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french lies posted:Great OP. Similar question, the Liancourt Rocks. Over here in Korea Dokdo is a big loving deal but I get the impression that other than some right wingers and trolls no one in Japan actually cares. It looks to me like there is a minor dispute but most of the issue is invented by Koreans as part of their general gently caress Japan narrative, but I don't know what it's like in Japan.
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Jun 26, 2012 11:57
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It seems super petty here too. But I've never met anyone in Korea who likes him and the party is worried about the next election. making GBS threads on Japan always goes over well here so it makes sense.
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Aug 11, 2012 18:52
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He's viewed similarly to W. His standard nickname is 2MB (initials, Lee is just I which also means two) since that's all his mental computer can run. Big business over the people, puppet of the chaebols, the standard conservative poo poo. It's one of the few things that literally every Korean I've ever met agrees on. I have no idea how he got elected.
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Aug 11, 2012 18:58
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That's interesting. I was just in Japan for the first time and was struck how individual everyone seems compared with Korea, but that kind of sexism is different. Korea is sexist as hell too, but all my Korean friends (women) think it's terrible and needs to change. The conformism keeps them from doing anything active about it, though. And some of them end up just going with what Korean society expects even though they hate every bit of it. Others have stopped associating with Korean men entirely and only hang out with western guys since they get treated so much better. Asia badly needs feminism.
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Aug 30, 2012 11:25
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ErIog posted:The yen appreciating against the USD is also the fault of the dollar weakening over time. It's hard to untangle exchange rates sometimes, but I suspect significant parts of have more to do with the dollar losing strength as opposed to the yen gaining that much strength. It's not just against the USD though. It's way up against the KRW, for one, and the won is up against the dollar too. As I'm reminded every time I transfer money back for student loans. 
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Sep 24, 2012 00:01
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EasternBronze posted:If the Won is up against the dollar shouldn't you be happy when you transfer it back because you will be getting more USD for the same Won? No, I get a lot less than when I first moved here. Am I using the words wrong?
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Sep 24, 2012 00:08
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Yeah I shouldn't post so early in the morning. It's vaguely confusing since the bigger the won number in the won -> dollar relationship, the further down it has gone. Here it has little to do with the dollar, the government is constantly loving with the value to drive exports. They had a big intervention months back that wiped out 10% of my income in a weekend. That was fun.
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Sep 24, 2012 02:16
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I'm not sure. Most Koreans will only buy Korean goods because they are Korean, and Koreans hate buying used things or having old things so there's constant turnover. Consumer goods here are also hella expensive though, there are some kind of taxes to encourage selling overseas instead of domestically plus the aforementioned Korean only products thing kind of gives the chaebols license to charge whatever the hell they want. Korea has some of the highest prices in the world for consumer goods. Exports have always been primary, Korea's really only had the money for home consumption in the last decade, two if you're being generous. My experience isn't useful for judging since I have found Korean products to be garbage and avoid them whenever possible.
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Sep 24, 2012 02:35
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I think fundamentally multiple places considered them theirs, but they were completely worthless until recent gas exploration so nobody really cared that much. Nobody lived there and there's nothing special on them, why would anyone have wasted time and effort on some rocks? So the historical claims are going to be murky at best.
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Sep 24, 2012 06:13
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It seems like it'd be a symbolic statement and make people flip their collective poo poo (including a lot of Japanese people, presumably). I don't think governments would do much except their usual nationalist gently caress Japan exploitation, or that it would actually affect things. As you said, Japan already has a powerful military in all but name, so it wouldn't change the reality of the situation. From watching politics here in SK I get kind of a feeling that some people would make a fuss, and the government would officially make one, but at some level the SK government would be okay with it. They make a lot of noise about gently caress Japan but I think there's a recognition that if there was serious trouble, like with NK or an aggressive China, that SK and Japan would end up fighting on the same side. They were right on the edge of a mutual military pact before LMB decided to toss it out for election year Saenuri nationalism. It just seems like on both sides the adults in the room realize SK and Japan are natural allies, even with all the poo poo that goes on in public. But maybe I'm projecting my wishful thinking that Korea will stop spinning themselves into frothing rages over nothing and about people whose grandparents were children at best the last time the countries fought.
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Nov 15, 2012 15:10
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Samurai Sanders posted:There was never any real risk to basically anywhere people lived, as far as I know. It's 99.9% anti-nuclear hysteria and 0.1% actual risk to anyone. Yeah. You'd catch a bigger radiation dose moving somewhere like Cornwall than you ever would have in Tokyo. Other than workers actually inside the plant it's unlikely anyone was affected.
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Mar 12, 2013 04:39
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ReindeerF posted:As America has shown, this can have unintended consequences. This actually gets misunderstood. The paying not to farm thing was a result of the Dust Bowl. Overfarming fucks up everything, as the Dust Bowl quite dramatically showed, but it's hard to ask farmers to just not grow anything since that means they have no income. So, the paying people not to farm concept was created to support farmers while their land was laying fallow, in order to prevent another Dust Bowl. Unless I'm wrong, but this is my understanding of it. The big farming corporations abuse it since they don't need to farm all the time, but then you're telling a company not to make as much profit as they could be and corporations are all assholes, so.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:25
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Protocol 5 posted:The rice issue is an important one though, mainly because so much arable land is devoted to rice cultivation, and polished white rice has a pretty lousy nutritional profile. More diversity would help a lot. Try convincing someone over here that rice isn't the healthiest food on Earth. I agree with you in concept but I don't see any way it's going to happen.
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Mar 19, 2013 03:38
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Protocol 5 posted:I know that, that's why I brought it up. The whole ridiculous obsession with rice and how only Japanese rice is good enough is totally loving people over. My stance on most issues facing Japan is morbid curiosity. You know, what is it going to take? Sorry, I don't know who lives in Asia and it's hard to understand the rice thing until you do. I really liked all the (little) time I've spent in Japan so watching the slow-motion trainwreck is sad. Also, I live in Korea which is in many ways going the same road as Japan, but about twenty years behind. I keep hoping they look at the mistakes Japan has made and go a different way, but that would require acknowledging that Korea has been copying Japan for decades. It's worked so far but needs to go a different path soon.
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Mar 19, 2013 03:49
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tractor fanatic posted:It's only been recently that Americans have started eating whole wheat bread again, and most people I know still only eat white bread. I don't think enriched bleached flour is all that much better than polished white rice. It's not comparable though. If American meals were centered around a bowl of white bread with a few side dishes and Americans believed white bread was the only food anyone really needs and was the healthiest thing in the world to eat, then it would be. Chinese cuisines are generally quite a bit less rice centric than Japan and Korea, from what I've seen. Japanese meals aren't just a bowl of rice, but the rice is considered the core of the meal and the rest is optional. Same in Korea. There are some foods that don't involve rice that are exceptions here (soba for example), but this is the rule if rice is on the table.
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Mar 19, 2013 04:32
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Koramei posted:What's the Korean public's opinion on Dokdo/Takeshima? Chinese people's aggression over Senkaku/Diaoyu we tend to write off as nationalism due to propoganda and silly brainwashed people (especially when we can compare it to the Japanese people's reaction on the same issue), but that can't be so true of Korea. Is it just resurgent hate over WW2 stuff. It's absolutely nationalist brainwashing, I get to see it all the time living here. Kids get Dokdo taught from an early age. Last year the English books were revised, one of the editions has a chapter on Dokdo and how to talk to THE FOREIGNER about the Dokdo issue. The schools also have Dokdo day. I greatly enjoyed the guy who drove his truck into the Japanese embassy a few months back over it, was hilarious. There are "Dokdo is Korean land!" signs up all over. I see them on buses, in convenience stores, on the street at random. My old ATM had it as a splash screen. The section of English books about Korea at any bookstore has a ridiculous massive volume about the history of Dokdo. For reference, Dokdo is two tiny rear end rocks that nothing has ever happened on ever. There's a Korean Coast Guard station there that pollutes the area with untreated sewage, that's it. Kids are also taught to hate Japan from birth by their parents and the school system, which adds into it. I've never met a Japanese person who gave a poo poo or had even heard of it, but I haven't spent that much time in Japan. And to be fair, most of my Korean friends don't give a poo poo either. But as you'd imagine, the kind of Koreans who are hanging around with whitey are different than average. Korea also has a hilarious dispute with China over an "island" called Ieodo that is underwater, but it doesn't get much press.
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Mar 28, 2013 02:17
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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.
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Apr 12, 2013 02:04
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Sheep posted:IANAL but I'm pretty sure you can't advocate committing genocide upon an ethnic group to their faces by saying things like "we will kill you all", even in America - not only because that would violate the "not inciting violence" provision of protected speech, but also because you would be communicating threats, which is illegal on its own. Also that is a pretty lovely derail to get into. Yeah, that's why I included the caveat--I don't want to make arguments for other western countries that I don't know as well. I don't want to derail with a who's better argument either but I am curious in the difference of free speech between the countries. Korea's constitution guarantees it basically the same way as the US, but Korea has a war powers act that allows the government to restrict freedoms as long as Korea is at war. And, well, they're permanently at war, so in practice free speech here is restricted frequently. Not as bad as when it was a dictatorship but still in striking ways to an American. What's the Japanese right like?
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Apr 12, 2013 02:41
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Madd0g11 posted:You didn't go to the museum then. It is the most awesome take on WWII I've ever seen. All they displays have English. It is fantastic, the amount of nationalist whitewashing in there is incredible. Did you know the war started when the Chinese just up and attacked the Japanese soldiers in Beijing for no reason? Manchukuo also had nothing do with Japan at all. Fortunately, all of Asia thanked Japan after the war for showing them the way to freedom from western imperialism. I have some pictures of the most egregious signs if anyone's interested, but don't want to derail too far. This is the only museum I saw that was like that and it is run by right wing assholes so it's hardly representative.
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Apr 24, 2013 13:25
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Gleri posted:I guess it provides the convenient excuse that they can't tell the priests what to do? My understanding s this is precisely why.
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Apr 24, 2013 14:09
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Korea frequently shits on Japan for internal politics too. Normal stuff. There is no upside for China to antagonize Japan into militarizing. They're big trading partners and Japan's military is already the best in East Asia. But China's internal issues are almost certainly more of a threat than any foreign ones, so it makes sense to focus that way. It's not like Japan has anything to gain from fighting either. Not that any of that reliably stops wars, as World War 1 amply demonstrated. But nationalist making GBS threads on each other is par for the course over here so I wouldn't read much into it. I live in northeast Asia so I don't hear much from the other countries but Korea/China/Japan constantly say this kind of poo poo about each other. They all still trade and make money off each other, no matter what slights real or imagined their mouth-breathing nationalists scream about. Hopefully it never escalates to anything.
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May 9, 2013 17:16
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Samurai Sanders posted:edit: vvv yeah, I guess you're right, this kind of talk has that function as well in China. Probably not Japan or Korea though, their countries can stay together pretty well without a constant barrage of nationalism. Korea's not in danger of breaking apart, but there is absolutely a constant barrage of government sponsored nationalism here. I'm not sure what exactly they're hoping to accomplish by it.
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May 10, 2013 01:32
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Would having services for families and allowing women to stay in the workforce equally help the economic problems enough, you think? I realize there would be just as much resistance to that but it seems more feasable since it's a purely internal solution.
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Jun 12, 2013 02:58
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Koramei posted:Nobody's broadcast TV is better than anybody else's, really. You think this, then you move to Asia and realize it is not true. I live in Korea, not Japan, but the TV is basically the same and it is utter garbage. It's incomprehensibly terrible. It makes Toddlers and Tiaras look like Shakespeare.
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Sep 13, 2013 01:21
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Madd0g11 posted:*Watches Japanese show* Yeah this is basically it. The absolute bottom shelf horrific reality shows in the US aren't really any better than the poo poo on Asian TV, but US TV has Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire and stuff. Asian TV is literally nothing but garbage variety shows (which at least in Korea are basically nothing more than marketing for kpop) and Mexican soap operas. The rise of truly exceptional TV is recent enough that I hope it will happen here someday, too. It's also weird because Korean movies tend to be really good. I don't know why TV is such a black hole of talent.
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Sep 13, 2013 03:16
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Madd0g11 posted:And the only good channel in Korea is the one that plays starcraft all the time. There's also the Seagal movie channel.
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Sep 13, 2013 04:05
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That's not really true, though. Despite the stereotype (and the real losses of jobs) US manufacturing is still top three, with its exact position depending on the study. Last one I saw it was EU, US, then China just below. The US entertainment industry is a big deal but it's hardly the only thing left.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:50
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Unless the MY ONSEN people get a clue about how geothermal power works, but fusion would happen way before that ever does.
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Sep 15, 2013 11:52
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There are a lot of people who believe that exploiting geothermal power will somehow magically cause the onsen to stop working. Enough of these people exist that Japan has close to zero geothermal power generation, despite being one of the best places in the world to do it. Wikipedia claims Japan currently produces 0.1% of its power through geothermal.
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Sep 15, 2013 12:16
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I could believe TEPCO being incompetent enough to do anything at this point, but from my understanding of how geothermal works there's no way to hurt anything with it. The worst that can happen is you gently caress up building the plant and it doesn't work. The Earth has plenty of internal heat, the onsens won't be affected by drawing off a tiny bit for electricity. You could drill into the onsen itself and vent it or something but that would have to be intentional.
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Sep 24, 2013 02:06
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Mr. Pumroy posted:South Korean men have a loving awful reputation (deserved, imo). If there's a trend of Korean women going out and marrying foreigners it would not surprise me in the least. I'm half-Korean and I've lived in Seoul with the Korean side of the family for about half my life, and from what I've seen, the women are some of the hardest working people you will ever meet anywhere on Earth and the men are shocking, abusive dirtbags. That's largely been my experience, I've lived here almost three years and have very rarely met a Korean man who was worth being friends with, most ended up being giant assholes to women so I couldn't deal with it. That in mind, the two Japanese girls I know here are both dating Korean men and so happy about how much better Korean men treat them than what they were used to in Japan. All the Korean women I know who have dated westerners have said they'd never date a Korean again, they couldn't go back to being treated like that. Anyway, anecdotes and all but I've yet to encounter anything that really defies the reputation. I do know a couple Korean guys who are normal, decent people, it's not like it doesn't exist of course, but the culture just encourages guys to be massive dickbags and surprise surprise, it works.
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Oct 24, 2013 01:35
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Samurai Sanders posted:If only they could be made to understand that employees, male or female, are basically only productive for six hours a day no matter how long they are in the office. Then this whole problem would go away. It's a world where the Ford productivity studies never existed.
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Oct 26, 2013 05:37
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ocrumsprug posted:The latter and apparently cameras weren't unusual. I get uncomfortable taking my phone out to snap a picture of my own kid around/in her school, so I don't really understand how the behaviour is tolerated there. Same thing here in Korea. My friend noticed an old man hanging out at the playground one day, and after a couple days saw he was chilling out every day beating off watching the kids. She freaked out and told the school, who said they'd look into it. Nothing happened, so she called the police a week later. Their response was "Yeah he does that, don't worry about it". I've heard those stories many times, that was the first time someone I knew personally encountered it.
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Nov 5, 2013 01:37
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Stringent posted:Would the cops do anything if you drug him off and stopped him being able to walk for a few months? Imprison and/or deport you for being a dirty foreigner assaulting a pure and righteous Korean citizen, sure. You're not even allowed to defend yourself if you're attacked by Koreans here. And being that it was an old man, he's essentially immune to the law and can do anything he wants short of literal murder.
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Nov 5, 2013 01:49
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Burberry men are flashers specifically, but it's the same idea. My middle school girls say they hate summer because of the burberry men that show up and show them their dicks regularly throughout the season.
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Nov 5, 2013 15:36
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I hope it's just like the same ten dudes doing circuits of the schools around the city, but god only knows. It's not considered a problem so there's no follow up or investigation or anything. E: Actually just remembered a little story one of my friends told me, the first burberry man of the year is considered special and good luck if you see him on a test day or something. She always looked forward to that one when she was in high school, but the rest were annoying. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 15:46
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I showed Amazon and one-click ordering to some of my Korean coworkers and they basically thought I was a witch for a week. You don't have to download ActiveX plugins? You don't have to enter 30 different verifications, any one of which failing in any minor way resets everything so you have to begin the process again from scratch? You don't have to use IE 6?
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Nov 8, 2013 18:37
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It's frustrating having to go to an unfamiliar doctor since if you don't speak Latin, you will have literally no idea what the gently caress the guy is talking about. And the guy thinks he's speaking English so he gets frustrated that you're confused and the whole thing is terrible. Everyone I know has been shocked when I explain that the scientific medical terminology they learned is all Latin and the vast majority of English speakers won't understand a word of it. The terrible English education rabbit hole over here is bottomless.
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Nov 10, 2013 16:30
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I haven't seen a medical textbook here, but I presume it works like everything else in English education and that they just memorized it word for word without any real comprehension or practical use. I imagine if you're in medical school then you might use the Latin terms a lot and it's not an issue. Medical education here also seems bad in general. My preferred doc went to med school in the US and lived there a while, so he speaks comprehensibly and doesn't give his western patients the placebo butt shot or tell us to drink warm water or any of the other nonsense you typically get from Asian doctors. Another issue is the common translation apps people use here will give you the Latin scientific name for things as the first result, not the common English name, and as a non-native speaker obviously you would have no idea that your dictionary is telling you the wrong term to use.
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Nov 10, 2013 17:41
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It's an age where innovative technology sectors are a huge part of economic growth and the entire economy is controlled by the iron fists of the 70 year old men who run the companies. So yes, it's a symptom of the larger issue of Japan creating a system where innovation is nearly impossible. You can't disagree, you can't suggest better ways that go against tradition, there's no venture capital, there's no risk taking because if you fail once you're done forever. It's frankly more surprising Japan ever had periods that it wasn't stagnant.
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Nov 11, 2013 04:50
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