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.

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/