Putting aside the content of the article, the photo of the "Cherry tree with temple in background. Chubu Region, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. " is actually a photo of Matsumoto Castle (in Nagano Prefecture).
As noted, they likely had nothing to do with it... but I take all of Iyer's writing about Japan with a grain of salt, because despite those 28 years, he can't read a word of Japanese and is apparently proud of it.
Thanks for pointing that out, considering he can't really participate in the culture or even read Japanese literature he has a pretty limited perspective I wager.
From article:
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I can't read — I can't — to this day, I can't read or write Japanese. And I'm at the mercy of things around me. I can't have the illusion that I'm on top of things. Japan was a place that I had a huge amount to learn from, and I'm still learning it.
This has to be hyperbole - how can you live in a country for 28 years without learning what a single word looks like?
reminds me of teens today who feign ignorance of popular music and only listen to classic rock or some other specific genre and love to criticise others' taste in music.
That's a pretty high bar. Newspapers, news magazines and technical materials (economics, poli-sci, math, circuits, algorithms, mechanical designs, chemical processes)are straight forward enough. And enough to consider one functionally literate, I would contend. Enough to participate in day-to-day culture, I would contend.
Japanese literature can be completely different level of challenging.
That astounds me. I met some expatriates that were illiterate (well, they couldn't speak much either) when I lived there -- but they usually came and went over the course of three year stints. They lived with their families, in expat neighborhoods, and their kids went to Western (American) schools.
And they left. Every ~3 years or so.
Even that would kill me. For me, literacy is job one. I never understood how an adult would be - could be - willing to be functionally illiterate as an adult.
Almost any time someone tries to make a point about a culture based on their language, ignore them. Languages, for the most part, evolve on their own, independent of cultural considerations. For example, in Spanish, the word for house (casa) is female, just like (almost?) all nouns in Spanish are gendered. This does not mean that gender plays a stronger role in Spanish speaking cultures than in cultures that speak a less gendered language, it is simply the way the language evolved.
It is worth pointing out that English also lets you omit the subject in some circumstances, namly commands. For example, we consider "clear your room" to be a complete sentence, despite the fact that it omits the subject, "you".
English almost always drops the pronoun in the imperative, for example like Portuguese and the familiar form of you in German. English doesn't really ever drop the subject of the sentence otherwise...
Sure, it does. If you're talking casually with friends, it's pretty common to drop the initial pronoun, especially when it's implied from context... which is exactly what happens in Japanese, except the context is larger.
It's another "theory about Japanese" (日本人論), people making stuff up that makes the Japanese sound unique, like that Japanese are descended from different apes than other races, or that Japan is the only country with four seasons.
Every country or people have their own ideas about how they are awesome, but I think I noticed it here because I'm an outsider.
I think in the end 日本人論 is just another form of supremacy, in this case Japanese. Notice the contrast to American exceptionalism, where a reason for USA Number 1 is often not needed, whereas nihonjinron usually requires some reasoning as to why the Japanese language is superior, or why Japanese brains are better, or why Japanese culture is exceptional. It is a very self-conscious way of exceptionalism :)
To be honest, I'm quite sick of any cultural glorification from any country. But given how Japan never went through a cleansing after their fascism (unlike east/west-germany after '45 and '68) I can understand that there is not a lot of self-awareness in that regard.
In some sense the youth is trying to distance itself from the problematic past by becoming apathetic consumerists.
Every time one of these articles crop up, I feel that someone is viewing Japanese through some heavily rose tinted glasses.
I think you mean "inferred". Japan is a "high context" culture in Edward Hall's theory, meaning that context in general is an important guide to behaviour, in contrast with other more explicit cultures.
A majority of Spanish sentences leave their subjects implied. I think French, Catalan, Latin, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese have mostly implied subjects as the old Latin roots make it easy.
But you'll find most spoken English sentences have I or You or a grammatically empty placeholder ("that is..." without antecedent or "there is...") as subjects. That's why other languages can omit them. It's pretty easy to guess which of those you mean so English could omit them eventually, too, with no loss of specificity.
But in Spanish, information about the subject is left in the sentence. "Lo leí" cannot have any subject but me, and "caminaba por la calle" could only be me, him, or her. In Japanese, the information about the subject is substantially more indirect. For example, in "昨日サボったわよ" the subject could be almost anyone, but the speaker is a woman and she is probably talking to a friend or family member.
You're on track with the "gramatically empty placeholder". We have expletive pronouns, like "it" in "it is raining", which one could consider to only serve grammatical purpose—it is only in the sentence precisely because the sentence must have a grammatical subject, not because the sentence has a subject in any semantic sense. There is some disagreement about this, however.
Congratulations on taking the dive! I've met lots of digital nomads and starry eyed entrepreneurs in Japan but the slog and paperwork of getting things set up often puts them off.
Let me know if you make it to Fukuoka and I'll buy you a coffee.
Do you have a blog? I am currently in Australia, and actually becoming a digital nomad is a kind of dream of mine. Not really sure how to make it a reality though...it seems that webdev/online contracting is such a saturated and race to the bottom pool.
I have a blog when I have the time to update it - rarely. I'm looking to hire developers, so if you don't mind being a remote employee we should talk. Google my HN username and you should find me easily enough.
I'm a big fan of Zen and it's ilk, but the Japan fetish in this article is way too strong. I bet the author thinks that samurai swords were way better than their contemporaries in Europe
But his pseudo-nihonjinron* is nothing compared to the Traditional European Martial Arts (Which are Much Better Than Japan's Didntchaknow) circlejerk we have going on in sibling comments. If I'm ever at a ren faire I plan to walk around and every few minutes loudly say "dude you should have brought your katana, you'd own everyone so hard" just to watch peoples' heads explode.
The odd part of this is they had far worse armor. Western knights where shockingly fast and well protected in full plate armor. 1 on 1 a knight would have been far more effective vs. a samurai. The problem is Knights where far more expensive to equip and ended up as far less than 1% of the population.
This is the huge advantage the Mongols had. They could field 'huge' (relative to population size) and devastatingly effective army's on the cheap. Often Mongols still ended up outnumbered by as much as 10-1, but mobility allowed them to avoid highly defended areas.
PS: I wonder how much the cost of medieval armor contributed to long term economic growth. Sort of the medieval equivalent of modern military innovations (computers, internet, radar, etc.) being useful in peace time.
Yeah, this annoys me. Japanese swords were folded over hundreds of times not because it was a superior crafting technique, but because they were using inferior steel with more impurities.
Damascus Steel is probably the coolest kind of sword from the past. Carbon nanotubes have been found in ancient Damascus steel swords, proving that the advanced metallurgy strengthened Damascus Steel above and beyond all other steel of that era.
And while Japanese metallurgy exists today... the secret of Damascus steel has been lost in time. No one knows how to make it anymore.
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With regards to Katanas vs Longswords...
Katanas are almost equivalent to Long Swords. The martial arts between the two styles are relatively similar. Sometimes Katanas were dual-wielded with wakizashi, while Long Swords would sometimes be dual-wielded with a dagger.
Sometimes Katanas are wielded with two hands, but sometimes you switch to one-hand for extra reach. Ditto with Long Swords (being used with "Bastard Sword" style)
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In all cases, the fetish with swords is universal across cultures. Polearms were the king of the battlefield in both the West and in the East... and the favored weapons of soldiers, and yet the stories all glorify sword-wielders. Swords were expensive in all cultures, and are therefore associated with the respective nobility class.
Meh, you can get carbon nanotubes out of soot too [0], they occur in any high carbon and high temp environment. Their existence in something is not proof that metallurgy is advanced in any sense, just luck.
European and Japanese fighting styles are also very different, as the katana is made with much more brittle steels [1]. In Japan, the block is not hard and the other blade has to slide along your's to not break the sword.
You use Damascus steel if your steel is of poor quality or you don't have the chemical know how to make good steel. You do what you can with what you have.
Still, swords cost a lot to make and end up as a status symbol. Look at the Japanese officers in WW2 [2].
It's both though - they used the crafting technique to overcome the limitations of the steel, and ended up with stronger swords than what you get by naïvely forging with better raw materials. Some fancy cooking is similar - you use a lot of prep to overcome the limitations of an ingredient.
No, Japan is far from being just another normal country, according to Dr 'Debito Arudou-有道 出人'[1][2] a naturalized Japanese and also a writer, blogger, and human rights activist, Japan is one of the most xenophobic, racist and bigoted countries in the world.
Anything he says is based on a 25 years of first hand experience and research of living and working in Japan. Resorting to name-calling and unfounded ad-hominem attacks only shows a lack of arguments from your side and nothing else.
Well, if I've gotta present credentials, then I'm a nisei, so I think I have some legitimacy. Not as much as someone living in Japan, but...some.
If we're using words like 'ad hominem', 'name-calling' and 'unfounded' please note that you labelled my roots "xenophobic, racist, and bigoted" with nothing more than an appeal to authority.
Clearly, you were not arguing seriously and neither was I, but now that you've called me out let's add some substance.
The reddit link others have posted provides some context, though is obviously not a primary source. Here's link that might be somewhat more detailed: http://www.gregoryclark.net/page14/page14.html
Debito had some relevance in the 90s in raising awareness of issues regarding foreigners in Japan, but he is definitely not an authority on Japan, regardless of how many years he has been here.
His experience (of apparently constantly experiencing outrageous racism) does not really align with many others' here, which suggests that part of it is over-reaction, intentionally or not.
I don't mean to endorse the content of the article, but what you wrote is true for every country. And we know that every country isn't the same, so I question the relevance of pointing out that most Japanese people are normal and live mostly normal lives.
The relevance would be there are a lot of people out there who don't actually realize it's true. News from Japan generally comes in two flavors: "Look how weird these people are." and "Japanese people aren't having kids, so Japan is doomed. DOOMED, I tell ya."
First, sure, Japanese people, as we all still shit from their behinds, work everyday for money and snore when they sleep -- that's not the real point of comparison. But for the average US person for example, the culture, historical legacy and customs of Japan can seem totally foreign [1].
Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc. They're not that much if favor of integrating immigrants either. It's not like it's unprecedented. Populations have dwindled to the point of it being a major issue for lots of ethnicities/communities worldwide in the past.
[1] and vise versa, although US culture is already familiar to minute detail everywhere to ordinary citizens -- from exposure to tons of US movies, tv series, songs, news programs, websites and books -- Japanese culture outside of Japan not so much, except to Nippofiles and Anime fans, which are far from the majority.
>But for the average US person for example, the culture, historical legacy and customs of Japan can seem totally foreign.
It's no more true for Japan than it is for anywhere. People who get all their information from the western press and then actually go to Japan come away shocked at how normal everything is. It would be like people in other countries forming their opinions on the US based on the Castro district in San Francisco during the '70s.
>Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc.
There are 127 million people in Japan. If the population shrinks by 35 million or so they'll have about the same number of people they had at the start of WW II. And they'll be a lot better for it, too. Certainly any time you have a pay-go pension scheme there are difficulties with a shrinking population, but it's nothing they can't manage.
As far as taking in immigrants, what Japan is doing makes a lot more sense that what the US or the Europeans are doing. I don't blame people who don't want to have to choose, at age 60, between immersion in a foreign culture and moving from the place they've lived for decades.
>It's no more true for Japan than it is for anywhere.
That's obviously false. There are places that share far more culturally and in the way of life with one another. Canada or Australia, for an obvious example, will be much more relatable to the average white American that most of Africa or Asia. Belgium will mostly familiar to a French or Dutch. Austria will be far closer to a German than China, etc.
>People who get all their information from the western press and then actually go to Japan come away shocked at how normal everything is.
If by "how normal" this means that people in Japan are also eat, work, sleep, etc, well, this is obvious. People are people. That doesn't mean that other aspects of Japanese society will be equally easy to relate to or accept.
From the mere fact that you can go back and find your laptop you left for a couple of hours in a public square, to attitudes towards work, marriage, parents, individualism, size of the average house, etc., there are lots of things that go beyond the surface commonalities.
>There are 127 million people in Japan. If the population shrinks by 35 million or so they'll have about the same number of people they had at the start of WW II.
That's not how it works. It's not a simple act of deducting people. The demographic changes that would have be in work for decades to make the population shrink by 35 million would also mean that the remaining 90 million million will be much older (in average) than back in the past when they were 90 million again, and this also has effects in society, economy, pension systems, etc.
No it isn't. The culture shock for a westerner is no more than you'd find going to any other country in the far east. Sure, you'll find it less in countries with which you share a cultural heritage. That's sort of obvious and irrelevant. Is Japan any weirder than China, or Vietnam, or Thailand? No.
>From the mere fact that you can go back and find your laptop you left for a couple of hours in a public square...
Not actually true. At least, not true enough that you'd want to chance it in real life.
>...attitudes towards work
Less foreign to me than attitudes in most of Europe.
>...marriage
Not strange at all.
>parents
Only strange if you'd never been anywhere else in Asia.
>individualism
Again, no more foreign to me as much of Europe.
>size of the average house
That's just Tokyo. And London, too, for that matter.
>That's not how it works. It's not a simple act of deducting people. The demographic changes that would have be in work for decades to make the population shrink by 35 million would also mean that the remaining 90 million million will be much older (in average) than back in the past when they were 90 million again, and this also has effects in society, economy, pension systems, etc.
Which I didn't think I had to spell out. Yes, it will cause some difficulties. No, that doesn't mean they can't take it in stride. Again, Japan is a wealthy country, and these are problems that can be papered over with wealth.
Will Japan's GDP be smaller as a result? Sure. Does it matter? No. What matters is GDP per capita.
Now you say that the cultural shock for a westerner "is no more than you'd find going to any other country in the far east".
The problem is I never said it wasn't and that Japan is somehow more shocking that other far east places. You were the one that attempted to trivialize it, saying that the shock would be the same for Japan "as for anywhere". In fact I specifically mentioned several places that would be more foreign to a westerner and some that wouldn't, not just Japan. At least now you seem to concur that Japan would be as foreign as those "far east" places.
>Which I didn't think I had to spell out. Yes, it will cause some difficulties. No, that doesn't mean they can't take it in stride. Again, Japan is a wealthy country, and these are problems that can be papered over with wealth.
You said: "they'll be a lot better for it, too", when in fact there will be ONLY difficulties. What would be better about an aging and shrinking population, plus economic difficulties? More parking space?
That they can "paper over these problems with wealth" (and for a country with a huge national debt and an problematic economy compared to the eighties early nineties), doesn't diminish the problem. It's just another way to say it would be costly. If you mean that they'll survive and still exist, yeah, duh.
Jumping in and having spent time in all those countries (I'm in China right now), I think Japan does have some uniqueness as a country that, until the Allied occupation which didn't last long, never was under a Western form of government or ideology (colonialism, communism, or Christianity / Islam).
Thus they retain some traditional forms that tend to get destroyed when a country is colonized or goes under a Western ideology.
Beyond that, I don't disagree with you but worth keeping in mind.
> Japanese people aren't having kids, so Japan is doomed. DOOMED, I tell ya
Sorry but it really is. The continued attitude towards gaijin is pretty ridiculous and going to hurt them. You only have three options to combat an ageing population: (1) have more children, (2) bring in young immigrants or (3) build robots.
Japan seems to think (3) is the solution. They sure as hell aren't doing anything about the other two like every other country on earth.
>(1) have more children, (2) bring in young immigrants or (3) build robots.
And (4) cope with the situation. Japan is a first world country with first world resources - they can cope with an aging population without doing any of that.
There is a point in there about how we view ourselves in the context of others in "the west" vs. how someone in Japan views themselves in the context of others. The whole thing could be readily replaced by the bit about the shop keeper and a couple of paragraphs though.
Agree. Trying to see Zen in every cultural aspect is pushing it way too far. Especially since spirituality is a pretty shallow thing in Japan for the large majority of people.
There is no doubt that there is a large degree of influence from Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto and even Hindu (people seem to forget this for some reason) philosophy in Japanese culture today.
I agree that Zen is not expressed in every cultural aspect, but by and large it is there.
Look, for example, at the collective reaction to the Fukushima disaster. If that Stoicism isn't an expression of Zen philosophy, I don't know what is.
> Look, for example, at the collective reaction to the Fukushima disaster. If that Stoicism isn't an expression of Zen philosophy, I don't know what is.
What are you talking about? Many people in Japan, even in the media, were revolted by the inaction of the government. Stoicism is maybe what you see from outside, but internally it's definitely not the case.
And look at the recent demonstrations in Japan against the change of constitution regarding Japanese military scope. You call that Stoicism ?
No but you see, the Japanese sleep on the floor and they're all really really smart, so if my family sleeps on the floor instead of in a typical Western bed then we'll all be smarter like the Japanese. Plus their civilization is really ancient and they know so much about mindfulness and plants and stuff
Actual words that have been spoken to me by an adult woman with two kids.
I feel compelled to mention- while staying in Japan I discovered buckwheat hull pillows, which have not made me smarter but are very comfortable and nice in the summer.
I wouldn't argue against some Japanese people being really really smart, but they have a rather shortish history (in Old World standard): recorded history begins around ~250 AD. By that time Egypt had fallen and Rome was past its prime.
If you're going to use Rome+Egypt for the West, you should probably include Ancient China in Japan's history. Japan didn't suddenly emerge out of the woods in 250AD.
Well, Rome and Egypt were just two famous examples I could think of, and I'm no means suggesting they represent the whole Europe. (And Egypt isn't even that much West. Do "Western people" consider Egypt as one of them?)
By the way, I wouldn't recommend including Ancient China in Japan's history: at least don fire retardant suit, because frankly that sounds like an efficient way to offend Chinese and Japanese people at the same time.
To expand on the shared history between China and Japan:
China was the superpower of ancient Asia, exerting significant influence on neighboring regions, and exporting its writing system, as well as science and technology to neighboring regions. As a result, approximately 60% of the words found in a Japanese dictionary are of Chinese origin (this becomes closer to 20% when you weight for usage).
Informatively, the Japanese word for China is 中国, or central country.
Additionally, the nature of the Japanese writing system means that any literate Japanese speaker would recognize the symbols in 中国 (China) mean "middle" and "country", and the symbols in 漢字 (kanji) mean "China" and "character".
That's the Chinese word for China too, which reinforces our point. The Japanese word for Japan has a Chinese origin too (land of the rising sun, to the east of China.)
I think most Western people don't consider ancient Egypt to be directly part of their history. The Romans, definitely. Many of the words in your comment and mine are hardly changed from Latin.
Art, music, dance, much of the spoken language, for example. Or do you mean completely devoid of outside influence? I think that's probably hard to find anywhere in the world today.
My main point is that there's a significant difference between a civilization adopting parts of other cultures, as opposed to other civilizations suddenly forcing it upon you through conquest.
The original thread I responded to seemed to argue that Japan had no history (read: civilization) before the adoption of kanji.
Re: the original thread, I was just using "the start of recorded history" as a convenient yardstick for measuring "ancientness" of civilizations. Of course the people and culture existed before that, but without any record it kinds of blends into prehistory.
I'm not suggesting having short history makes Japan inferior or anything like that. It's just a predictable consequence of living on islands across the sea from the culture center. (My own country's history is not much longer, after all.)
The western world is largely a direct descendant of the Roman Empire.
Language, architecture, cultural ideas, religion, science, just about everything around you shares Roman origins or influence.
If you think Roman culture is gone, you might consider the Pope, head of the religion started in and promoted by the state whose seat is in Rome (ok, Vatican City is it's own thing, but the Pantheon is like a mile away), who conducts mass in Latin, the language of the empire ... might I go on? ~15% of the world population are Catholic.
> Language, architecture, cultural ideas, religion, science, just about everything around you shares Roman origins or influence.
Roman influence, sure. Also Arabic, Indic and Chinese influence. Every experience affects us. But would we really be so different without the Roman influence? E.g. Roman sewer systems were used to argue for the design of London's sewers... but only for about 20 years, after which modern sewer design surpassed anything the Romans had done.
> you might consider the Pope, head of the religion started in and promoted by the state whose seat is in Rome
But only adopted in the fading years of the Empire, well after 250AD, and not really a reflection of Roman culture.
> who conducts mass in Latin, the language of the empire
Rarely, and getting rarer.
> ~15% of the world population are Catholic.
Sure. But how many of them know Latin? How many of them have any real influence of the Roman empire?
It's interesting to think about how much more "gone" ancient Egypt is than ancient Rome. Sure, much of ancient Egypt was really ancient, but the present culture of Egypt owes very little even to the Ptolemies.
I think there are many reasons but a large part is the religious aspect... pre approximately 500 AD Egyptian Culture was more or less wiped out during the spread of islam. I dont know how much pre common era egyptian culture was related to ancient egypt culture...
Meanwhile on the european side catholocisms spread only increased the influence of (certain parts of) roman culture. The renaissance which was significantly due to 'italian' culture further served to increase the influence of roman culture (especially in architecture and the arts)
Cross-cultural variations in intelligence are substantial. Parasite load has a substantial effect on intelligence. It's not at all implausible that sleeping habits would affect that.
I've been very lucky to have visited Japan. I can say, having visited many other places, there is no such place like it. The social awareness of the Japanese people is on a level never seen elsewhere. One truly great nation, with a truly great population.
I can give you some examples for what can be described as micro-aggression (even if SJWs are totally abusing this term and take away any legitimacy when claiming to be a victim of it) Keep in mind that either of these things happen to me on a daily basis.
1) I speak JLPT ~N2 level with almost no accent, but get handed the English menu in a restaurant in Tokyo.
2) I get complimented for being able to eat various Japanese things (natto, umeboshi) or being able to handle chopsticks.
3) I get compliments for being able to read Kanji after talking to someone for the past few hours. How do they think I learned the language? With romaji?
4) Speaking to staff in Japanese, staff answers to my Japanese friends instead of speaking with me.
The last three ones are almost symptomatic for 日本人論, where it is common to think that certain Japanese cultural habits or attributes cannot be mastered or understood by outsiders, thus it is necessary to point them out or try to compensate for them.
Some of these attributes are reasoned to exist because of biological differences (google Japanese Brain), others because of the 'rich' cultural heritage of Japan that was never tainted by other countries (as if China and Korea are not close to Japan...).
Don't take this as me being unhappy to be in Japan. I just wish that people were a bit more self-aware around here. The problem is just that there is not the necessary vocabulary around to address these problems. It's not as if 人種差別 is a popular subject.
1. I get that a lot too. At least they're trying to be helpful; from their perspective it would be embarrassing if they gave someone obviously foreign the Japanese menu. Most people's exposure to westerners here starts and ends with English teachers, so I would forgive them for this one.
for 2 and 3, I think it is because they are actually surprised; there are a lot of (Japanese) people who don't like natto or umeboshi either, and kanji is something they spend hours per week studying for 10 years to be literate in.
4 is a hard one. They assume that a foreigner obviously can't speak Japanese. It can be super annoying.
I've lived in Japan for 14 years, and I'm doing a startup here.
In my experience, if you stay in Japan for more than a year, you go through several phases.
The first phase is confusion. Why am I being treated differently, even though I'm doing and saying the same things as another Japanese person.
The second phase that quickly follows is anger. This is bullshit! I know my accent and pronunciation is correct! Why are they saying they don't understand me! WTF!
The third is dull acceptance. You're not going to change Japan. They're not like this because they're bad people. They're just inexperienced with foreigners and foreign things, and they're overcompensating and trying to be nice in the way they think is nice.
The final stage is fun. This is the best stage. You understand all the social patterns and why everything is happening, so you just relax and start enjoying it.
When you go into a restaurant and order in Japanese and the waiters response is "I can't speak English! Sorry!" you respond in Japanese "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Is there anyone here who speaks Japanese?"
This often (not always) has the interesting effect of changing the "foreigners cannot speak or understand Japanese" mindset, if only for a moment.
Sounds like you're in between stages two and three. It gets better.
To quickly respond to your list:
1) It's your face. It's nothing personal. They're just trying to be accommodating.
2) My typical response is "I've been using chopsticks since I've been four, since we used to order Chinese takeout. So complimenting me on my chopstick skills feels the same as me complimenting you on your deft fork techniques." This may result in enlightening your Japanese friends as to why it's challenging to be overly grateful for their well-intended compliment.
3) Kanji is hard. They're just impressed that you can read it, since they spent years as kids studying and repeating kanji over and over again. Having said that, my typical response here is "Actually, I think English is much, much harder than Japanese. Sure Japanese is difficult, but it's logical. English is full of exceptions, weird spellings, inconsistent grammar, because it's a mix of languages. If I wasn't born a native speaker, I can't imagine how I'd learn English from scratch."
4) Yep - you're definitely not alone. It can be hard to avoid feeling a bit slighted here. If you haven't seen this already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt5qSm9U80 I gently correct people here. "Excuse me - since I'm ordering, could you please look at me?"
By the way, thinking of these things as "micro-aggressions" is a terrible way to think. They're not being aggressive. They're often just not very familiar with foreign people, and they're doing their best to be accommodating. Once you get to stage four, this becomes a lot easier.
Good luck, and don't forget to swing by the Hacker News Tokyo Meetups if you're in Tokyo - https://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/ - we're just about to announce another one.
Thank you a lot for the nice response and the kind explanation. You are definitely right that there are never any bad intentions behind the various experiences that can be had as a foreigner.
Perhaps my problem is not really the experience itself, but that I don't know how to deal with certain situations in a smooth and sociable way. I also have not lived in Japan long enough to really master all social interactions. It's quite easy to forget when you're from another culture how much routine your own culture already has and how different it can be.
The same way as you're abusing it. Maybe they're genuinely happy and proud that you can do it, or are just trying to make you feel better and help you however they can? Normal people call this "being nice" or "compliments".
Hi ido!
Maybe this comment is a little bit out from this topic, but I saw from an earlier topic where u commented about the self-employed thing for a programmer in Vienna. I'm expecting to move soon in Vienna so can you tell me some start tips about self-employed as programmer? I didn't see any e-mail or other contact so this was the only way to contact you. Please forgive me.
Few examples I've observed on my 3 month visit there that I haven't seen anywhere else:
1. You can walk in the crowd at the shibuya crossing with your wallet sticking out of your back pocket filled with cash and not worry about getting pick pocketed.
2. Everyone carries around a portable ash tray with them when they smoke and never throw cigarette butts on the ground.
3. No one throws any trash on the ground. Garbage cans are hard to find too and everyone just carries their trash with them.
You don't need "social awareness" to explain any of your observations:
1) Low income inequality / strong welfare system
2) This is actually a counter example. Nothing more socially offensive than second hand smoke.
3) Trash cans disappeared from the streets of Tokyo shortly after the sarin gas subway attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995, and they've never reappeared.
But even without trash cans, Japanese people don't litter, ever. In contrast, Berlin, where I currently live, has lots of trash cans but the streets are full of litter.
Berlin doesn't get cleaned enough by the city. Yesterday it was still covered in fireworks and empty wine bottles from New Year's Eve. The only reason it looks clean today is because it's covered in snow.
If it were cleaned more regularly people wouldn't litter so much. (Not a defence of people who litter, and it's the one thing I hate most about living here.)
One time last year I had to stay overnight in Japan to reach a connecting flight. The airport allowed people to sleep on the benches (very comfortable with no arm rests), and a police man stands there all night and watches over everyone to keep them and their belongings safe.
To top it all off, there is a sign addressed to people sleeping there that at 3 AM the airport personnel need to polish the floors and they apologize for the noise!
Similar experience. I was in a Ryokan in Kyoto where some workers were about to repair some fittings in the street and make some noise. We were given a leaflet in English apologising for the noise made and the next day when we got out the supervisor was ready with a candy and a small toy for our daughter.
The only times you will hear this, is out of the mouths of Chinese/Korean nationalists looking to bash the country (their own bigotry), or Gaijin blogs from young white (usually affluent) kids who are/were upset they weren't treated like kings when the got off the plane. They were upset that the girls didn't throw themselves at them and that people didn't rush to attend their every whim.
If you look at actual scientific studies, you'll find Japan is on-par with the rest of the world when it comes to their racism. Japan is actually less racist than France and equal to places like Finland or Germany.
That's terrible methodology. For example maybe in a country with very few foreigners people aren't as worried about foreign neighbours as other things. It doesn't demonstrate anything.
It's excellent methodology because they asked indirect questions. Coming out and asking someone "Hey, are you a racist?" wouldn't be effective.
Asking someone in an unrelated economic experiment something like "Would you mind if your neighbors were black?" is more accurate because it tricks people into revealing their true biases.
But this didn't ask them would you mind if your neighbours were black. This made them pick what they're most worried about. That question can only be asked in context of my country. If there's almost no change of a foreigner living next to me but there's a high chance of crime in my area even though I'm massively racists and would actually care about more about a foriegner living next to me (all things being equal) because of my circumstances I'm actually more worried about crime atm.
For anyone who didn't take the time to read the entire thing,go back and find the section about the shopkeepers and read that. It pretty much sums out what the author is trying to get at.
I think the author's location skews their perspective. Kyoto is quite different culturally to the big cities, and you'll find the same kind of "individualism" that you find in Western cities in Tokyo etc. By "individualism" I mean the poisoned kind where you're defined by the articles-of-self you've purchased, whether it's a Gucci bag on your shoulder, a collection of charms dangling from your wrist, where you go to eat and what phone you have as opposed to the form of individualism which is to define yourself by what you do and how you conduct yourself.
I've lived in Kyoto and Tokyo and tend to agree with you there. Although people outside of Tokyo are much friendlier in general. Which is the same of most big cities/areas outside of them.
> As a result, perhaps, my Japanese neighbors seem unusually good at adapting themselves to circumstance -- fire or nuclear meltdown, sudden earthquake or infidelity (to which the local response is nearly always "It can't be helped") -- and unusually good at following orders (hence, perhaps, their celebrated brutality in war).
But orders come from somewhere, no? From some self, no?
Too true, although you could have stopped after the word "writing". :)
I quickly decided that the article was full of crap and closed the tab. I only learned that it was written by one of the authors fullest of shit in a world full of many full of shit authors due to your comment.
After reading this comment, I Googled "pico iyer full of crap" and this comment was the second result.
I was hoping to get some insight into why you guys have such a negative reaction to this guy. Instead I found out that Google has gotten scary fast at indexing.
Fair question. To me he comes across as remarkably insincere, someone with a history of publishing and saying things no properly skeptical person could take seriously.
It's more of a negative reaction to HuffPost than the author I see a story like this one, that I might normally read and then seeing it's on HuffPo immediately it's value is squashed because of their immature partisan drivel day after day. I'm convinced they are hell bent on driving as big a wedge they can between everyone in modern western culture.
It's an article from an author without much consequence in mainstream culture on a site where it will quickly be drowned out by the noise of another TRUMP/HILLARY/SANDERS story.
