|
Japanese business, you dumbasses. Among many many other things, lifetime employment is a thing of the past so don't hold that up as a reason for not hiring people with awesome international educations.
Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Mar 28, 2013 |
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 04:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
Ned posted:That isn't to say Japanese immigrants aren't entrepreneurs but many of them seemed content to be farmers and laborers. You never know, their descendants may become presidents one day 
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 04:46
|
|
|
ocrumsprug posted:If everyone that was an expat was coming from a third world country, I could buy that argument. However if you are a North American, European or Aussie/Kiwi/Japanese expat, you aren't likely to be digging in a coal mine or something. It even goes beyond typical first world community disengagement, as I have no doubt were I to pick up and move Japan or Europe I would find the Canadian expats there to talk/cry/bitch about the motherland with. That's true, and maybe the discussion has shifted in this direction but it's not really what I was talking about. The word I used was 'diaspora,' not 'expat community,' which is a really different thing. The word 'expatriate' at least to me implies people who are going to go back to their country after a set period of time. 'Diaspora' is more like people who leave for good. Those of us in the Jewish diaspora, for example, may never live in Israel (I certainly don't intend to), for example. But at the same time, the diaspora doesn't imply total assimilation into the new culture, and still retains ties and influence in the old country. Jews are a little weird because for a lot of history we never had our own country, so the Chinese diaspora works as another example. There are multi-generational Chinese communities all over the world, some of which were directly responsible for the huge changes in China in the first half of the 20th century, and its economic development at the turn of the 21st. I'm not as familiar with them, but I'm aware that Vietnamese and Korean diasporas have similarly affected their home countries. Those of you more familiar with Japanese history might have some insight into how the Japanese diaspora used to work, but now it seems to basically not exist. It's a shame, because having that kind of foreign-but-not-quite influence on the country would probably lead to a lot of change for the better. caberham posted:You never know, their descendants may become presidents one day Is this a Fujimori crack? I understand that there's still a sizable Japanese population in South America and especially Brazil, but they've mixed in with the locals too much to be acceptable to the old country or something.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 06:04
|
|
|
And he's referred to as El Chino locally, heh.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 06:07
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:Japanese business, you dumbasses. Among many many other things, lifetime employment is a thing of the past so don't hold that up as a reason for not hiring people with awesome international educations. The really sad thing, that Japanese business is really not complicit in, is that bias against people with overseas experience also happens in admissions down to the high school level. I teach at a low level school, but a new student that transferred in last year had spent a year at a high school in France. I know for a fact she was fluent in French. She should have been able to get into any of the top schools in the prefecture, but instead was relegated to my school since she didn't fit the template for the students of those higher level schools that had been on that track since junior high. It was a tremendously depressing realization. So much of who's going to get which jobs is essentially frozen after middle school. The students are tracked very aggressively, and it's pretty much impossible to break free from it. In English, the area I'm most familiar with, the level of English you need to get into the highest level universities in Japan is only taught at the high level high schools. The level of English you need to have to get into a high level high school is only taught at the high level middle schools. The people who get into those middle schools are the people who pay shitloads to send their kids to cram schools. None of the tests these kids are taking actually evaluate real English ability anyway, and so it just becomes this bullshit enshrined excuse to gently caress over undesirables. So the gatekeepers at every level are basically saying, "nothing we can do!" while enforcing these kind of extremely impersonal check-box-style templates on everyone. They get to cover their rear end against any criticism by saying, "We're just going by test scores, what's not fair about that?" then denying the existence of severe structural biases. Nobody at any of these levels wants to take any responsibility for evaluating anything or having an opinion on their own. It's buck-passing all the way down. Nobody ever got fired for buying Dell or IBM. Nobody gets fired for hiring someone privileged and sheltered out of Toudai. Anecdotally, I have a friend that did a year in Canada on a working holiday visa. She was conflicted about how she should broach this subject with her co-workers since she knew they were going to assume that she had tried to escape to Canada or something because she must have been a failure at life before. She also had trouble finding a job after coming back despite a college education and 5 years in her field. Her English isn't perfect for sure, but it's better by miles than a lot of actual English teachers I know. Like the person in your anecdote, Sanders, she wants to gtfo of Japan. I know you probably don't think it's just a problem with Japanese business, but I'd like to emphasize here that this is a problem with Japanese society in general. You see evidence of it in study abroad students, but it's part of a larger, immensely damaging, cultural norms. ErIog fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 08:44
|
|
|
The Japanese community here in Iceland is fairly OK, but seeing as it's only a couple dozen people keeping in touch is my impression from meeting them during the yearly Japan Festival at my uni. They are a hell of a less organized group though than the German expats I hang with every month or some of the Viet or Thai peeps, partly though because they took their whole families with them, like people said.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2013 15:48
|
|
|
Not politics exactly, but its an indicator of how bad the economy is suffering and the need to modify policy. I love this article because its the typical kind of article where they find a horrible result showing they've dug themselves a hole and the answer to the problem is to simply dig deeper (they'll eventually come out on the other side of the earth, right?). More than half of Japanese students see career success as unnecessary quote:Only 9 percent of Japanese high school students surveyed last year said they strongly hope for success in their careers, a sign that the country's economic woes may be curbing the ambition of its youth. I'm sure this reflects similarly across the past 5 years of high school graduates as well. These are the people going to college and getting jobs. These are the people that are suppose to be "rebuilding" Japan. The only reason why we've gotten here is because they built the system this way and haven't bothered to improve it/fix it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 13:29
|
|
|
I dunno, seems to me like its just a higher proportion of kids in Japan have figured out that the current socioeconomic system is a grinding, soul-crushing engine built to enrich the well-connected elite and they want no part in it beyond making a livelihood. You can hardly fault them for knowing whats up and opting out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 21:14
|
|
|
Protocol 5 posted:I dunno, seems to me like its just a higher proportion of kids in Japan have figured out that the current socioeconomic system is a grinding, soul-crushing engine built to enrich the well-connected elite and they want no part in it beyond making a livelihood. You can hardly fault them for knowing whats up and opting out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2013 21:16
|
|
|
While it's nice to see the younger generations having that realization, I don't have a lot of faith that the situation is going to get better in the near future. There was a good series on this podcast, about ブラック企業, that talked about the current state of Japanese business. The framing of the issue was very interesting. They kind of took it as read that the business structure in the past few decades has been beneficial to workers, and then framed the current trends as being business responding poorly to increased competition due to a down economy. Within that framing, though, they were quite brutal in calling out the current problems. The main theme was businesses taking advantage of recent graduates and essentially using them until they died of overwork, quit due to depression, or just killed themselves. They mentioned an interesting generational gap with this issue. On paper, the kinds of things being asked of recent hires are similar to the things that used to be asked of workers. Workers in Japan have traditionally been asked to work long hours, have unpaid overtime, and sometimes receive low wages. It used to be that people put up with this because the lifetime employment system meant they would eventually advance in their company and have a better situation later. They would put up with these things even if they knew they were technically illegal. This has created a cultural gap that they touched on briefly in the show. Japanese people that are 50+ don't understand what the younger generations are complaining about, and see them as being lazy, over-pampered, whiners. This exacerbates some of the social toll because the pressure to work like this comes from the businesses as well as parents. Parents are saying, "Just work hard. Stop complaining. I had to work hard too, you know. I had to do unpaid overtime too." while their child is being ground into a fine paste at a dead-end job that isn't even providing them training in skills they might be able to transfer to a new job in the future. The problem this creates is the lack of political support for reforming the system or increasing enforcement of existing labor laws. The younger generation has no political clout, and the older generations are, for the most part, unsympathetic to or aggressively ignorant of their concerns. So the younger generation can be as vocal about it as they want, but they still have to contend with the political problems of the population shift that's happening in the background. The one ray of hope I see is that Japan having a somewhat okay social safety net gives people fairly decent support for starting small businesses. So the disenchantment with being employed at existing entrenched Japanese companies could spur a lot of interesting economic growth in terms of small business. I'll admit I am reaching here to find a silver lining. What would be nice is if, as I said, they just actually enforced existing labor laws.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2013 01:14
|
|
|
So much of that applies to the current United States as well. The two major diversions I see are that there was not much tradition of lifetime employment and entrepreneurship is much riskier for those who want to strike out on their own.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2013 04:51
|
|
|
ErIog posted:The one ray of hope I see is that Japan having a somewhat okay social safety net gives people fairly decent support for starting small businesses. So the disenchantment with being employed at existing entrenched Japanese companies could spur a lot of interesting economic growth in terms of small business. I'll admit I am reaching here to find a silver lining. What would be nice is if, as I said, they just actually enforced existing labor laws. Lemmi Caution posted:So much of that applies to the current United States as well. The two major diversions I see are that there was not much tradition of lifetime employment and entrepreneurship is much riskier for those who want to strike out on their own. I think there are a lot of similarities between Japan and the US in terms of the young working culture. Most are not long term employees and many don't have a very secure job future. I think the the biggest difference is still that, in the US at least, there is a culture of small business/entrepreneurship as well as angel investors/venture capitalists. That doesn't exist in Japan to the same scale. Say what you will about the riskiness of starting your own business; but economies thrive on new ideas and those come out of small start-ups usually. I think it has been stated before that the big reason why its not of the same scale in Japan, is because CEOs don't usually take home giant salaries and bonuses in Japan, like they do in the US. I don't think you need that necessarily to instil a desire to build your own company; but I do think there needs to be more support in the culture for it. Open up lines of credit for starting businesses, start introducing the idea in different parts of the school system, encourage popular media to cover the idea, etc. Kenishi fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Mar 30, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2013 12:53
|
|
|
Do you have statistics to back up your assertion that the rate of small business starts is different between Japan and the US? I don't doubt that it is different, but anecdotally, I was assuming that the rate of small businesses in Japan was larger than the US. It feels to me like there's a lot more tiny mom and pop operations that might not be doing spectacularly, but haven't completely disappeared due to conglomeration and the car culture like they have in the US.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2013 01:50
|
|
|
Yeah, I assume there are a lot more sole proprietorships proportionally than the US. I also think it's funny that a lot of people hear "entrepreneur" and "small business" and immediately think of S-Corps and LLCs raising venture capital, and not some lady taking out a loan at a local bank to open a shop.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2013 04:35
|
|
|
Lemmi Caution posted:Yeah, I assume there are a lot more sole proprietorships proportionally than the US. I also think it's funny that a lot of people hear "entrepreneur" and "small business" and immediately think of S-Corps and LLCs raising venture capital, and not some lady taking out a loan at a local bank to open a shop. They're equally the same in definition, but no flower shop on a back street is going to be adding much to the country. Its not a fresh idea that's likely to build a new industry. Japan needs industry building ideas put out by start-ups and small corps.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2013 10:11
|
|
|
Don't underestimate the economic power of the millions of スナックs all over the country! I can't decide if I'm trying to be sarcastic with this statement or not. They employ women, at least. Sheep fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Mar 31, 2013 |
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2013 12:11
|
|
|
I was thinking of small business as an employment alternative rather than as an economic engine for the nation. A lot of less educated Japanese self-employ, whereas in America it is less of an option and those people are more likely to simply disappear from the workforce.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2013 21:35
|
|
|
From Mainich today, an editorial entitled "respect and dignity for new recruits a major challenge."quote:Around 10 percent of young employees, however, end up quitting their jobs in under a year. About 20 percent quit within two years, and about 30 percent in three. quote:Numerous conditions must be fulfilled for an employee can be dismissed, and by going back on a tentative job offer, companies can incur the penalty of having their names released to the public. Sheep fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Apr 3, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2013 05:25
|
|
|
So this situation is basically the only way to work under the labor regulations? I'm trying to understand why someone couldn't just set up shop in Japan with American-style management and HR practices and dominate the business landscape by owning all the talent and actually having a lean, efficient workspace.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2013 06:06
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:So this situation is basically the only way to work under the labor regulations? I'm trying to understand why someone couldn't just set up shop in Japan with American-style management and HR practices and dominate the business landscape by owning all the talent and actually having a lean, efficient workspace. I assume it has something to do with monopolies collaborating against any such action?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2013 13:15
|
|
|
Finally got some stimulus worth a drat. Its a bit more then I thought, but that said, I can't see how anyone is at all surprised that this happened.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 01:12
|
|
|
My exchange rate 
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 01:55
|
|
|
The strong yen has been depressing the manufacturing sector something fierce. Predictably, there are already Austrian school dingbats getting down with the doomsaying, while ignoring the various factors that were screwing the Japanese economy. Yeah, they totally should have gone for austerity measures, because they've been so successful in Europe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 02:09
|
|
|
Pompous Rhombus posted:My exchange rate Screw your exchange rate. I can almost justify a trip to Japan again. On the other hand, the 10,000 yen I have sitting in my desk drawer at home is now worth less than before. To get real though, is the exchange rate anything close to a solution to Japan's economic problems?
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 02:35
|
|
|
It's not the exchange rate so much as the inflation rate. Japan's been in deflation for ages and since prices are sticky consumer expenditure has been low. Having 2% inflation is pretty average for most Western countries and Japan's been trapped in a deflation/negative GDP growth quagmire for ages. The Nikkei went up big today and has been soaring since the election, so businesses seem to be anticipating lots of growth. Obviously debt is a big problem, Japan's public debt is the highest (in relation to its GDP) in the world, but the way I see it, they can't even attempt to pay it back unless there's actual growth in the economy. That said, my savings 
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 03:07
|
|
|
Pompous Rhombus posted:My exchange rate I've made about $500 today so far and I didn't open a position until well after the drop, so gg Japan, keep it up.  but also I saw this on my forex news feed quote:Soros says that the Yen fall in Japan may become like an avalanche which coming from a man who (notably silently) made a cool billion off the earlier slide of a few months ago has me slightly worried that he's not being completely forthright with that statement. e: or maybe he just doesn't have a position anymore and so is being honest. I dunno. Forex is weird. ReidRansom fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Apr 5, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2013 03:21
|
|
|
For the people that haven't see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoTBRpcaZS0 Uyoku sure are some fuckers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 21:21
|
|
|
LimburgLimbo posted:For the people that haven't see this: Holy poo poo, what is wrong with some people  Well, the comments to that video restored a shred of my faith in humanity at least. Except the idiot who apparently thinks that Korean anti-Japan demonstrations are frequently worse somehow excuses this.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 21:33
|
|
|
Genpei Turtle posted:Holy poo poo, what is wrong with some people edit: I don't think Japanese students learn how to structure arguments properly in school...like...at all. Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Apr 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 22:12
|
|
|
Check out the other videos on that guy's channel. He's got some other videos of protests, as well as the counter protests, which ended up being way bigger than the ultranationalists.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:01
|
|
|
Just how far to the right Japan has swung was really driven home for me last week when I went into the storeroom and looked at the new history textbooks we have for the 2013-14 school year. I only had about an hour and a half to go through them, but here's some numbers I jotted down: 5 textbooks (Japanese history A/B) for the new year. All 5 mentioned a Nanking 'incident' 2 called it a 'massacre' or 'genocide'. 4 gave numbers (20 to 200 thousand, generally) of people killed. 1 actually mentioned civilians being explicitly targeted by the Japanese army. 4 mentioned forced labor within the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 1 mentioned atrocities committed against native populations in the GEACPS 1 mentioned the Bataan Death March. 2 mentioned 'comfort women'. Neither mentioned anything approaching sexual slavery or defined the term 慰安婦 for the students. 1 spoke of 'comfort women' using an entire sentence. The other (日本史図鑑,see below) simply had 'comfort women (military forced comfort)' on a list of 'attributes of the GEACPS' 1 actually used the word 'war crimes' when describing the Tokyo war crimes tribunal. 1 devoted an entire page to Japan's justifications for attacking America, including charts of resource imports, yet failed to explain the reasons for the embargo. 0 spoke of the concentration camps in Karuizawa where even non-Asians holding Japanese citizenship were interred. All spoke of the internment of ethnic Japanese citizens in America. I'm thinking of ordering my own copies so I can sit down and actually properly go through them. It was really interesting (and kind of terrifying) to see what Japanese students are being taught about their country's history. I will say that one textbook (日本史図鑑) was actually kind of decent and had really good information where it bothered to go into detail - lots on the occupation of Korea and Manchuria, the second Sino-Japanese war, atrocities committed by the Japanese military, etc. Another, 日本史A(ひと・くらし・未来) was borderline passable. The rest were absolute garbage. I can get titles/publishers on Monday if anyone is interested in looking for themselves. Sheep fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Apr 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:28
|
|
|
For those of us that don't speak Japanese ... what is she saying? Although I'm guessing by the Rising Sun flag that it's some ridiculous nationalism? It's weird that that would be a banner people would rally behind; is it still common to see in Japan? I thought it had a similar kind of stigma to a swastika. edit: wow well I can understand the follow up video. That is incredibly disturbing. How common is this kind of thing? edit 2: wait no I don't understand the follow up video at all is it demonstrations and counter demonstrations or 
Koramei fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:29
|
|
|
My lovely translation: Dear lovely Koreans living in Tsuruhashi(?), and also those Japanese present today, hello. I am so disgusted that I cannot stand it. (everyone replies) Yeah! I want to kill you all! I'd like to give you all a Tsuruhashi massacre just like the Nanking massacre! (everyone replies) Yeah! When the anger of the Japanese explodes, that's what it will be! (everyone replies) Yeah! We will kill (genocide) you all! Go back to your own country before we do it! (everyone replies) Yeah! This is Japan. It is not the Korean Peninsula! (everyone replies) Yeah! Just go back already! (everyone) Go back! So yeah there's your freedom of speech in Japan. Koramei posted:It's weird that that would be a banner people would rally behind; is it still common to see in Japan? I thought it had a similar kind of stigma to a swastika. There are dudes in black vans with the naval ensign painted all over them blaring patriotic music talking about "restoring the emperor and kicking all foreigners out of Japan and restoring Japan to its glorious past" driving up and down the roads of pretty much every city in the country every weekend. Then you have the hordes of people posting online who don't have the balls to dress up like paramilitaries and drive around on Sunday afternoon. I won't pretend to have researched how big a thing it actually is but there is obviously some amount of support there. The rising sun with rays is mostly just seen as a more-patriotic-than-normal symbol than anything else. Certainly doesn't have anywhere near the connotations that the swastika does. As you can see from my previous post, Japan is less about confronting its past and more about whitewashing it these days. Sheep fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Apr 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
Sheep posted:So yeah there's your freedom of speech in Japan. Yeah but I think that video was from earlier on, the followup video from a month later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQeqy7Vw8dg
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:53
|
|
|
There's a really huge disconnect between how far-right weirdos and the typical middle-class Japanese person views the world that mirrors the situation in the US and Europe in a lot of ways. Compare with "Obama is a communist who wants to impose sharia and ban country music" loons and fascist European soccer fans.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:53
|
|
|
The difference is that we can't go out in the streets in the west and advocate genocide without running afoul of the law. That is not the case in Japan.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2013 23:58
|
|
|
Sheep posted:The difference is that we can't go out in the streets in the west and advocate genocide without running afoul of the law. That is not the case in Japan. Meh, you probably couldn't get as far as that girl did, but you can get away with a lot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2013 00:03
|
|
|
LimburgLimbo posted:Meh, you probably couldn't get as far as that girl did, but you can get away with a lot. The scene: Pankow, Berlin A young German middle schooler standing on the side of the road. Dear Polocks living in Berlin, and also those Germans present today, hello. I am so disgusted that I cannot stand it. (everyone replies) Yeah! I want to kill you all! I'd like to give you all a Pankow massacre just like the Wola massacre! (everyone replies) Yeah! When the anger of the Germans explodes, that's what it will be! (everyone replies) Yeah! We will kill (genocide) you all! Go back to your own country before we do it! (everyone replies) Yeah! This is Germany. It is not Poland! (everyone replies) Yeah! Just go back already! (everyone) Go back! Absolutely unfathomable. And with good reason. Edit: Sheep fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Apr 12, 2013 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2013 00:20
|
|
|
I didn't notice anyone saying it wasn't hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
Sheep posted:The difference is that we can't go out in the streets in the west and advocate genocide without running afoul of the law. That is not the case in Japan. Really? Germany has strict anti-Nazi laws but I can't imagine anyone getting in trouble in the US for doing the same thing. I mean we had literal (very small) Nazi rallies in my hometown, it was covered by the first amendment. I don't know enough to say you could do that in other countries but I'd think you could.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2013 02:04
|
|
