level.) i guess i was surprised by the recent agreement being announced because i had thought that the korean govt was tacitly on their side -- that they wouldn't ever want to accept anything that japan would offer

i suspect my confusion here is just my entrylev grasp of korean politics: i always forget that as well as conservative koreans for whom japan is by definition unforgivable, there are also equally conservative koreans who want to claim japan wasn't ever that bad and the colonial era was just one big misunderstanding

hey i have a question for you -- can you point me in the direction of any particularly informed takes in english on the recent news on reparations and apologies over comfort women?

― carly rae jetson (thomp), Friday, January 1, 2016 11:25 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201601020046

i've never read an article in english that talks about the nuances of the issue.

but it has been explained to me like this from a zainichi:

koreans want the japanese to admit that these were systematic acts ordered by the gov't. the japanese say it was not systematic, and for koreans to provide proof that it was. there is no hard evidence (for obvious reasons).

koreans say they were discriminated against and for the japanese to admit to it. the japanese say there was no discrimination because there were japanese "comfort women," as well. however, from my basic understanding, under imperial japan's control, koreans would change their names to japanese because they were treated better that way. "treated better" means all sorts of things, from my understanding. so even if someone had a japanese name, they could have been korean.

koreans want this stuff in japanese schools' textbooks, which will never happen.

with regard to the "apology," the way this has been explained to me is that while japan has suggested "it is sorry," the problem is with semantics. a lot of koreans and zainichi want the japanese gov't to apologise in a more direct way.

what i've noticed is that korean-japanese politics/relations always have indirect speech/meaning. they don't do the whole confrontation thing, so rarely use "direct language." because of this, their politics and actions are a lot more symbolic than westerners' -- it's like the medieval ages.

anyway, because of this, a lot of koreans and zainichi see the japanese gov't's "apology" as not directly apologising, but vaguely feeling "sorrow/bad" for incidents that happened. this is why you'll read in every report that ianfu/wianbu still want an apology.

it's all highly contentious, nuanced, and complex, mind you. korean-japanese relations are the toughest to crack because of their long history.

i agree with the left on this issue, but i am a privileged white male who reads the asahi shimbun, living in english-speaking north america. not even my girl's zainichi father reads the asahi, but i think that's because he actually has to live and operate a business in japan. and one must make concessions.

While acknowledging the criticism that has arisen among the public, especially over reports about moving a comfort women statue erected in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, the statement said, "If the results of the best efforts made by the government are deemed invalid, there will be no government willing to handle troublesome issues."

ah jesus

so i skirt around talking about this issue to actual koreans most of the time, unfortunately. as i understand it there's some hard evidence, plus first-hand testimonials from japanese military officials involved; the japanese have admitted structural involvement at all levels -- the question is not so much whether japanese involvement was systematic as to whether the execution was on all levels directly theirs (it wasn't); the issue of coercive recruitment for military brothels was in the textbooks for a generation but is being removed, it's not an it'll-never-happen but rather a place where ground is currently being lost ..

but most of this is pace c. sarah soh's book on it, which is good but .. makes me regret the dearth of other stuff on it; there's a devil's-advocateishness to it i don't know if i quite want to rely on. (her larger argument is that various korean parties continually require japan to admit to is beyond the realm of what japan would ever admit to by design, because it suits korean nationalism to have japan by definition inhumanly villainous more than it wants them to actually apologise or make reparations, and what the survivors actually want has been largely lost in the noise for years)

yeah i've spoken to a few younger japanese and they said they don't study those things but it's very briefly mentioned.

never read sara soh's book, but i do get the feeling that the younger japanese population is more accepting and open to change. it also depends on what prefecture we're talking about. this is anecdotal but the younger people from kansai prefecture (such as kyoto or osaka) seem to sympathise more with koreans, while people from nagasaki or something stay "neutral".

(i almost always ask japanese people what they think of koreans and zainichi when we're talking about cultures -- it's interesting to see/hear how they reply)

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8908868

better than most

i've been apartment hunting the past few days. the right neighborhood in tokyo is not much more expensive than an apartment near an odakyu odawara line station in kanagawa. i'm going to look at one more place tomorrow, south of the pinwheel planned garden city of den-en-chofu and north of tamagawa station, just across the river from kawasaki. but the place we looked at today, i will almost surely finalize the contract on it. it's just north of oku station and just over the southern border of arakawa ward, within walking distance of the yamanote line (tabata station is about twenty, twenty five minutes' walk) and on a quiet, straight street in an interesting neighborhood. relatively inexpensive.

i have the yurekuru call app on my phone and check the list of seismic events every so often. sometimes i'll be sitting on the floor and think i feel something and try to be still but before i open the app, i realize i was just feeling the thump of my circulation in my crossed legs. i feel the occasional genuine tremor and shortly after i first arrived, there was a firm, sharp snap that shook the apartment hard. mostly i don't think about it. but i know that if a strong earthquake shakes tokyo, the alluvial soil of the shitamachi will liquefy and most of what's built there will be consumed in a raging inferno or swept out to sea on the sumida river. i wonder if i should worry more about that.

Last time I was there I felt what I thought what was a significant tremor and asked my wife's family about it and no one had even noticed.

http://www.city.seki.lg.jp/cmsfiles/contents/0000007/7817/466A1842.JPG

bringing you the latest in japanese culture reporting. at machida station, it's split between mothers with cameras and their daughters in extravagant furisode with faux fur collars and fresh cut flowers in their immaculately piled up hair and then the gangs of yanki girls with bare shoulders and two inch eyelashes, stealing stealing slugs off cans of chu-hi. the boys are driving under the station overpasses in infinitis with the tops cut off, hacksawed mufflers, and national flags hanging out the back and roving in packs in matching leopard print jackets with older cats in sharp suits passing big bottles of sake and torys extra. kids are drumming. mochi is being distributed by old people. seems like a lot of fun.

On the Tōkaidō Shinkansen from Nagoya to Shinagawa today the salaryman next to me drank two cans of beer with his lunch. I had a great view of Fuji-san.

see any girls with fur collars?

no. Is today coming of age day? I just got here

yeah. i was waiting for a roll of film to get developed in machida. i had no idea what was going on. i'm basically clueless about everything that goes on here. i saw the dudes in cars with japanese flags revving the hell out v6 open headers and thought some right wing boso groups was doing something.

recommend a bar in tokyo to listen to bowie and cry into my beer

america wake up i need an answer

i was going to a say a daniel carver wake up white people as i noticed a japan/hs overlap but i felt it was inappriaptiate

marestsnest calstars sup

i can confirm i'm drunk at 4:52 pm

I did see girls with fur collars tonight! In Shinagawa

Sup Dylannn, http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows//blog/2013/03/david-bowies-brit-themed-cafe-opens-in-tokyo

In the Ginz, unfortunately

Oh wait, it seems that it was a limited time deal, sorry man

There's a Brit pub called the Aldgate, near the Hachiko exit, looks like one's best bet.

Shin-iwasaki building 3F 30-4 udagawa-cho shibuyaku Tokyo

sup dyl! I'm in NY so missed your wake up post at 4 AM my time

thanks, everyone. i can't name a single david bowie song.

i just woke up on a mat of urine-soaked 1000 yen notes.

Yoko Ono bought a full-page ad in the Village Voice this past week and just by chance mentioned a cafe in Tokyo where you can go and just cry...I'll try to find a copy and take a photo of it. I don't think it's online

no idea exactly to what dylan is talking about, but it sounds like shougatsu-related

my girl's mom just sent us mochi and azuki beans stuff to eat on january 15 for koshougatsu. so it's probably related to that?

anyway, we ended up eating effing red/azuki beans since friday, dear god, i cannot see another sweet red bean til ...well, i admit, more red beans this weekend

curse january 15

My 3 year old had anpan for breakfast. It's always in the house

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/11/national/japan-welcomes-newest-adults-coming-age-day/#.VpP8uBV97IV

“I actually think I’m better off having no aspiration in life” because, she explained, the devastation would be hard to overcome if she didn’t achieve her dreams.

yeah, i guess you can start eating azuki beans/celebrating these festivities any time between jan 1 to the 15, so she wanted to start this weekend

anpan is really good, but since friday i've had:

two bowls of zenzai
a couple anpan
patjuk (korean red bean porridge)
patbingsoo with an extra side of pat (korean shaved ice with red beans with an extra side of red beans)

i'm taking a little break before going at it again this friday

http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-21290

Abe-san's wife supporting hemp caught me completely by surprise

also dylan

she's just a symptom of japan's culture of shame, right? it's obviously pretty poisonous

it doesn't allow you to fail and if you do, it is such a huge deal they treat you like a social pariah

it's also sentiment i can identify with -- definitely really identified with when i was 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEIBWX6x0eI

okinawa looks like fun

Here's the Yoko ad:

http://i.imgur.com/3LKOqtb.jpg

i can't find any reference to it except for yoko's thing.

searching in english interesting detours included 涙活http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/crying-it-out-in-japan/389528/ -- a group crying seminar -- and a service by the same huckster where host types come and cry with you. i'm unsure of my japanese googling and with various forms of "crying cafe" i didn't find anything of note and the only solid reference to a crying cafe was "泣くための環境、アイテムが揃った「泣きカフェ」というのがあれば結構人気が出るかも ... というか、そんな感じのお店はすでにあるかも(調べてないので不明ですが)," which seems to mean 泣きカフェ crying cafe would be popular but i'm not sure if they exist. nothing for like クライング(?????)カフェ.

but there is this: http://www.gardenhotels.co.jp/campaign/ladies/plan-07/

http://newsphere.jp/business/20150510-1/

women only!

I'm sure there must be a place where salarymen can go and have a good cry, but they're probably also wearing nappies or something.

I walked around Kabukichō last night, it wasn't as out there as I'd thought it might be. maybe b/c it was a wed night in january. I mean yeah I got offered sex with underaged girls but in a place like that that's like being asked for directions. robot restaurant looked pretty fun but I'm alone & that would take away from it. had ramen in golden gai instead.

also these toto toilet seats...the only souvenir I really want

was it nagi in golden gai?

yes it was!

it's the only ramen place in golden gai. i think i mentioned it on this thread earlier. it's actually amazing. i go to the location that's between shin-okubo and shinjuku stations because it seats more than six.

i happened to walk through kabukicho yesterday afternoon as well. i got lost walking back to shinjuku station from some business near hanazono shrine and took an insane loop of shinjuku. somewhere earlier on the thread, i wandered into shin-okubo but yesterday i ended up hitting the strip of korean businesses, which are closer to higashi-shinjuku station, and got even more off track. at some point, i came back toward shinjuku station through kabukicho. first time i noticed the automated anti-touting announcements on strategically-placed loudspeakers. (i would wager that sex with underage girls is not actually available in kabukicho. closest you might get is a 20 year old in a school uniform. most of the attractions except the strip shows and their busloads of chinese and korean tourists and a few savvy pink salons are not really open to foreign visitors).

well he did say "underage girl, 17, 18 years old", & I was thinking that wasn't as underaged as I'd have thought if he'd just said "underaged girl". didn't make eye contact. next guy just walked up to me and just said "sex!". almost lolled.

yeah the broth at nagi was amazing, the little fish.

japan doesn't seem as fucked up, on the very surface at least, as I thought it would seem based on the western media I consume. which I guess isn't surprising in a clickbaity world. though the more fuckedupness is as you say not really open to foreign visitors, I suppose.

i don't mean to sound so critical but the japanese are masters of disguising things/themselves and honne to tatemae

yeah I just meant the sorta lol western coverage like "you can buy live crabs in vending machines!" & "you eat shark flavored ice cream" & this is probably all true but it's not like this is ~usual japanese life~.

buddy currently livin in Tokyo just tweeted this

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/127966/sickness-japan-one-groveling-apology-oldest-boy-band-world

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/snow-country-hokkaido-japan junot diaz running with every cliche and hack metaphor

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/424dat/how_i_can_feel_more_positive_about_living_here/

there's a part in peter carey's book about his son's obsession with japan and their resulting trip to tokyo. he wonders why his son finds japan so attractive. i don't have the book here or i'd quote the exact line but he guesses that possibly his son sees japan as a place that would treasure or appreciate aspects of his personality or his philosophy that are not treasured or appreciated in new york, where he lives. peter carey and his son spend a short time in japan and they find it to be a paradise of ryokans and traditional culture and video games and fast trains. spending a short time reading reddit/japan, there seem to be countless young men in western countries that want to go to japan for...-- it's hard to know why. they have a vision of japan as a utopia, where they might be appreciated for their quiet stoicism and love of japanese culture. it seems like japan attracts a type of expatriate that was perhaps attracted to elements in japanese culture that they may not fully understand or may be mostly imaginary.

on that thread in particular, it seems many of the same young men, a year or a few years down the road, have discovered that japan is BULLSHIT. they look back home and see warmth and acceptance and critical thinking:

Personally I vastly prefer Canada or certain other countries to Japan though. (The genuineness, the open-mindedness, the willingness to talk about the flaws of society etc, instead of the deny-everything if-you-don't-like-it-get-out attitude many people have here.)

i'm sure japanese society is frustrating, especially after a decade but. every place sucks in about the same amount and often for different reasons.

i see round trip tickets to Japan are under $700. so tempting. i have seriously considered teaching English in Japan for years and it seems more and more like something i should/need to do with my life. i took 2 years of Japanese in college and find the language quite agreeable. any tips from anybody who has done ESL in Japan? dylannn what do you do for work?

looking at job boards, i see thousands of esl jobs but i've never investigated it. i have no particular advice except: if you speak enough japanese to do a job interview in japanese and you're willing to come to japan without a job, there's a decent job market. i came to japan planning to go to china within three months and changed my plans and paid an immigration lawyer and got an apartment downtown, and during that time i just lived off some money i had in the bank and found it doable, found a job fairly quickly. tokyo is deceptively cheap, if you get the combination of cheap neighborhood and not having to commute too far or some weird route with lots of transfers.

i lucked into a job where my basic japanese skills are rarely tested, work with middle easterners and europeans and the guests are 33/33/33 european, american, chinese. live in a cool as fuck old neighborhood that still has bath houses and three seat yakitori spots and will be under water when the big one comes, a short walk from the yamanote subway loop.

if you're like "into" japan, it's probably more rewarding? maybe? maybe it's a disappointment. but as someone with no plans to ever live in japan, tokyo is liveable and usually inexpensive and has everything in it that you'd ever need no matter what you're into.

(posting because nobody answered you, adam)

yeah, it's weird. i feel like more people who were really into japan and moved there write on the web about how disappointed they are living there. but that could just be that the negative nancys and neds are the loudest of the bunch?

700$ roundtrip is dirt cheap, yes. that sounds like some garbage chinese airline, though, to be honest.

keep in mind almost any foreigner can get a "teaching job" in japan. sometimes they don't even ask for a degree. that means they're more disposable, higher turn-around rate, and conditions vary widely from company to company, and whether you're actually teaching or not. my girl tried learning english at various types of "english learning centres" and she has hilarious/horrible stories about how you don't really learn anything and the quality varies tremendously

this is all from what i've heard and from friends who have done it, so take it with a grain of salt.

if by esl you mean eikaiwa, i've heard those are the worst (and more popular ones). being an alt is better but you don't actually teach and the less japanese you know, the better. being an alt requires a degree, which means it's better already. proper teaching jobs are different, of course.

esl is probably good if you just want a one or two year break from your life to do whatever. it's not exactly a job with career advancements. a few of my friends did it and came back to not do anything related to teaching, but they had a lot of fun.

and when we were toying with the idea of moving to japan, i'd agree with dylan on rents. everyone tells me japan is so expensive. from my research, that's not the case at all. it's very affordable, so long as you're not doing some entry level job or doing minimum wage-type work

thanks for the responses.

i don't speak Japanese at the moment. it has been 10 years since my classes. i do watch a lot of subbed anime tho.

i am not in any way fluent in Japanese these days but i do have a college degree. it is in studio art and i spend most of my time doing freelance video editing. it is interesting but not very challenging or exciting.

ideally i would like to get a job teaching English, and i would be learning Japanese at the same time through immersion on the culture. but i am not sure where to start. something good for somebody who doesn't know much Japanese =) the best way in for someone who only speaks English at first.

i very interested in Japanese culture and would like to eventually get into translation as well. i always find it very fascinating to listen to an interview with someone who has translated a video game and is constantly faced with all kinds of questions. it sounds like a fun, interesting, creative time.

well i actually worked in the localisation department of a big game developer (a really long time ago). from what i hear most localisation is now done in asia and europe. there are only a few big game devs, though, the biggest being capcom, if memory serves, and their hq is in osaka. translation and loc jobs are not the best for wages, to be honest. ideally, you want to get into a big translation company, or somewhere like united nations in new york; stable and decent pay. otherwise freelance translation is kind of horrible

localisation-wise, you'd be looking to move up to a coordinating or director position; possibly producer role -- this is from a translation or loc tester role. game dev jobs generally pay less, though

i got an offer from blizzard a while ago in southern california. let's just say it's nowhere near competitive. if you love games, then that should be your drive, but again, you'd want to move up to a director or producer role to make any decent wage. it's pretty doable, though

with regard to teaching in japan, my friends were on the jet programme (in canada). i just googled and assume this is the US version: http://jetprogramusa.org/

https://vine.co/v/e9xYFXEhzx0

http://kotaku.com/japanese-mascots-are-too-damn-big-1763733924

i see round trip tickets to Japan are under $700. so tempting. i have seriously considered teaching English in Japan for years and it seems more and more like something i should/need to do with my life. i took 2 years of Japanese in college and find the language quite agreeable. any tips from anybody who has done ESL in Japan? dylannn what do you do for work?

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, March 5, 2016 6:38 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

two of my close college friends got burned out in L.A. and one of them went to Japan for ESL, and the second friend followed suit a couple of years later. my first friend knew little to no japanese but had a successful run there. made a lot of friends, enjoyed teaching, DJed at bars, met himself a lovely local girl, and after six years moved back home to Pittsburgh to raise a family and now he's teaching there. best thing he ever did, i think. my second friend did well there too.

i should add neither of them were particularly confident types or worldly types and both went in a little apprehensively, they just wanted to make a drastic change and it worked out well for them and they're both much happier today as a result.

however my first friend did in fact always express during his time in L.A. his fear of earthquakes, and the reason he left japan was because he was caught up in what was essentially the middle of the Tōhoku quake and evacuation zone (he was inland from the tsunami, fortunately) and his apartment was wrecked. plus he was planning on leaving anyway.

Reading Dylan's post above about motivations for moving to Japan, I'd say that, as someone with no plans to ever go to Japan, my primary motivation for going would be the trees, roadsides, spaces, and buildings, but mostly the trees. I live where I live now because I wanted to live around more trees, better trees, and better spaces. That sounds weird, but I lived in Florida, and I couldn't get the flatness, the exurban ugliness, or the sun out of my head.

I dunno, I think most anime is unmitigated shit and it seems like my hobbies might be considerably more expensive in Japan, but I've definitely romanticized scenes from e.g. Hana and Alice and other movies that make Japan seem like a Frank Lloyd Wright property transformed into a nation. But that doesn't mean I'd like living there.

if you like trees and japan, you probably want to pay sendai a visit...wait for it...the city of trees...

(yes that's touhoku region)

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20160311-00000028-jij-pol

the usual yahoos in the comment section

pictures from my phone vol 1

http://imgur.com/dCZ11VE.jpg
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That's a lot of curry

that's g dyl

craving katsu karei ima

so i

uh

stumbled upon this...

http://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/

sup

my girl pregnant and she has pains in her stomach today and got a thing where they put a camera in her vagina and it showed
baby had arms.r
having a baby in japan is like expensive and bureaucratic. i could send my baby to a private school in canada for the price of a public school in japan (roughly)
and i could buy baby a damier graphite ruck for the price of a fuckin randoseru?
rent is like the same cost of living pretty cheap
my mom could look after the bby in canada and free birth + school
thoughts?

but i like living in tokyo for selfish reasons
please advise

in canada, they have clean air and the kid could go fishing or something??? also thoughts about sending half foreigner kid to school in japan??? but in canada would go to school with under 50% white kids????. selfish reasons to stay in tokyo would probabily lead to breakdown of my marriage feel me

can't imagine wanting to go through pregnancy/birth/infancy in a foreign country isolated from my family, support network, and medical care in English but what do I know

is your partner Japanese and what does she want?

she's japanese but has lived in canada. she's pretty disconnected from her family for various reasons and sees the reaction of my mother as extremely heartening??? like, she couldn't believe that my mother cared so much + they spoke on the phone with lots of questions about nausea and tears the two of them. she brought up the idea of moving to canada again.

depends where in canada i guess, near yr mom could be good

yeah move to Canada for sure

she brought up the idea before speaking to my mother, i mean. she has a good job in japan. i have a pretty good job. we have enough savings to not worry about work for half a year or so. + livign with my mother = free condo + car. ii do like living in tokyo. it sorta seems like money + family support, canada is so much a better option, though. it's hard to get into but... i dunno. actually i really don't know i just don't know how i transit into being like a father to a family. honestly my first thought is like i like living in tokyo dual income no kids and fuck going back to vancouver and living in surrey and i can't even grow up even though i'm 32 years old. i forget even my real arguments for staying in tokyo.

okay.

hmm, yeah, i guess metro van living not really competing with Tokyo in many, many ways

otoh might be the best arrangement with yr mum there and everything

rent is cheaper and our current arrangement where both of us make good income + live in an old arakawa ward neighborhood... but health insurance, buying insurance to give birth, the cost of a health checkups, cost of childcare, cost of primary school -- tokyo is much, much more expensive. also living in japan, my wife has to do a lot of things by herself, where i could pick up a lot of the burden in canada + my mother.

http://i.imgur.com/vmfHc8S.jpg

actually i really don't know i just don't know how i transit into being like a father to a family.

no one ever knows this, you just do it

weigh the pros and cons

but...

my good friend was born and raised in japan, but his parents are american and canadian (they've been living in japan for more than 40 years). he moved to us and canada when he was a teenager. he is a teacher and has three kids with his american wife and they live in vancouver, and even living in an expensive city, he does not want to raise his kids in japan

i don't know what city in canada you'll be at, but basically, his opinion is that he wants his kids to be around a more diverse set of people, which vancouver happens to have. he sees japanese people as not accepting foreigners that much, and for sure international schools are very expensive in japan. but if we're comparing something like edmonton vs japan, i would choose japan if your wife has strong family support over there. also if you live in japan, you have to make sure you can adapt to that culture without feeling miserable about it

but this is about your priorities

go where family will be able to help you and where it makes financial sense. do what benefits the child in the long-term. education in japan is not that great, but the quality of life is good

also unless you live in the country side, japan's air is not exactly cleaner. canada has a couple spots where the air is really bad, but in general, it is better than japan's air quality

uh scratch that last sentence, i misread you

I've never even been to Japan, all my knowledge of it is second-hand from other people who've been there/lived there/have family there but yeah general consensus seems to be that foreigners don't, how shall we say, enjoy the full benefits of Japanese society (whatever they are)

Compound this with the fact that a) parenting is always harder than you think it will be and b) you will need all the help you can get would leave me to recommend that you live where things will be easiest all around, especially for the mother and the child

xp

if i had the choice of vancouver or tokyo, i would choose vancouver hands down btw

xpost i understand the idea of having your kid around a more diverse group of people. i have coworkers with kids and if they're from china, philippines, korea, iran, romania etc etc they all worry about bullying or just the weirdness their kids will feel in japan despite speaking japanese + japanese passport + born in japan. i don't know how serious that is. i have friends that have kids going to private schools in azabu, where there's mostly foreign kids, and it's not much of an issue. also... is it crazy to say that i fear my child will be soft if they live in japan? i don't want to raise a pussy ass kid? also a daughter in japan, i don't think it's unfair to say that japan is not on the cutting edge of giving girls a fair shot compared to men. maybe this is partially my own prejudice against japanese society but???? actually, i think growing up in a place with lots of different viewpoints and people... that's what i'd want my kid to have. also yeah, lots of my coworkers have lived in japan 10, 15 years and they're still far less... you know, part of the country? than they would be in canada. not that the canadian immigrant experience is all beautiful but you know.

also going with the CON: my wife has a strained relationship with her parents. especially her mother. she left home when she was 15.

CON: cost of childcare. cost of giving birth. canada has well funded public schools and i could realistically afford private school.

PRO: my mom is stoked.
PRO: my wife brought up canada by herself. she's lived in canada before.

xpost
thanks everyone for the tips. i'm kind of having this moment of slipping back into bad habits and writing it off as yeah well i won't do this again in six months ever again and overwhelmed and thinking about like i missed out on so much and i actually laughed to myself thinking, "well, when you have a baby, you won't be able to..." and i was listening to an audiobook of infinite jest and drowsing and i'm done having a reckless adolescence even if it lasted a decade too long and all the fathers i know are kind of square dudes and one actually cautioned me the other day against drinking coffee because he said i could get in a caffeine withdrawal and hurt my children in his whatever but actually i'm struggling with thoughts far darker than he could ever imagine probably so who am i going to talk to?

i'll go back to canada, though, take the kid fishing in a few years.

thanks for your kind words and advice.

i've been thinking a lot about my own parents, what they must have thought about when they realized i was in my mom's stomach. my dad joined the air force and it changed the course of his life. i think about what my kid will think about the decision i make right now, what it will mean. i have no idea about the internal lives of my parents. my mother was married once before she married my father and she never told me about it. my mother once told me she took lsd after i told her i took lsd. i have no idea what was going on in her life. i don't know how they did it. i have a lot of respect for them... in a way. i mean, they never went to college themselves but i learned to read when i was too young to read and got a degree in chinese, for whatever reason, and i haven't talked to my father in half a decade but i can't help but respect how he showed me love in his own way and taught me to be a caring person.

now, i heard it's kinda expensive to buy a house in vancouver....

i don't think it's unfair to say that japan is not on the cutting edge of giving girls a fair shot compared to men. maybe this is partially my own prejudice against japanese society but????

Japan is ranked 89th in its treatment of women by the World Economic Forum, they are a disaster in terms of gender equity:

the WEF reports that there are significant inequalities in economic participation and opportunity in Japan, as well as in women’s political empowerment. Japanese women face highly unequal wages, and attend university at significantly lower rates than Japanese men. The ratio of women to men in parliamentary or ministerial positions in the Japanese government is .13.

also fwiw becoming a parent is scary but it's also awesome (or can be, anyway!)

ILX has a good group of smart and supportive parents: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=207147393

> is it crazy to say that i fear my child will be soft if they live in japan?

dyl you know i have a zainichi nk gf, so i struggle daily on how to articulate how japanese people act, but i think japanese people value humility and orderliness and stoic control of heated emotions. to a lot of us westerners, this may seem like soft behaviour, but you know there's a balance to be had. people should speak up and stick up for themselves, but not fight, get out of control, or get loud. this is how i see it. there's a lot of strength in controlling anger and it is something i value, personally. maybe a lot of japanese withhold even the most beautiful of emotions, and that's where i think they take it too far. it's kind of difficult to express what you are saying to someone who hasn't experienced japanese culture, though, as we definitely have differences when it comes to this

i'm not a father, and don't want to give too much advice on it, but once you're a father you pretty much base most decisions on what's good for the kid(s), even if it may not make sense to others or sometimes yourself. responsibilities first, fun times later

also it depends how your wife is, but i know old school japanese wives expect dad to work to death, from 7am to 10pm. on days off, you'd spend time with the child or do something for the child. hopefully your wife is open to taking turns with the child so each of you can get some alone time and also divide responsibilities, but you see what works for you and open communication is like way more important than if you were in a relationship with a canadian, because misinterpretations and miscommunication happen way more often

I don't know you dylannn but I have been a dad for 14 years, there is no "way" that you have to be and I'm definitely not "square" like 90% of other dads I know. I have friends who are pretty full-on artists and filmmakers and also very committed dads, and not remotely square. It sounds like you are kind of sick of being self indulgent and almost ready to reach the point where you realise being self indulgent all the time is actually not freedom, it's kind of restricting in its own weird way.
And the thing you don't know until you experience it is that your kids are a whole other thing from any other kids you have met - whether you adopt or are the biological parent. I genuinely don't like about half of the kids I meet, before I was a dad it was about 80%, but my daughters are just as cool and interesting as it gets.
Lastly while I am crapping on, the stress of the parenting experience is strongly dependent on how complex the living environment is. I lived in Sydney (4 million) with little kids and moved to Hobart (200 000) and the change was wonderful, instead of an hour in the car for some activity, the park was two blocks away. Having your mother on hand sounds like a great way to have regular time out too.

∞ i hear you. i feel like i mostly live in a bubble of like azabu/roppongi and have a limited knowledge of japanese society and cultural mores and most of my japanese friends are in their 20s and grew up or went to school outside of japan-- but maybe i'm trying to be polite here and not say i think japan is fucked up. i find... honestly, having lived in china, just as a comparison, i find what i do encounter here, like attitudes of people to things i take for granted to be... far more foreign and ununderstandable, and the xenophobia is something i try to ignore. and like work culture, like you said. when i hear about the home/work lives of japanese men, it sounds really grim. but i mean like ability to handle the world and various situations?? japan is a low crime / culturally homogeneous (mostly) / low stakes kind of place, where you can float thru life without looking down dark alleys or worrying about anyone scamming you, mostly. is that complete nonsense, to worry about that? might be a bit wrongheaded and there's a chance i haven't expressed it properly. and also just the probably more reasonable idea of exposing them to more! like, i want to send them to a school where they'll be exposed to lots of different people. probably too early to worry about that and it might not even make sense. but maybe i personally don't want to live in canada, even? later, at least. so, i don't know.

we're now only debating where the birth will be: tokyo or vancouver. even if the birth is in tokyo, we'll go to canada soon after. i tend to prefer the birth in vancouver option because it's easier, bureaucratically.

ayo matthew k i posted last night around 4 am drunk, caught the last train home, talking shit to a romanian girl. and just in general i was enjoying the dual income no kids big city adventure we were having and talking about taking a year off to go to new zealand for no reason and she was supposed to be taking birth control, feel me? it's a beautiful thing, though. i had no regret or anything. but it does have me wondering how to raise a kid and-- i'm good, though.
good advice on a simpler place, i think. the tokyo/vancouver question has been the biggest issue.

Was half considering having a kid when I lived half the world away from my family but decided to wait til I came home. It may be different for you but some kind of stability and predictability and simplicity are really really appreciated once you're in the crazy world of having a baby. I didn't want to expend loads of mental energy even navigating the systems (financial, healthcare, parental leave etc) of another place. (NB my friend was in a similar situation but had the baby over there and seems fine, so hardly insurmountable)
When the baby arrives you may feel a tiny bit like 'I am trapped and my life is over' but believe me that time goes really quickly and things get easier/you have more options pretty quickly.

Vancouver's pretty expensive now though! I guess not as bad as Tokyo.

we're now only debating where the birth will be: tokyo or vancouver. even if the birth is in tokyo, we'll go to canada soon after.

Is citizenship of your child an issue?

You would be doing your kids a huge favor to get them dual-citizenship. I would register (or pre-register if possible?) your child's notification of birth at your local Shiyakusho/Nyūkoku kanri-kyoku, there's a lot of paperwork (shussei shoumei sho/shussei todoke), application for kodomo-ka/jidou teate, passports & health insurance).

And finally and most importantly: congratulations and best of luck ルコックさん! ^___^

I feel you dylannn, three years into fatherhood myself and a no kids dual income adventure sounds pretty good about now, but if you've made it into your 30's already, well, we've had our fun, haven't we? How much fun do you need?

Of course it's hardly the end of the world, plenty of fun to be had yet, but most importantly, you (and your partner) will be so, so, sooooo glad to have your mom around to help out with the baby. Takes a village as they say, and that is no lie.

thank you for the dispatches and pics from Japan by the way, thoroughly jealous that you've spent however long you've spent over there, but hey North America ain't so bad. Approximately the same latitude anyway

I might mean longitude, forgive me I dropped out of high school

pictures from my phone vol 1.5

http://i.imgur.com/tNoxI4e.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/NX8w6fW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FDSXDrC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RlID9r6.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/yxujahJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/A69LNMY.jpg

tokyo is definitely cheaper than vancouver, if you rent or even buy a place in a neighborhood like... somewhere around ueno? or if you go just across the border into kawasaki? i have a friend that has an elevator in his house and it cost like 100k but he commutes 4 hours a day. but well funded public schools + socialized medicine + trees and grass + work/life balance is appealing.

Is that near Ueno station in your phone cam pic of the elevated railroad? Looks familiar. He says, about a random scene from a city of 20 million people.

yes. if you go out the panda gate and turn right at the dusty stuffed panda in a plexiglass box, walk toward the park. i like looking down from the bridge that goes from station complex to the park.

still waiting for everyone to move to tokyo.

might get to come back to tokyo this winter. am hoping to spend a summer there soon too. such a rad place, I can't wait.

http://qz.com/785654/toyota-is-using-sewage-sludge-to-power-its-new-electric-car/

japan's obsession with poop knows no bounds

http://images.gawker.com/18k1b9daqid0gjpg/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636.jpg

Fuckin' Sale

sup i just mov ved to minowa signed a 1 year lease

Damn! I'm so very jealous, you're hop and a skip from the Kiso Valley and Takayama, my favourite places.

takayama is awesome

Just looked it on google maps. kind of land locked, no?

Amused at the idea of feeling land locked in Japan, an island archipelago that is ~200km at its widest points and traversed by thousands of rivers and streams and lakes.

Speaking of lakes, when I think of Minowa, I remember the gorgeous maple "blooms" in the autumn:

https://www.google.com/search?q=もみじ湖&tbm=isch

odd that this site code can't (or can no longer) handle basic query strings.

Try this instead:

http://goo.gl/ugVN7H

point taken, I guess I meant relatively landlocked.

The train ride to Takayama is awesome, I have never seen so many hydroelectric power dams but they are all kind of 50s and quaint looking. The mountain rivers are just nuts.

A friend stopped over in Kyoto on a business trip and got me a sticker that has a drawing of the Kogetsudai on it and says "Ginkaku-Ji Traffic Safety Guard" around it. I barely remember any kanji and have never been outside of Minato-ku so figuring it out took an hour or two of research and analysis.

I like the idea of carefully manicured sand piles as zen traffic safety though

gritty tokyo neighborhood not scenic nagano hamlet.

famous for...? sanya: day workers, yakuza murdering leftwing filmmakers, gentrification. former burakumin neighborhoods. yoshiwara, formerly a genteel red light district housing women sold into sexual slavery now acres of soaplands serving chinese tourists.

Quite a distinction

why is japan so fucked up good god

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/34366/1/lifting-the-lid-on-japans-underground-chicano-culture

I read and watched this and was kid of nonplussed as the appropriation of cultures and style has been going on shibuya for awhile now

Then again I only have a visitors perspective so i'd defer o someone who lives there (Dylan???)

https://twitter.com/RudyHavenstein/status/829436261324578816

kurodasan day

you think trump is bad

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/24/shinzo-abe-wife-akie-under-pressure-ties-ultra-nationalist-school-japan

Children aged between three and five sing the national anthem every morning and memorise the 1890 imperial rescript on education (pdf), which demands loyalty to the emperor and sacrifice for one’s country. The US occupation authorities banned the rescript, believing it had fuelled pre-war militarism.

Kagoike is the Osaka branch leader of Nippon Kaigi, an ultra-conservative lobby group whose members include Shinzo Abe and more than a dozen members of his cabinet. The group wants to rebuild the military, claims that Japan “liberated” east Asia from western colonialism during the war, and that the US-authored post-war constitution has emasculated the country’s “true, original characteristics”.

this is the equivalent of little nazi kids or kkk children chanting nationalistic chants

http://saigaijyouhou.com/blog-entry-15639.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-education-idUSKBN13X1UV

Cultural activities at the school, where the walls are lined with images of the imperial family to which students bow throughout the day, include learning traditional Japanese musical instruments, martial arts and board games. Students also take trips to military bases.

Kagoike said he hopes other schools will adopt their curriculum so children are prepared to protect their nation against potential threats from other countries.

"If an imperialist nation is trying to harm Japan, we need to fight against it. For that, revising Article 9 of Japan's Constitution is indeed necessary and should be carried out as soon as possible," he said.

Article 9 of the U.S.-drafted constitution renounces war and, if read literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces, although Japan's military, called the Self-Defense Forces, has over 200,000 personnel and is equipped with high-tech weapons.

Revising the constitution is one of the key policy targets of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party. His government has already stretched its limits to give the military a bigger role.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/17/national/osaka-preschool-scrutinized-passing-slurs-koreans-chinese/#.WLJCgHeZOb8

In February last year, a parent in her 30s received a handwritten letter from the deputy principal that bluntly said, “I don’t discriminate. But in my mind, I hate Koreans and Chinese.”

The woman, who is ethnically Korean but a naturalized Japanese, pulled her child from the school several days later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeDcrCdpJc

I tend to cringe when people say Japan is weird or fucked up but I just seen what might be the worst thing yet from the country: bottles of pretend children's urine, as if it's supposed to be sexy. But actually that's not as bad as that cannibal guy becoming a celebrity/author/porn performer.

pictures from my phone vol 2

http://imgur.com/3Wkxs1U.jpg
http://imgur.com/gwByj6F.jpg
http://imgur.com/OrhLlKd.jpg
http://imgur.com/AXxwlt5.jpg
http://imgur.com/VqvWUnP.jpg
http://imgur.com/Rab2MXz.jpg
http://imgur.com/NgwewN7.jpg
http://imgur.com/9NduRwm.jpg
http://imgur.com/jmFTEdv.jpg
http://imgur.com/3NW8Tqb.jpg

http://imgur.com/NlKs077.jpg
http://imgur.com/PToq0cl.jpg

Solid Ikebukuro gritpix itt.

Speaking of lakes, when I think of Minowa, I remember the gorgeous maple "blooms" in the autumn.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Sunday, December 11, 2016 12:12 PM (five months ago)

huh I just booked a trip for the fall, must have been inspired by this memory provoked a few months ago.

tokyo realness. all those pictures were taken right around each other in taito ward (nihonzutsumi/senzoku/asakusa) except for the grey office tower on the west side of ryogoku and tokyo tower. most of tokyo outside of the central wards seems to look like that.

where are the vomit pics

http://i.imgur.com/OcEgSYd.jpg

i don't commute anymore so pictures of vomit have slowed down

lol

beautiful photos of the cities at night: https://www.flickr.com/photos/megane_wakui/33699769516/in/photostream/

i like these franck bohbot dusk tokyo pictures http://www.franckbohbot.com/tokyo

flying in today! gonna be in town for a month plus, staying between Tokyo and Yokohama

what are you going to do?

we have clear orangina.

http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20170620/10/hatimitsumama/08/f8/j/o1175078613964805503.jpg

one of the photos from my phone above of la cachette hotel wasn't an attempt to recreate a franck bohbot picture but there's one that looks just like it. it's the only love hotel between yoshiwara and asakusa. it changes colors every ten seconds. there's a "black music" bar right across from its entrance and a restaurant owned by a pro-wrestler.

i often wish other people lived in tokyo, so i could enjoy an ilx thread like the london or new york threads, where we could discuss train lines and... the toyosu move? mmmozza opening in aoyama?

TS: doutor vs Starbucks

doutour has cheese toast and tuna melts, a menu of conventional coffee, allows smoking and hanging out, and just generally seems welcoming. i would go to starbucks in other countries but not in tokyo.

All along, iirc, Japan has quietly continued to sell Zima. And now ... they've reintroduced it in the US. Japan: on the flavored malt beverage cutting edge.

Yeah. Starbucks was a bad comparison but I couldn't think of another place like Doutor

chain wise ya probably nothing competes with doutor

but chains are generally of better quality in japan than in the us (look at 7-11 in japan or lawson for example)

maybe seattle's best, coffee bean and tea leaf or peet's coffee in the us, but i'm not sure if these are national chains or just small chains

i often wish other people lived in tokyo, so i could enjoy an ilx thread like the london or new york threads, where we could discuss train lines and... the toyosu move? mmmozza opening in aoyama?

― dylannn, Tuesday, June 27, 2017 4:28 AM (five hours ago)

FAP in Shonan/Enoshima? LMK bruh

that would be cool! i'm going through some personal shit + waiting to get paid from some writing projects but probably next week, if that's cool. maybe euler is up for it? i'm going through both of your old posts to research possible topics of discussion: beer, sonic youth, rem.

phew, just got in, my first time in the summer, and oh the humidity; could I be craving a Pocari Sweat? I'm here as an academic visitor. I brought my family for the first time so we're gonna see a lot too. where do you guys live? I'm in 日吉.

@Euler
How long is your stay?

I'll def be stopping through Yokohama, will be doing some lol commuting between Shonan & Daikanyama for a bit.

@dylannn- further research prompts: east VanCity hangz, craft happushu capsule reviews, where to buy vintage le coq sportif windcheaters in ameyoko, wizard caps.

also best 小籠包 in Yokohama would be something I'd be interested in knowing. I used to know about 15 years ago but shit changes.

I'm here until the end of the month

Remember dudes, for relaxing times, make it suntory time : )

all other times strong zero 9% ume

closest station to me is minowa, a three minute or so walk away, thirty seconds to yoshiwara, ten minutes to asakusa.

i know shonan fairly well, as i lived in kanagawa when i first got here and rode my bike down to hiratsuka and enoshima quite often. i went out to kanagawa at the end of last week and went to sagami lake, which looks like the abandoned hotels/failed tourism project landscapes further west. i rode a boat shaped like a whale.

http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=9;t=021257

Rikidozan was a bully who hated any American who couldn't make him money. He was on drugs & alcohol & loved to bash Americans or anyone weaker than he. He was killed as a result of a knife wound that he received in a fight on 12-8-63 at the New Latin Quarter, a famous night stop in Tokyo. It was not a mob hit. Rikidozan had more than just mob connected, he was part of a gang & a member of the yakuza. Organized crime financed JWA in those days. On the night he was stabed he was sitting around throwing coasters at a black american band, drunkenly yelling "Neeruro go homu. Sonnabeech". Riki got up & started talking to a women in the door way to one of the restrooms. A 24 year old member of a rivial gang, Katsushi Murata, tried to squeeze by Dozan but bumped into him. Words were exchanged & Riki sent the kid flying with a right hand. Rikidozan jumped on top of him, crazed with anger & drugs, and started hitting him with blows to the face. Murata grabbed a six-inch hunting knife he had on his belt and stuck into Rikidozan's belly. The wrestler stood up in pain & Murata fled. Riki went back to his table & drinking companions & forced his way on to the stage, wair he sang "Mack the Knife". "There is a killer in the house, look at what he did to me!", he said as he opened his jacket to show a bloodly chest. He was taken to a clinic that night & to a American hospital the next morning. He had surgery, & was doing well, but against Dr.'s orders started drinking & developed peritonitis. He had a second operation & 4 hours later was dead. Doctors later claimed he died from anesthetic. Some Japanese would later claim that Dozan was killed by the American CIA.

After leaving the New Latin Club, Katsushi Murata had gone with his mob boss & 3 others to Riki Apartments to apologize and negotiate some sort of monetary settlement before turning himself into the police. Murata waited outside Rikidozan's penthouse in the parking lot, while the boss went inside. He was confronted by an angry band of gangsters loyal to Rikidozan. Murata allowed himself to be slashed in the face and chest with butcher knifes, but when his companions were attacked Murata reacted & cut a foot long gash in the abdomen of one of the attackers. Japanese prosecutors charged Murata with murder & found him guilty of manslaughter & sentenced him to prison for seven years. Murata always claimed self-defence. Later Katsushi Murata rose high in the ranks of the Sumiyoshi. By age 50 in the mid 80's, he had his own sub-gang. A great honor. Every year, on the day before the anniversary of Rikidozan's death (done not to upset the family) Murata would go to the Riki's grave in the Ikegami Honmonji Cemetery to bow and pray before the life-size bronze bust of the wrestler.

#OnThisDay in 1963: Rikidōzan dies from complications from a stab wound he suffered in a Tokyo nightclub. He was just 38. RIP [thread] pic.twitter.com/r9uBriWZTI

— Allan (@allan_cheapshot) December 15, 2017

on a night when bob sapp literally fought a grizzly bear (sneaky promotion for a boxing card) and uchimura teruyoshi brought his youthful swagger to nhk's flagship new year's eve roundup of enka, sexy zone and parodies of tv shows i've never seen, it is sad that the story of the night is an aging kansai hooligan and comedy elderstateman hamada something donning blackface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGUtXtKALb4

浜田君焼きそばを食べろ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8RCIEK3h8I

japanese tv sux balls.

https://i.imgur.com/OmOLhnB.gif

in other news from new year's eve tv, we saw this guy's dick.

i've watched that gif countless times and i'm still not sure what i'm seeing there.

That is a peculiar looking organ i must admit

Hey were all きれい in our own way

upon further inspection, i believe he had the prudent forethought to bag the head and shaft in some kind of flesh colored possibly nylon sack.

pictures from my phone vol 3

http://imgur.com/WClocsd.jpg

i forget how to do this

http://imgur.com/xYHcYDQ.jpg
http://imgur.com/9lKSaWD.jpg
http://imgur.com/2Rgv0MQ.jpg
http://imgur.com/Sn6C8aL.jpg
http://imgur.com/Daz9M5R.jpg

Cool shots

What’s your go-to canned coffee these days?

craft boss black or the georgia japan craftsman

http://imgur.com/TuFz2MFp.jpg

http://imgur.com/TuFz2MFp.jpg

well golly
https://imgur.com/TuFz2MF.jpg it's there anyways

Noted.

What’s the latest, D?

hey, nothing. im committed i think to living in tokyo for the near future. i moved again, between asakusa and ueno. its a danchi so the rent is shockingly low, populated exclusively by 80+ year old women, a few chinese families. chill neighborhood and not too far from our old place near minami senju. kid got into daycare.

right now its sanja matsuri and those tattooed short skirt men are drinking strong zero, pissing in parking lots all across this half of taito ward.
i was forced to wade into it on my walk to buy snus at the tobacco shop beside maruetsu in asakusa and got a brief taste of it.

Really want to try strong zero

Man, how great is this, what a life!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2018/05/15/farewell-doreen-simmonds-85-year-old-nottingham-conquered-japans/

pictures from my phone vol 4 mito morning
https://imgur.com/h4501uL.jpg
https://imgur.com/KuWrPoF.jpg
https://imgur.com/h7l13yj.jpg
https://imgur.com/SmYzgKa.jpg
https://imgur.com/WbbsJXP.jpg
https://imgur.com/ocmi5oi.jpg

it's true that anywhere outside of central tokyo excepting osaka and parts of the next ten biggest cities not including satellites of tokyo is dreary

No way, Kanazawa is great

Hell no, Gifu motherfucker!

If you choose to get a place on the border of the country/city you get some real beautiful places

Right now only thing holding me back from living in japan is the japanese working environment

The work I’m in is not available to english speakers in japan (not even western companies), as you’d need to be fluent in japanese to take on that job over there

xpoost
kanazawa is a theme park
gifu is a suburb of nagoya

i'm exaggerating and i didn't mean dreary as absolutely negative. i love to stroll abandoned arcades and deserted red light districts. much of tokyo is dreary in a pleasant way.
most of the country that i've seen is beautiful and worth visiting, probably especially if you're not into big cities.

another intense gallery... that soapland shot is terrifying.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/queen-chateau-soapland

woulda loved to attend one of those back in the day

there are still a few in la

for science, research and reporting to the p01ic3 of course

Nice shots D

pretty massive earthquake in japan

and the west reporting erroneous and incomplete reports

smdh

6.4 is what I saw earlier on the USGS site

6.6, Hokkaido. houses buried in landslides, 2 reported deaths already

http://www.asahicom.jp/ajw/articles/images/AS20180906002535_comm.jpg
from the Asahi Shimbun

I missed the recent Kansai earthquake by a day and I’m in Sapporo in a couple of weeks. Sooner or later I’m going to be caught up in one of these, which is a pretty sobering thoughts.

Is the rain from typhoon jebi a factor in the landslides or just a coincidence?

Does dylannnn still post here?

Planning for 2+ week work trip. Last time I commuted from Chigasaki to Shibuya which was a little long but the family was stoked on the beach.

Was considering Karuizawa but that may also suck in the coming months, might be better to stay more local? I used to randomly hang in Tokorozawa back in the day and kind of have a fondness for scraping the edge of the outer suburbs. 2LDK mansions are surprisingly cheap on airbnb.

Haven’t seen him in a while but I thought he moved to china?

I found Ueno pretty easy to stay last time. It's the opposite side of the Yamanote line but there are straight-across trains from Akihabara. But Ueno Park and the museums etc around there make for nice variety, and the place has a good feel.

i'm in beijing a lot these days but still based in tokyo!

i hate leaving this particular ward in tokyo, so i base this mostly on transit. i don't see a commute from karuizawa working... i just looked up the transit situation and you'd have a tough time making it under 3 hours once you came into ueno or tokyo station on the hokuriku shinkansen then transferring to the yamanote. hakone or ohiradai, anywhere out there, not quite as pretty as karuizawa but you're on the odakyu line, one train to shibuya, get there in an hour and a half. you could even go somewhere way up in tochigi and get in easier than from karuizawa, still in some pretty mountains and not far from the water. how about along the ibaraki coast? i was going to recommend hiratsuka or somewhere else on the shonan coast (or down the miura peninsula) for good balance between city/ocean/mountain, but chigasaki is right there.

if it's the city, maybe kitasenju? it's a happening neighborhood suddenly and easy to get into the city but remote enough that it feels like you're in chiba. akabane out in kita ward, if you like that showa atmosphere.

In my much more limited experience, I second Ueno and Okachimachi.

Kitasenju look interesting.

I get to spend a couple of months in Tokyo next fall. My wife is going to be a visiting scholar at Keio, which apparently comes with an on campus flat.

i live just north of ueno station, and i'd recommend getting just a bit beyond the area, especially if you're staying in an airbnb. just the sheer number of tourists staying around here, the hundreds of hotels and airbnbs and other quasi-legal minpaku, all the tourists flocking to asakusa and ameyoko and the zoo, it can be offputting, i think.

if not kitasenju, then maybe minami senju or nihonzutsumi, a fascinating neighborhood that has a history as a center of labor struggle, outcastes, day laborers and homeless and plenty of charm still left, fairly welcoming because around 2008 world cup and before, hostels started to be built, business hotels, slowly being gentrified as the flophouses and business hotels are being converted to hotels catering to chinese tourists and suburbanites move in from chiba, still close enough to asakusa to walk down (five, ten minutes) and see the northern half of that area, yoshiwara, kappabashi etc. eat on the arcades around sensoji at dusk when the tourists have left... or around the triangle formed by nishi-nippori, nippori and mikawashima stations, right in the heart of gritty shitamachi, very quiet especially as you approach mikawashima, and yanaka ginza and the yanasen area are just to the west, but easy to get in and out. or further west, machiya or oji or otsuka, so you can stay in a chill neighborhood, ride the city's last streetcar around, but still hop on the yamanote to get to ikebukuro or shibuya or wherever. or even across the river in sumida ward, still in the early process of being gentrified (because it's going to be underwater when the big one hits and the alluvial soil liquefies), plenty of charm, museums and parks and good restaurants.

I have been a visiting scholar at Keio with an on-campus flat but it was in Hiyoshi fwiw. Though then you’re close to Yokohama which for livability I might prefer to Tokyo?

I find the areas around Ueno very sympa, Asakusa and even over the river toward the sumo stadium. These areas are older but seem somehow very solid, if that makes any sense.

Hopefully I will be going to Kyoto in April.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/15/japan-cyber-security-minister-admits-has-never-used-computer/

these photos of everyday life are great: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/tokyo-street-photographer-mikiko-hara/

as is: http://www.youtube.com/user/Rambalac/videos

Tell me more about this "Ueno"...

jk, please don't! I spent way too much time there in the 00s, plying my wares on the mean streets of Ameyoko. Fond memories of this dive: https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1311/A131101/13008521/

Thanks dylannn for the recs, I'll spend this weekend doing some more research and hopefully booking by Sunday. No offense to the other recommendations but in case it's not obvious I'm looking for to stay not quite inaka but as far outside of town as I can manage (now that Karuizawa is off the table, Chichibu may be pushing it).

I’m still perplexed ueno is an actual tourist spot

chichibu would be doable. you could probably go a little further west to kofu, and have an easier time getting in to tokyo and be way out there but still in a town.

ueno, the keisei narita line dumps people right there, within walking distance to asakusa, the zoo, akihabara on 99% of foreign tourist itineraries and package tour stops, a billion hotels around the stations, ameyoko is now given over to mostly touristy-type shit, so it makes sense that people stroll through on their way to akihabara. it's a weird place to choose to live, i realize now, at ueno in peak tourism. i live in a danchi occupied by mostly 70 and 80 year olds who protested the construction of a hotel right next door, but what can you do? i should take my own advice and move to kofu.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Why-large-scale-immigration-would-be-bad-for-Japan

Replace japan for the US in that article and ilxors would ban the hell out of you

Thing is, nikkei’s arguments are exactly the same arguments US republicans and Canadian tories make

i don't really agree with tasker. i don't think japan will tolerate large-scale immigration, anyways, but i don't think that's what abe is trying to push, either.

i'm not really a keen observer of japanese politics but it seems like it's not immigration but deeper problems that are the issue. i think you could look at it from tasker's point of view, like, there are inefficiencies and we could just solve them.

but also, there are "labor shortages" but most new jobs are low income zero hour contract jobs: low-paid irregular workers account for nearly 40% of the entire labor force in 2017 (compared with 15.3% in 1984 before deregulation),29 while Japan’s minimum wage is the lowest among 19 advanced economies: ¥798 per hour (on average for FY 2016). ... Moreover, the number of the working poor (those who earn less than ¥2 million a year) increased from 10.9 million in 2012 to 11.32 million in 2016. https://apjjf.org/2018/6/INOUE.html bringing in temporary and quasi-temporary workers from the china or vietnam or nepal helps put off real reform, caters to the corporations that have benefited from abenomics, maybe forestalls left agitation for better quality of life, worker rights etc. don't worry about immigration fucking up the social welfare system when it's already been gutted. don't worry about a labor shortage when everywhere else in the developed world is reducing poverty except japan, 1 in 7 japanese children are poor, the worst gender pay gap among developed nations, corporations are making record profits but wages haven't stagnated for nearly three decades...

turn the place over to the chinese, i don't care

fuck, have stagnated for decades, among other typos.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/13/business/poverty-japan-underclass-struggles-achieve-upward-mobility/#.W--Zonozarc

ilx japanophiles, are any of you knowledgeable about japanese art history especially okakura tenshin, fenollosa, meiji aesthetic nationalism, new conceptions of oriental art history and unitary asia?

or any good books on the development of asian art history, even.

if not, that's okay, too.

The Musée Guimet here just had an exhibition on Meiji art and the catalogue could be relevant: here. Nb it may be in French, I haven’t seen it. My autumn was too busy to go to the exhibition.

“On Tuesday, after a flood of eager consumers crashed the website of the electronics manufacturer Sharp, the company said that it would sell its latest line of masks via lottery.”

if you had told me in advance that Japan and Sweden would be outliers in the quality of their response to covid-19 I would have said "sure, makes sense" but I would have assumed the opposite of what actually went down.

Among other headlines you wouldn’t expect about japan

Low-tech Japan challenged in working from home amid pandemic

maybe this will finally cure them of fax machines

And hanko! Nice though they are.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent-family-fabricated

Thanks, good article

decided to do a (long) thread on nazis in anime/manga lol

major tw for nazi imagery, pedophilia, and antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/rhjaSTiBBT

— ube bebe race reveal party (@VlVlISM) April 20, 2021

Some of this is pretty shocking. I've seen a lot of back and forth about what Attack On Titan is really doing but I don't know.

Thanks for linking

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/18/drink-alcohol-japan-urges-young-people/

they should hire Viz as consultants for their national "drink more booze, kids" ad campaign

This is a bad idea

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/business/tiny-apartments-tokyo.html

The times really seems to have a handle on this theme

i lived in a tiny apartment. the bed was in a loft accessed by a ladder. the loft ceiling was too low to make love in many positions, nothing more elevated than a modified froggy style. to avoid climbing down, it was best to begin and finish in the living room / dining room / everything room.

tokyo is affordable. you don't need to live like this. it is fun for a while.

americans: somehow i missed that Strong Zero chuhai is now available in the USA as "-196" (was that the OG name in jp?) in lemon, grapefruit and peach flavors.

still waiting for umeshisho, sudachi or shiikwaasa flavors kana

i think strong zero is subtitled by -196 still

sugarfree kakuhai in a can, soda and whiskey only, has been replaced by more creative bourbon soda cans, evan williams, and so on. i wonder if americans get those

I drank so much strong zero in fukuoka last summer

Thank you 24 hour family mart

i like canned wild turkey and soda.

i appreciate the new gin tonic line from suntory, especially the original. previously it seemed that only gin soda was available in a can.

dyl, i have to go to make a stop in Omiya (!!!) next month. previously i have only been through Omiya going roughly 250kmph heading to the mountains. any tips or hidden gems?

i knew i had been, but i had to look at google photos for the day to see what i did there. i tagged along for a photoshoot at hikawa jinja, pleasant and shady in midsummer. i don't have any tips. i barely remember it. above-average commuter hub, good for turning up b-class gourmet gems. preserved 1980s suburbia atmosphere in the decaying department stores. affordable girls bars. surprisingly well-stocked second hand shops. and shotengai properly clogged in early evening with carousing office workers, high school kids slow to return home, and homemakers picking up dinner.

There’s a really good train museum in Omiya and a rather bizarre little people mover style train bolted to the side of the Shinkansen tracks.

Love a good decaying shotengai, though.

The only place on my “want to go list in Omiya” is this Izakaya

https://maps.app.goo.gl/sEf2vDjNqDZzwiDr5?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

I have no idea how it made it on the list but I’m guess it was on Kodoko no Gurume by the looks of things.

I am in Japan

Thanks dyl, will be up there for a 葬儀 but will bookend the services with work and a vacation (えー?... 4-5C is not something I enjoyed while there).

Looking up B級グルメ options around our hotel and the izakaya Ed mentions is on the next 区画.

My wife is concerned about the amount of ラブホ in the vicinity but I told her the other side of the station looks even seedier. Neither of us have ever been there so it's a new experience for all of us.

1980s suburbia atmosphere in the decaying department stores

i wish i had spent more time in Saitama. Very much this vibe. Only passed thru Omiya on my way from Kanagawa to Miyagi but it seemed chill, for such a big hub.

ご愁傷様です Steve

Actually, I wonder if anyone could help with something, I'm looking for 'walking around POV' YouTube channels that specialise in older towns/villages/places in Japan, there are a ton of city-based ones that I've found, but I'm sure there must be more uploaded in the native language and maybe the kanji barrier is stopping me.

thanks matthew 💛🙏

@Maresnest: my kindergarten level japanese search term recommendations to the rescue:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=歩く+4K+POV+田舎

shit, i need to render that in UTF-8:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E6%AD%A9%E3%81%8F+4K+POV+%E7%94%B0%E8%88%8E

Saitama also is also a big black hole for me. I’ve done way more walking around decaying suburbs of kanagawa and Chiba in search of sake breweries than I have in Saitama. I think all I’ve been to is the train museum in Omiya and Kawagoe Coedo Machi - so tourist stuff.

XP - Ahhh, thanks so much Steve you've expanded my horizons madly, I double-screen these vids when I'm working from home to give me a window to look out at, this is fantastic.

i like picking for a visit random suburban stations an hour or so along a major train line. the best holiday i took in recent years was to mito in ibaraki.

maybe especially if you followed along with the thread this is interesting https://thebaffler.com/salvos/eastern-promises-levi-king

Enjoyed that , thanks

Yeah, that's a good read, thanks.

That was amazing dyl, thank you for sharing. <3

But this stopped me cold in my tracks:

"But it does mean I am sought out by sophisticated tourists when W. David Marx doesn’t get back to them."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Who’s that

he's some oxford mississippi kid whose penchant for vintage clothing brought him to Japan in the late 90s where he is now a culture correspondent.

He's a decent writer, his book from a few years back 'Ametora' was great.

And the clothing thing came later, he was way into Shibuya Kei and did an internship at some magazine like Popeye, where he got hipped to the whole Nigo/Bape/Cornelius deal.

i'm sure i discovered david marx because momus mentioned him in bitchy asides on his blog. i liked this series he wrote back then: https://neojaponisme.com/2012/02/28/the-history-of-the-gyaru-part-one/. and this one: https://neojaponisme.com/2011/11/28/the-great-shift-in-japanese-pop-culture-part-one/. i haven't read his books.

Really enjoyed the piece dylannn

Linkin Park is playing in Omiya the day we leave... who's in?

"pictured here holding a rocket launcher"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-10/yakuza-crime-boss-admits-to-smuggling-nuclear-material/104802328

Loved yr work dylannn

thanks everyone
i owe a lot to the the encouragement or at least tolerance of ilx over the years

I liked Marx's Status and Culture book

Off to Osaka tomorrow. The baffler article was great thanks Dylan

Yeah, fascinating essay, great writing!

Reprinted!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/14/tokyo-drift-what-happens-when-a-city-stops-being-the-future

it doesn't really work in the guardian but if you put a provocative headline and some pictures people will scroll it and react

I guess the lede is clickbait for the Guardian “but I’m a traveller, not one of these wretched tourists” core demographic.
I think the piece is FAR more insightful and thought-provoking than that, and I have to own up to being that demographic, so I say this only as a comment on its suitability. Hoping their readership will learn some stuff like I did.

https://soranews24.com/2025/01/28/71-year-old-japanese-man-who-wanted-to-look-cool-robbed-63-houses-treated-strangers-to-sushi/

I'm in Omiya AMA

I'm no longer in Omiya

how has the experience changed you?

Anyone have restaurant recs in Tokyo and osaka?

Tokyo: The Open Book
Osaka: Bears Namba

I have a few Omiya recommendations if anyone's ISO.

Ramen Take Saburo in Asakusa
https://s.tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1311/A131102/13164284/dtlphotolst/

where are you staying in tokyo? hard to get a bad meal really

this was a handy guide to the various neighbourhoods
https://whenin.tokyo/

thanks