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For Japan to keep going It's gotta be increased immigration. Or robots. Or clones I suppose. Or Japan could have a giant cultural shift and allow women to easily work and be mothers, and make higher education easier to get so parents don't feel like they have to spend $texas on cram schools and stuff. It's gotta be one or more of those or eventually Japan will shrivel away.
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May 11, 2014 05:23
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Samurai Sanders posted:eventually shrivel away. This doesn't involve doing anything so I think we'll go with this one.
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May 11, 2014 05:24
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Most people don't want to live in a tuna-less world anyhow.
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May 11, 2014 05:26
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It's also interesting to see a gradual shift in the demographics of foreign expats. At least anecdotally, I've seen an outflow of well-heeled expats from places like the US and UK, especially after the Tsunami, and an inflow of foreigners from places like Eastern Europe and Africa. Of course, outnumbering all those, are the mainland Chinese. Again, another litmus test of Japanese xenophobia, is asking a native about mainlanders.
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May 11, 2014 06:01
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hadji murad posted:Most people don't want to live in a tuna-less world anyhow.
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May 11, 2014 06:06
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shrike82 posted:
In fairness I think everyone that's not the Mainland Chinese (or maybe Mongolians?) hates the Mainland Chinese.
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May 11, 2014 06:08
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This is somewhat unrelated, but how similar are Japan, South Korea and China culturally? I know China is complicated by it being less developed, and the government, but I have heard Korea at least has pretty much the same problems as Japan? China's demographics are already hosed up thanks to the one child policy, right? I'm assuming, then, that in 50 (30?) years China will be in the exact same spot?
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May 11, 2014 06:12
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shrike82 posted:It's also interesting to see a gradual shift in the demographics of foreign expats. A lot of that is the result of the financial crisis when a great many companies, finance firms especially, but others as well I believe, finally took the opportunity to move to places where it's cheaper to do business, moving offices to Singapore and Hong Kong, and/or outsourcing more to India. That's aside from the places that just plain lost notable headcount and haven't made it back again. Can't say I've personally noticed the influx of other immigrants, but I don't really have any inroads to those communities. computer parts posted:In fairness I think everyone that's not the Mainland Chinese (or maybe Mongolians?) hates the Mainland Chinese. There's divisions among mainland China too, so it's probably best to say that everyone that's not Han Chinese hates the Han Chinese.
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May 11, 2014 06:16
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icantfindaname posted:This is somewhat unrelated, but how similar are Japan, South Korea and China culturally? I know China is complicated by it being less developed, and the government, but I have heard Korea at least has pretty much the same problems as Japan? China's demographics are already hosed up thanks to the one child policy, right? I'm assuming, then, that in 50 (30?) years China will be in the exact same spot? Much more similar than any of them would ever admit to, but they're all pretty distinct. Japan doesn't have as much of the Confucian influence which is very strong in China and Korea, for one, but it's still there and results in a lot of the big problems you see (filial piety would be a pretty big one off the top of my head. Filial piety itself is not a bad thing, but it's a big reason why the pension system works the way it does, how just as many housewives are stuck taking care of their in-laws as well as their children, etc). My usual joke is that no matter what Japan does, Korea likes to take it and outdo them. Whether it's low birth rate, population greying, overtime work, hours spent at cram school, plastic surgery... 
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May 11, 2014 06:19
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icantfindaname posted:This is somewhat unrelated, but how similar are Japan, South Korea and China culturally? I know China is complicated by it being less developed, and the government, but I have heard Korea at least has pretty much the same problems as Japan? China's demographics are already hosed up thanks to the one child policy, right? I'm assuming, then, that in 50 (30?) years China will be in the exact same spot? Culturally, I find Koreans and Chinese much more similar. There's a lot of Japanese influence in Korea, but from living in Korea and visiting the other two (and having Chinese/Japanese friends living here in Korea tell me their thoughts) I found the similarities stronger with China. China is such a big diverse thing that it's hard to say. Beijing, at least, was a lot like Korea. There's strong Japanese influence in Korea though, and as far as like national development, Korea copies Japan constantly. Economically/developmentally Korea is Japan but 20-30 years behind. I hope they will look at Japan's mistakes and avoid them, but I suspect they won't. Copying Japan was a good idea, Japan developed well and Korea did it too, but only to a point. There's a ton of cultural stuff in Korea that is straight up Japanese (Korean pop culture in particular is almost entirely taken from Japan), but most Koreans will claim they invented it and are legitimately unaware it's from Japan. I've literally had a student wearing Hello Kitty clothes with anime notebooks eating Pocky and drinking Pocari Sweat tell me how everything Japanese is evil with zero self-awareness. A lot of the bad things are shared with China, like the general filth and spitting and shoving and driving. Japanese culture is more diverse than people give it credit for too, though. I've only been to Tokyo and Osaka, but the people in those two cities are very different. Tokyo felt like a totally other thing than Korea or China, while Osakans seemed much more like Koreans. Much friendlier, more talkative. Chinese people generally remind me more of Americans than anything else. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 06:58 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 06:55
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Samurai Sanders posted:We wouldn't be facing a tuna-less world if they could slow down their intake just a LITTLE bit. Look it's our loving culture to eat everything in the ocean as much as we want to.
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May 11, 2014 07:00
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Madd0g11 posted:Look it's our loving culture to eat everything in the ocean as much as we want to. Just look up "Chinese zombie trawlers" for some idea of how modern fishing works.
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May 11, 2014 07:38
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Is it true that Japan is very low tech? I read these articles, not sure how accurate they are. http://edinburghnapiernews.com/2011/01/26/%91japan-high-tech-image-low-tech-reality%92/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10543126 EDIT -First link doesn't work with when linked for some reason so just copy and paste. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 07:51 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 07:47
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Grand Fromage posted:Chinese people generally remind me more of Americans than anything else. Ok, I realize we got problems, but that's just flat out mean.
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May 11, 2014 07:51
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punk rebel ecks posted:Is it true that Japan is very low tech? I think its been mentioned in this thread before, but most regular Japanese don't really use home PC's at the same level as people in the US and Western Europe. Online ordering is only a thing for embarrassed otakus buying shady goods, things like Hulu and Netflix basically don't exist and digital marketplaces like Steam and Amazon's ebooks are ignored in favor of still buying physical goods. It seems to be more of a "we do things this way and always have" thing, one poster described a Japanese co-worker crying with relief when they were offered some aspirin for a moderate pain as things like commercial available analgesics aren't widely used/available and doctors tell them to bear it with dignity (or something like that).
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May 11, 2014 07:58
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Eh, online shopping is definitely a thing in Japan these days.
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May 11, 2014 08:01
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I think Japan is starting to catch up in the business area, but they're so far behind it's going to be pretty laughable for a while. Mitsubishi finally has a debit card now and it's such a Big Thing that they literally have commercials on TV to explain the concept to people. My office is an odd dichotomy of the two, serving clients who are perfectly capable and have their poo poo together as far as tech goes... and then there are the other clients where it's so low-tech I have to personally go to the office and edit their notes written on a 1980s IBM running Ichitaro. It's like if I had to go to edit someone's work and it was all written on WordStar. I guess it's kind of cool that I can impress the oyajis by knowing basic command lines in DOS.
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May 11, 2014 08:11
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Mitsubishi finally has a debit card now and it's such a Big Thing that they literally have commercials on TV to explain the concept to people. Only took them like a decade to catch up with the West.
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May 11, 2014 08:19
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shrike82 posted:Eh, online shopping is definitely a thing in Japan these days. Frankly, the number of women I've seen shopping online on the train is shocking. If they aren't playing shiiiity Line games it seems like they are buying poo poo.
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May 11, 2014 08:26
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Reverend Cheddar posted:I think Japan is starting to catch up in the business area, but they're so far behind it's going to be pretty laughable for a while. Mitsubishi finally has a debit card now and it's such a Big Thing that they literally have commercials on TV to explain the concept to people. My office is an odd dichotomy of the two, serving clients who are perfectly capable and have their poo poo together as far as tech goes... and then there are the other clients where it's so low-tech I have to personally go to the office and edit their notes written on a 1980s IBM running Ichitaro. It's like if I had to go to edit someone's work and it was all written on WordStar. I guess it's kind of cool that I can impress the oyajis by knowing basic command lines in DOS. According to Jake Adelstein, when he took a job in the early 90s at the Yoshimura Shimbun rather then any sort of computer there was one employee who's job it was to get information from a massive array of file cards whenever they need something. I don't know how accurate it is, close I'd think, but in Mad Men getting a computer was almost essential to conducting business in the late 60s.
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May 11, 2014 08:37
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pentyne posted:I think its been mentioned in this thread before, but most regular Japanese don't really use home PC's at the same level as people in the US and Western Europe. Online ordering is only a thing for embarrassed otakus buying shady goods, things like Hulu and Netflix basically don't exist and digital marketplaces like Steam and Amazon's ebooks are ignored in favor of still buying physical goods. Online shopping exists and is quite prevalent actually, as are painkillers which you can easily get over the counter from chain drugstores. Doctors will prescribe the poo poo out of anything so I have no idea where that last part came from either.
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May 11, 2014 08:41
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Yup, and citing Adelstein doesn't particularly inspire confidence either.
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May 11, 2014 08:42
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Since most people have their credit cards set up to automatically debit the full balance from their account every month I don't think it's all that surprising that people don't feel a need for debit cards. That said, my bank has offered one for at least the past 5 years or so.
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May 11, 2014 08:53
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I should ask my wife if any of her 7 credit cards function as a debit card. I wonder if the average citizen has more credit cards or umbrellas.
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May 11, 2014 08:59
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It's a tech dichotomy that's for sure. First ones to push 4k television, lots of robots in manufacturing. Lots of development in open source software. Then you got fax machines
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May 11, 2014 09:37
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pentyne posted:I think its been mentioned in this thread before, but most regular Japanese don't really use home PC's at the same level as people in the US and Western Europe. Online ordering is only a thing for embarrassed otakus buying shady goods, things like Hulu and Netflix basically don't exist and digital marketplaces like Steam and Amazon's ebooks are ignored in favor of still buying physical goods. Rakuten is one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world, Amazon.jp owns, and there is a Japanese Hulu.
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May 11, 2014 09:48
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caberham posted:Then you got fax machines
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May 11, 2014 10:10
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LyonsLions posted:Since most people have their credit cards set up to automatically debit the full balance from their account every month I don't think it's all that surprising that people don't feel a need for debit cards. That said, my bank has offered one for at least the past 5 years or so. Rakuten? Rakuten is special, the big banks are starting to catch up I actually did have the Rakuten debit card at one point (when it was still e-bank), used it to buy a plane ticket online, was suddenly out $900 because the bank knew what was going on but the Japanese airline insisted it had to be a credit card. That was a nightmare.
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May 11, 2014 10:30
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Madd0g11 posted:Rakuten is one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world, Amazon.jp owns, and there is a Japanese Hulu. Japanese Hulu is great when you only want to watch even numbered seasons of something avoiding the odd ones. Or occasionally vice versa. IDGI
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May 11, 2014 11:13
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caberham posted:lots of robots in manufacturing Up until very recently that wasn't true of the actual factories in Japan - a lot of the jobs that were replaced by robots in factories in the UK were still manual in Japan until 5 or 6 years ago (the one that I can point to, because I wrote all the software for the project, was checking the quality of steel doors for cars. 20 or 30 highly skilled manual workers replaced by one guy, one PC, and 2 infra red cameras) As for debit cards, when I first moved to Japan in 2003, my bank card was also a "J-Debit" card, which all the big stores like Yodobashi technically accepted, but as they were never ever used none of the employees knew how to use them. That said (a) J-Debit has no links to Visa/Mastercard so they're useless for anything outside Japan (or foreign vendors operating inside Japan, like Amazon JP) and (b) even then they only started up in 1999, which is hilariously late compared to the west.
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May 11, 2014 11:17
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As far as I know, Japan is still waaaaaaaay behind the US in terms of streaming video and download sales of games and so on. In fact, we keep getting Japanese stream video/games over here that they don't get over there. edit: online sales of physical things is awesome though since nowhere in Japan is more than two shipping days away. Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 11:20 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 11:18
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I'm not sure you guys are taking into account just how different things are done over there. Japanese people could stream TV to their phones in 2001. Like, live television. There are also countless streaming sites that are designed specifically to operate in that weird i-mode thing that Docomo has. Besides that, Youtube is absolutely huge in Japan so I'm not even sure where the idea that they're somehow "behind" in streaming tech comes from. I can't think of a domestic style Netflix, but that's really not a big deal when you have Tsutaya and Popeye cafes around almost every corner. There are also cultural/economic/social reasons why Netflix doesn't make a lot of sense for Japanese people. Why would you want to stay in your cramped apartment all day? Especially if you're young and don't have a family, you're going to be living in what is basically the size of a single bedroom. Watch episodes on the train you say? When are you ever going to take a train more than probably about an hour where you can actually sit down and enjoy something? Unless you're working in Osaka and live in Tokyo, you're probably not. It's true services like Steam haven't penetrated the market there as much as they have here, but again if you live only a few blocks from the nearest game shop why bother? PC games aren't nearly as big there are console/arcade stuff are. Mobile stuff is way more important in Japan that America. The only bright spot in Nintendo's recently released earnings report was that stuff about the 3DS going like gangbusters. People simply don't sit down at their computers and play games unless they're an enthusiast. Again, where is their 24in 1080p monitor going to sit? Those BBC articles are misleading because they take shortcuts. Japan is "tech backward" in many ways, some of them for dumb reasons. It's the "tech equal" in other ways like with Bluray technology and car tech. And it's "tech forward" in others. IC Wallets in their keitai anyone? Basically take anything the Western media reports on Japan casting it in the light of 1. dilapidated hasbeen 2. old people only 3. Super weird bizarre place with a big grain of salt. I'm reminded of that ridiculous thing Vice did a few months ago about the Japanese sex industry or that crazy-rear end Guardian piece that might lead one to believe that Japanese young people totally hate sex. Think about those two ideas for a second. If you're going to accept their premises that those two images represent "Japan", they're mutually exclusive. You can't have a booming sex industry and have young people refusing to bang. Clearly the answer is way more complicated and nuanced. Sorry to get on my soapbox there for a minute. I really really really get pissed off at how the western media basically gets all of their Japan reporting wrong because then I get questions from students that are attempts to confirm their biases in the direction of the three ways I mentioned. Maybe it was a bad idea to close all those Tokyo bureaus. Shinobo fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 14:10
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Sheep posted:Long hours does not necessarily mean hardworking, the Japanese are quite underproductive per hour worked compared to other similarly advanced (G7) nations. Apparently after some incidents (I assume suicides) related to overwork, a prefectural Board of Education instituted a mandatory report of hours for all teachers. If you went over a certain amount per week, you had to speak with a councilor, to make sure you were doing OK. The teacher who was telling me about it said it was common knowledge among teachers that the councilor didn't really do anything and wasn't actually that concerned. Naturally, teachers responded by under-reporting their hours  This sort of stuff isn't news to Sheep, but it's a pretty typical explar of the ineffective, "treat a bullet wound with a Band-Aid", COYA-type responses you get in Japan.
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May 11, 2014 14:13
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Shinobo posted:I'm not sure you guys are taking into account just how different things are done over there. Well what we're coming to already is the Galapagos effect, isn't it? I think all of us are pretty well-aware that Japan has some pretty high tech stuff (toilets man toilets), but they are high tech things aimed strictly at the domestic market. That's the trouble, when they have to interact somehow with the rest of the world which has for the most part moved on and Japan continues to dig its hole in the sand.
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May 11, 2014 15:08
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punk rebel ecks posted:How is Japan's welfare state? Is it as generous as Europe? A bit less like America? Or even tighter? This discussion has passed by a bit, but I feel like a key point here is that "welfare" in Japan and other Asian countries exists in the form of zero marginal product jobs being available, either directly from the government or through social pressure on private companies. quote:with a big grain of salt. I'm reminded of that ridiculous thing Vice did a few months ago about the Japanese sex industry or that crazy-rear end Guardian piece that might lead one to believe that Japanese young people totally hate sex. Think about those two ideas for a second. If you're going to accept their premises that those two images represent "Japan", they're mutually exclusive. You can't have a booming sex industry and have young people refusing to bang. Clearly the answer is way more complicated and nuanced. I don't think they're as mutually exclusive as you're making them out to be.
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May 11, 2014 16:01
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Shinobo posted:You can't have a booming sex industry and have young people refusing to bang. Hint, it's not the young people that are frequenting the whorehouses and blowjob and titty-feeling bars. Pompous Rhombus posted:Naturally, teachers responded by under-reporting their hours Exactly what I would expect to happen. Addressing the symptoms rather than the underlying problem is so typical. Sheep fucked around with this message at 16:38 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 16:35
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but seriously though all western reporting on japan is utterly worthless because it is filled with orientalism about the Sheep posted:Hint, it's not the young people that are frequenting the whorehouses and blowjob and titty-feeling bars. declining degree of sex has to do with the fact there is no way for anyone to afford to have a family these days, and to a lesser extent a relationship
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May 11, 2014 17:14
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ookiimarukochan posted:Up until very recently that wasn't true of the actual factories in Japan - a lot of the jobs that were replaced by robots in factories in the UK were still manual in Japan until 5 or 6 years ago (the one that I can point to, because I wrote all the software for the project, was checking the quality of steel doors for cars. 20 or 30 highly skilled manual workers replaced by one guy, one PC, and 2 infra red cameras) Yeah they still have those "old master" system and apprenticeship in Japan. It's weird  I was thinking along the lines of high end industrial equipment all coming from Japan. Like AIDA, Okamoto, Sodick, and making higher end glass and solid caps.But I suppose that's just a quality and cost issue than using cutting edge tech. ABB robot arms are better than Panasonic ones
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May 11, 2014 17:37
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Shinobo posted:I'm not sure you guys are taking into account just how different things are done over there. edit: but what this thread also does which is a problem is drift away from politics and towards just general cultural stuff, and that's a problem. Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 19:01 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 18:26
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caberham posted:Yeah they still have those "old master" system and apprenticeship in Japan. It's weird How is this different from the Mittelstand model in Germany? It's another good example of how people and media will reflexively slant something coming out from Japan as peculiar. This is a very good example because people have been lauding Germany's skilled apprenticeship system in SMEs as a moat to foreign competition but view the same model in Japan as archaic. I've basically given up on most media and expat portrayals of Japan. It's so lazy.
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May 11, 2014 23:30
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