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fart simpson)
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sex slaves being less common would immediately make it less comfortable for expats and I'm assuming most of them would stay in tokyo, which makes everyone miserable expat or not.stephenthinkpad posted:Well I have never been to Japan so I can't argue with you, I am just going by 2nd hand impression. But I am talking about the Japanese "thing" of going to KFC in Christmas, and celebrate Valentine's Day in their own Japanese way. I call these little gestures "pandering to the western culture". I don't know what else do call them. I can list alot of other things such as baseball and pro wrestling, etc. I wouldn't consider any of that "pandering" to a culture and more like capitalism successfully commercialized events that no japanese person should organically care about. For christmas in particular it was just a successful add campaign by KFC that made it into a pseudo tradition. Cao Ni Ma has issued a correction as of 16:48 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 16:45
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Here’s an example: https://www.expatexplorer.hsbc.com/survey/country/Japan/Singapore Japan was also 32nd out of 33 worldwide in 2019, and worst in Asia. Think the above is for 2020 where they fared a bit better overall but I think only losing to Beijing in Asia? I’ll admit “on drat near every one” was hyperbole and a bit of a pisstake. Expat surveys also vary hugely on how they weigh various factors and their methodology (as I recall HSBC is fairly decent because they try to draw from a broader sample set and not just “our customers” aka all the highly paid executives), but Japan consistently loses points in these things for factors like ability to make friends/fit in/social acceptance and whatnot.
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Dec 28, 2020 16:47
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They're not pandering to western culture, businesses are adapting western commercial holidays to Japanese culture. I am not sure culture is a thing to which one can pander, and anyhow the intended audience is Japanese people.
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Dec 28, 2020 16:52
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I think my experience in Japan was different then most expats in that the more I lived there the more I became convinced that the thinking and behavior of Japanese people was fundamentally the same as people who I had known back home. Especially as I learned the language and started making friends there. It was part of an unraveling of my previous thoughts on “the east” which I now realize had been shaped by the bubble of growing up in the US.
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Dec 28, 2020 16:54
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Chomskyan posted:I think my experience in Japan was different then most expats in that the more I lived there the more I became convinced that the thinking and behavior of Japanese people was fundamentally the same as people who I had known back home. Especially as I learned the language and started making friends there.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:07
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Chomskyan posted:I think my experience in Japan was different then most expats in that the more I lived there the more I became convinced that the thinking and behavior of Japanese people was fundamentally the same as people who I had known back home. Especially as I learned the language and started making friends there. In my personal experience this isn’t really all they different, and this is essentially experience of anyone who actually learns the language and meaningfully interfaces with the culture. The question just becomes how many of the expats around you actually do so, and what kind of people do you hang out with. The overall issue is that there was and is and probably will always be incentives to otherize Japan/Asian cultures for western audiences, be it for actual monetary compensation or social purposes as you try to frame yourself as having had unique experiences or having expertise in a subject few have. The reality is way more boring; people are largely similar everywhere.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UfxcjVu8hw
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Dec 28, 2020 17:11
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Kinda case in point, just flipped to Instagram and what do I see but a Polish guy I know from Japan who’s back in Poland for a bit (I think while his visa processes after he hastily married a girl because his work visa was denied); his story shows a segment from a news show in Poland about sex dolls in Japan. He quips “please see a doctor Japan”. I can guess at the content of this segment. I can also guess why they didn’t run a similar segment about RealDolls made in the US.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:15
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LimburgLimbo posted:In my personal experience this isn’t really all they different, and this is essentially experience of anyone who actually learns the language and meaningfully interfaces with the culture. The question just becomes how many of the expats around you actually do so, and what kind of people do you hang out with.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:16
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Yeah it's really easy to live in Japan without knowing the language and having your own bubble of other white people. Which I guess is fine, but from my experience it's just bitching about how racist Japanese people are. Lol guess what the Polish guy I mentioned above talks about allll the time. Usually mixed in with some good ‘ol racism of his own, along with gems like “Japan is way more racist than Poland, because I’ve never experienced racism in Poland”
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Dec 28, 2020 17:26
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The funniest thing I've read recently is Japan closing it's borders to foreign tourists to prevent COVID is actually extremely racist.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:32
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LimburgLimbo posted:In my personal experience this isn’t really all they different, and this is essentially experience of anyone who actually learns the language and meaningfully interfaces with the culture. The question just becomes how many of the expats around you actually do so, and what kind of people do you hang out with. I think this is all correct. I’ll note that most of the expats I knew didn’t learn Japanese and didn’t engage with the culture. They stuck around other expats and Japanese who could speak english. So based on that I suspect that the experience you and I had is rare, but admit I don’t have any hard proof that this is the case
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Dec 28, 2020 17:36
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LimburgLimbo posted:Here’s an example: I always wondered why Japan doesn't have told many immigrants moving to it compared to say Singapore or the West. LimburgLimbo posted:The entire premise that Japan is significantly more “lonely” than elsewhere is questionable. The dude is also definitely not an “expert”. Thanks for the detailed response.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:42
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https://twitter.com/VisonaNicola/status/1343597889419948035?s=19
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Dec 28, 2020 17:45
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:The funniest thing I've read recently is Japan closing it's borders to foreign tourists to prevent COVID is actually extremely racist. Well, closing to tourists is fine or course, but on that subject the first ban also banned permanent residents, leaving a lot of people who have lived a long drat time in Japan stuck outside. THAT was extremely hosed. And when combined with the extremely lackluster and loose “lockdown” Japan had, it’s just plain a slap in the face to foreign residents. Chomskyan posted:I think this is all correct. I’ll note that most of the expats I knew didn’t learn Japanese and didn’t engage with the culture. They stuck around other expats and Japanese who could speak english. So based on that I suspect that the experience you and I had is rare, but admit I don’t have any hard proof that this is the case Yeah for sure it’s less common in a numbers sense. For western expats coming over and hanging a few years either doing some specific work or having their Japan Adventure is overall more common by far. I just dislike to normalize that as if it’s what’s expected/should be.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:47
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my boss last time I was in Japan referred to her currently stint there as her third 'Japanese adventure.' She was stationed there 3 to 5 years at a time. She spoke no Japanese. I eventually figured out she basically never left the US military base. She didn't know any of the local landmarks. I already tended away from to expat bubbles but seeing someone so firmly planted in one (while maintaining the pretense that she was some kind of world-wise traveler) gave me a powerful aversion to them.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:57
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When I go to other nations I always explore areas, including ones that tourists don't go to in order to get a feel of the country. I often dislike going to places expats and tourists go to.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:21
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https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/12/23/US-Forces-Korea-to-receive-first-COVID-19-vaccines-in-country/2411608744721/quote:U.S. Forces Korea to receive first COVID-19 vaccines in country lol of course
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Dec 28, 2020 19:03
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stephenthinkpad posted:Well I have never been to Japan so I can't argue with you, I am just going by 2nd hand impression. But I am talking about the Japanese "thing" of going to KFC in Christmas, and celebrate Valentine's Day in their own Japanese way. I call these little gestures "pandering to the western culture". I don't know what else do call them. I can list alot of other things such as baseball and pro wrestling, etc. It's just marketing using the foreign appeal of the West to sell things. The KFC Christmas was wholly manufactured by KFC's marketing team. Valentines day and White day were both used to sell cards and candy.
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Dec 28, 2020 20:28
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sincx has issued a correction as of 05:32 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2020 20:43
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Arguably Japan was more exposed to marketing "holidays" than other countries in Asia simply because of time and the relative importance of the US economy to Japan. Although, certain aspects of American culture in Japan (like baseball) predate the Second World War. The irony about American expats complaining about Japanese culture is that US has had such an enormous influence in materially shaping Japanese society for 85 years from supporting effectively a right-wing one-party state to monkeying around with the Japanese economy through the plaza accords. It is also difficult it is to separate issues affecting Japanese society (bullying/Hikikomori/loneliness" etc) from the political economy of Japan because for the specific last 40 years since Japanese people have been continually ground down at their jobs and it is hard not to see that end up affecting people psychologically. (Also, almost all of these issues show up in Western societies as well.) Ardennes has issued a correction as of 21:17 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 20:59
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Looks like ant financial is going to be broken up https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/28/china-orders-alibaba-founder-jack-ma-break-up-fintech-ant Can you imagine anything like this happening in the west
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Dec 28, 2020 21:02
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The other Ma (Tencent boss) is sitting in his pants.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:10
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I really wish there was some video documenting the rise of loneliness and depression across the first world in the modern era that isn't a 4 minute short or something highly sensionalized.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:22
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https://mobile.twitter.com/oranckay/status/1343649226715062272 the thread saying her parents were communist saboteurs is very funny the actual boring explanation is that south korea was such an undisputed shithole country until basically our lifetimes everyone wanted to get out and any actual immigrant from there will happily tell you as much its their kids who have a romantic fixation on the country and even that only became a thing like this century
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Dec 28, 2020 21:37
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didn’t the gdp of South Korea only overtake the north in like the 1980s? more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than anything else.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:39
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punk rebel ecks posted:I really wish there was some video documenting the rise of loneliness and depression across the first world in the modern era that isn't a 4 minute short or something highly sensionalized. you could read No Longer Human
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Dec 28, 2020 21:41
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Throatwarbler posted:didn’t the gdp of South Korea only overtake the north in like the 1980s? more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than anything else. The 1970s and it was more because of building a trade deficit with the US, but yeah, North Korea's economy was crushed by the collapse as well.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:48
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Some Guy TT posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/oranckay/status/1343649226715062272 I mean South Korea used to be a right wing dictatorship so... Throatwarbler posted:didn’t the gdp of South Korea only overtake the north in like the 1980s? more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than anything else. North Korea had the edge to South Korea until the mid-70s, at least in GDP output. Quality of life is arguable as North Koreans were notably shorter than South Koreans even when the North was ahead.
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Dec 28, 2020 22:23
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punk rebel ecks posted:I always wondered why Japan doesn't have told many immigrants moving to it compared to say Singapore or the West. Considering how the bigger immigrant communities in western countries (I'm specifically thinking of France and the UK) are from former colonies they impoverished for one or two centuries, Japan getting crushed and losing their colonies after 50 years probably played a role.
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Dec 28, 2020 22:38
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sincx posted:BrutalistMcDonalds I agree it's worth keeping an eye on the GBS reactionaries/HK gusanos, in case they try to stir up poo poo in QCS again, but engaging with them is utterly pointless, and risks another astroturfed "mod is condoning
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Dec 29, 2020 02:08
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Kassad posted:Considering how the bigger immigrant communities in western countries (I'm specifically thinking of France and the UK) are from former colonies they impoverished for one or two centuries, Japan getting crushed and losing their colonies after 50 years probably played a role. I think a lot of that tends to have a base in where after colonization there’s generally 1) some existing ethnic enclaves and/or familial or other connections in the immigrating country, 2) a level of language ability related to the receiving nation. Japan arguably didn’t colonize anywhere long enough for that to reeeeaally happen. Though Koreans and Chinese are by far the most common immigrants/expats to Japan by numbers, and without number in front of me I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Taiwan (the one place where Japan had a colony for a long time) has the most immigrants/expats to Japan per capita of then origin country. There’s also the factor that Japanese citizenship, though overall actually much easier to apply for than other industrialized nations, requires people to forfeit their other existing citizenships, which for a lot of prospective immigrants is a step too far considering a lot of people primarily go for economic reasons and don’t like the idea of having no easy way to return to their birth home, when it comes down to it.
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Dec 29, 2020 02:39
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its worth noting that under the japanese empire all people under their dominion were theoretically japanese citizens so the only real obstacles to immigrating were learning japanese and figuring out how to physically get to japan lots of people took advantage of this until the war made doing so counterproductive the whole notion of an exclusively ethnic japanese identity is actually relatively recent not that youd ever know this from listening to japan watchers
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Dec 29, 2020 03:00
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modern Japan also just straight up annexed and destroyed the ancient nation of Okinawa in an unambiguous was of naked aggression in the loving 1880s and spent the next sixty years conduction an active genocide, reaching a crescendo during ww2 when they were just herding civilians into American gunfire or just straight up burying them alive for no reason other than spite. Okinawa has a much stronger historical claim to independence than say Ukraine, or any number of other white countries, and yet the Okinawa independence movement is virtually unknown outside of China
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Dec 29, 2020 03:20
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VideoTapir posted:They're not pandering to western culture, businesses are adapting western commercial holidays to Japanese culture. I am not sure culture is a thing to which one can pander, and anyhow the intended audience is Japanese people. China also has Christmas and Valentine's Day and they're 100% the above. It's all about getting people to buy more.
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Dec 29, 2020 03:41
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I heard the conservatives in China want to put limits on celebrating 'foreign'/'western' holidays, so maybe look forward to that in china conservatives are kinda the good guys since returning to 1950s politics means Mao
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Dec 29, 2020 03:42
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:China also has Christmas and Valentine's Day and they're 100% the above. It's all about getting people to buy more. Actually China put a clamp down on Christmas celebration, and especially Hollween dress up celebration. The most recent example was a TV talk show put up Christmas decoration in the background and later they got blurred out. It reminds me of how the French rejected over use of English words in French media and advertisement.
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Dec 29, 2020 04:00
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As an extension to this, there's a special status for Imperial subjects and their descendants who remained in the new, smaller Japan yet also did not opt to naturalize, which considers them neither quite immigrants (birthright eligibility, legally open-ended work and welfare eligibility except for some government offices, exempt from immigration controls including those based on employment status or criminal record) nor quite citizens (voting rights have only recently been mooted). Most of the Korean community in Japan falls in this category, either as RoK or DPRK citizens or some still as stateless hypothetical citizens of the Kingdom of Joseon, and especially the first subcategory offers an interesting palette of work and residency options that's probably the closest thing available to dual citizenship in context--I believe it also triggers the Korean draft exemption for roots-down expats.
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Dec 29, 2020 04:04
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Throatwarbler posted:modern Japan also just straight up annexed and destroyed the ancient nation of Okinawa in an unambiguous was of naked aggression in the loving 1880s and spent the next sixty years conduction an active genocide, reaching a crescendo during ww2 when they were just herding civilians into American gunfire or just straight up burying them alive for no reason other than spite. Okinawa has a much stronger historical claim to independence than say Ukraine, or any number of other white countries, and yet the Okinawa independence movement is virtually unknown outside of China That’s because the “movement” is incredibly small and not really politically significant, but China likes to play it up for domestic political reasons and also to make the claim that China has a stronger claim on Okinawa historically.
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Dec 29, 2020 04:05
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Some Guy TT posted:its worth noting that under the japanese empire all people under their dominion were theoretically japanese citizens so the only real obstacles to immigrating were learning japanese and figuring out how to physically get to japan I’m not familiar offhand with every single detail but all the “citizens” of the colonies definitely weren’t consistently treated as equals and I don’t believe it was as simple as just getting to Japan for most. I think there’s also a timeline there though; people tend to forget that Japan underwent really rapid change not only economically and industrially, but politically, in particular in the early 1900s where all the relatively sane and decent (at least by the standards of contemporary imperial powers) civilian leadership started to lose out heavily to (or get assassinated by) the far right extremist military, and things really went downhill. It definitely did happen though; great grandfather on my wife’s side went to Kyoto University in the early 1900s from Taiwan. I’ve heard that there were limited slots for non-Japanese though, and they tended to allow them mostly in specialties that were needed, like medicine etc. Need to look into details some more.
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Dec 29, 2020 04:14
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