I’m not very familiar with all the details, but Hentai has a history in the art tradition of Shunga, which has its roots in Ukiyo-e, which are woodcut depictions of various topics. Shunga is specifically part of the Ukiyo-e depictions of the pleasure quarters, which includes not only images of a sexual nature, but also other areas of entertainment (like sumo and tea house scenes).
So what does all this have to do with the Hentai images of women being raped by tentacle creatures? Well, there was quite a bit of variation in the different sexual behaviors being depicted, including Hokusai’s Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. (Google it at your own risk; it’s just as NSFW as tentacle rape Hentai. It is, however, quite a bit less violent.) Wikipedia’s article on the woodcut explains the interest in tentacle eroticism as a result in a resurgence in Shinto and Animist belief. I’m sure that someone with more interest in Edo period Japanese religious practices and art could give a more full answer as to “why tentacles” in all of this, but I really can’t explain much further.
The canned coffee is great! I realize it tastes little to nothing like real brewed coffee, but few things are quite as satisfying as the feel of a hot can of coffee (hot cans from vending machines are another great device!) when you’re standing on a train platform in the middle of winter.
And speaking of Coke, Coca-Cola’s Georgia is one of the biggest brands of canned coffee here. Although their American roots don’t make them immune to Engrish.
It was quite different being in Japan in '81. There weren’t any Western tv personalities who speak Japanese fluently, slike there are now, so people weren’t used to seeing us. Most of the interest we had was from people who wanted to talk to foreigners. There was very little interest in the church.
Why do you prefer to live there?**It creeps up on you. I really liked Japan as a missonary, and wanted to come back to live here for 5 years or so to get more experience in business and it grew more and more on me. Part of that was the I was a geek in high school, and felt an outsider. Coming to Japan, especially back in '81, out in the countryside, we were treated special and given a lot of attention.
Japanese work hard, which I admire. The cities are clean and orderly and there a lot of cool toys here. There’s a lot of great restaurants and things to do. It’s comfortable for me here.
Plus, my career is selling to Japanese, which is much easier to do here.
While the US music market is the largest in the world, the Japanese market is big. Japanese pop music, J-Pop, sells a lot, but a significent percentage of sales is Western music, rock, classic, jazz, etc. Japan has more than its share of people who get dedicated to a particular something, and will collect books, posters, etc. I had a friend my age, who like Kathryn Hepburn and had all her movies, posters and book about her. Not all obscure American artists could make a comeback here, but if that artist was particularly popular then they could easily sell a couple thousand CDs.
I used to work in the pro audio industry, but on the equipment side, and not the sales side. Japanese CDs are more expensive than US, and counterfeit products from China are a problem, often the extra tracks are used to get people to not buy cheaper counterfeits.
** boytyperanma** You’ve found a difference in games vs. games. Pachinko isn’t gambling. I couldn’t be because gambling is against the law, except for state sponsored horse racing, keirin (bicycle racing) and boat racing. So if people were to gamble on pachinko, they would be breaking the law. This is why you get a prize, which isn’t money. The only pachinko place I ever played at gave out pens in cases.
Fortunately if you follow the seedy-looking guy down into the alley, you can find a completely separate business which, for reasons only Adam Smith could fully explain, if interested in purchasing the prize. They’ll give you money for the pens. Whatever happens after that is a complete mystery.
Unfortunately, there is a critical shortage of businesses interested in purchasing back the Sega tokens.
China Guy Missed the other part of the question. My wife came to Japan to study at graduate school. She’s been here for 10 years now, and is a part-time instructor at two universities.
Getting back to Kozinga. There’s as much of a difference between Japan and other Asian cultures as between Japan and the States. In Japan, you need to be less straight, so a fair amount of the conversation is feeling out how another person feels about something so that you can phrase your thoughts. My wife says that her Chinese has mellowed out since living here.
Japanese language is more pronounced between formal and causal speaking. Often, people who are older will use casual talk with their juniors, who talk back using formal expressions. (desu – masu). This is so, even if there is only one year difference between the two. While Taiwanese will respect their elders, it’s not to this level.
Taiwanese tend to me more hospitable, a trait that is shared by Vietnamese, where there is more of an obligation to take care of guests. Certainly Japanese are polite and hospitable, but Taiwanese go out of their way to take care of guests. When my wife was first here, she felt Japanese to be cool.
Japanese also tend to dress up more. Taiwanese women often complain that they need to increase how much makeup they use when they live here.
As mentioned above, I’m usually the tallest person around, so you would stand out here. Japanese are the shortest people in East Asia. A friend of ours is your height, and is constantly bumping his head on things.
Most of what I have learned about Japan has come from this board!
One thing that has struck me as odd is that many have mentioned that Japan is very xenophobic, especially towards westerners, and specifically towards Americans - I have heard how they do not like to rent to, or live near, Americans.
In politically correct USA, it is no secret that many people are bigoted and racist, but for the most part, it would not be legally allowed to openly discriminate based on nationality or race. Do those types of laws apply in Japan?
Actually, of all the foreigners in Japan, Westerners, especially white ones, have the easiest time of it. Unlike Africans, Middle Easterners, South Americans and (non-J) Asians, there’s very little negative stereotyping specifically about us. People who don’t want Americans around usually don’t want foreigners of any stripe around. In many ways, in fact, westerners can find themselves subject to a great deal of positive attention, which can be nice at times, but can eventually get annoying when you’re more interested in just being one of the community.
I wrote out a long post on what I thought were the social causes, as well as the legality, in TokyoPlayer’s Pit thread just before this thread was created for specifically Japan-related questions. Rather than rehash it all, here’s the link.
I’ve found Japanese people to be the nicest in the world. I’m 6’1" and white. They seem to love Americans. Whenever I was stopped looking at a street or subway map people would always stop and assist me in finding my way. There is some xenophobia but you have to look for it. My friends found they don’t like westerners in their strip clubs. Many would not admit them at all and the women in the ones they made it into would not go anywhere near them.
Thanks for answering my question out of left field there.
One reason I was curious: When I lived in Taiwan before I was married, I would casually talk with people like the lady at the dumpling shop, and most of the time they were really glad to be able to talk with me in Chinese, and most of the time would ask me if I had found a local girlfriend yet and encouraged me to get married and settle down in Taiwan.
Now that I am married and living in Taiwan, everybody seems to take the fact that I have a Taiwanese wife in stride, and they love to see pictures of my daughter. It’s funny that in the US, I would get a bit offended at the admittedly infrequent comments about how a “mixed” ( :rolleyes: I dislike even typing the word) baby was more attractive or smarter. But here in Taiwan, I hear it all the time, in various shades of admiration or envy, and I suppose I’ve gotten used to it.
(Also, I’m at the point now where everybody I meet automatically assumes that I speak Chinese, so that even strangers will come up and ask me for directions on the street sometimes.)
But I get the idea that attitudes might be different in Japan regarding finding a local girl, settling down permanently, and having half Japanese/half Western kids. In fact, I suspect Taiwan might be unique in this regard.
Still very busy moving into my new place in Boston. Post made for reasons of subscribing, in case I forget about it and if there’s maybe anything I can help answer
What you wrote mirrors my own experience in Japan, so things aren’t so different. You hear “mixed kids are so cute!” comment quite often. I’ve yet to experience genuinely negative attitudes towards mixed marriage. As a matter of fact, it’s something of a popular topic in mass media. There’s a best selling (and quite funny) manga called “My Darling is a Foreigner” about the author’s experience with her quirky American-born husband. It’s also a popular topic on television shows.
Just one hour ago, I was looking at cameras in an electronics store and a salesman came to me and started his sales pitch without verifying that I did, indeed, understand Japanese. This happens often, and it is something I appreciate. Of course, you also get people who will absolutely insist on using broken English and hand gestures despite the fact that you’re speaking to them in fluent Japanese.
I’ve only been in Taiwan for work once, for ten days, but I remember being surpised at how much similar to Japan it was. I expected Taiwan to be like mainland China, but I found it to be closer, superficially, to Japan in many ways. There were of course, striking differences, and this was only a short stay.
Can you use chopsticks?
Do you have a gun?
Japan has its quirks, and the renting to foreigners is one of them. As Sublight points out, its easier for Americans than others. I’ve commented on this before, but I used to date a woman who lived on the rent from her properties. She would hang out at Roppongi, looking for foreigners to meet and hopefully get married to. Quite an stunningly attractive woman, but unfortunately just absolutely crazy, she had a string of relationships, mostly short. Anyway, she wouldn’t rent to foreigners, because her property agency adviced that foreigners could “cause problems.” We were OK to fuck, and even to marry, but just not to rent to.
I’ve had problems renting, and the first time in my life I ever experienced flat out discrimination in my life.
I’ll take a stab at the Taiwan-Japan thing. I lived in Taipei for 3 years on and off during the 1980’s, studied Japanese my last year in Taiwan, then went for an MBA in the US followed by 2.5 years in Japan in the 1991-94 timeframe.
First, generally speaking the older Taiwanese (not mainlanders) received a Japanese language education and speak Japanese quite well. Many of the older Taiwanese elite were educated in Japan (former President Lee Teng-hui is an example). The Taiwanese (not mainlanders) generally liked the Japanese experience (very different from the Korean attitudes). The Japanese are generally credited with building a very good infrastructure in Taiwan.
Before I lived in Japan, I thought the things I saw in Taiwan were very Chinese. Once I moved to Japan, it really struck me how many things were probably Japanese and not Chinese in origin. For example, railroad crossing bells, government uniforms like postal workers. Japanese food is very popular in Taiwan, and I’d say a lot of things like sashimi, eel rice, udon noodles, etc all came from Japan. These foods were not available in China 20 years ago although getting popular now. People would buy manga, clothes with Japanese designs, Japanese notebooks and other little things like that over Mickey Mouse or other western designs.
When I traveled in Southern Taiwan, especially out in the sticks, elderly people generally didn’t understand or speak Mandarin. but their faces would light up when I asked if they spoke Japanese in my very poor beginning student Japanese. They would be ecstatic to speak in Japanese (probably even more so in taiwanese).
all that said, taiwan is it’s own culture and a lot more Chinese than Japanese in personal interactions, way of doing business, etc. Japanese (at least in the big cities) are generally quite reserved and takes a long time to be accepted. You can be accepted by the Taiwanese very quickly. I made good friends in Taiwan and still keep in touch with the family I lived with 25 years ago. In Japan, when I was a total work slave, I had Japanese friends from grad school that returned to Japan and some Japanese work buddies, but didn’t make any new Japanese friends in 2.5 years. (Taiwan and China are quite different, same is true of Taiwan and Singapore or Taiwan and Hong Kong)
I did meet my wife, who is Shanghaiese but a Waseda graduate, in Tokyo and we were married there. Never really encountered any overt issues about being a mixed couple. I’m pretty sure the issues would have been around me acting as a henna gaijin on occaision, rather than we were a mixed couple. I did get into some nasty brawls in Taiwan when together with girlfriends. I was younger then and a lot more combative. And again it could have been a lot more to do with me being a white guy in the wrong place than a white guy with a chinese girlfriend.
Koxinga, Jovan, tokyo player et al, my experience has been that there can be resentment of mixed couples, but find that married couples are accepted. It’s one thing to be banging every gold digging passport chasing skirt around, it’s another to be responsibly married. Not sure if that’s your experience. Amerasian kids are pretty universally adored, at least in casual encounters. Often used in advertising.
FWIW, that’s my own personal experience with the Taiwanese and Japanese cultures.
Word. First big professional job, working for a well known investment bank, making close to 6 figures, and no one would rent to me. Heck, I had real estate agents shoo me out of their shops (chotto muli). One in particular I almost went back and busted out all their windows. finally I got rented but sheesh, it was painful.
It’s really funny, because I will give a semminar in fluent Japanese then get into a debate at lunch on the policies of the current government with a fellow presenter and suddenly they will notice that I’m using chopsticks and will compliment me on my skills, as if it’s really hard to live here for 17 years and not figure out how to use them. :rolleyes:
Next time they do that, just stick your chopsticks in your bowl so that they stick straight up out of your rice.
Gaijin’s revenge: complement them on how well they can use a spoon.
I can’t remember if the chopsticks straight up in the rice is taboo in Japan or not. Certainly is a huge taboo in Taiwan. Most parts of China it’s not.
How did you end up actually going there to live? Did you get a job with a Japanese company and do you now have some sort of permanent residency? I am curious about how the immigration process worked for you.
Yeah, I spent about 7 years in Osaka, and that was probably the commonest question, and the one that bugged me the most: “Of course I can bloody use chopsticks! Can you tie your shoes?”. That and “Do you have a gun?” No, but I can dream, can’t I?
Yeah, it is: only to be done with rice offerings at funerals.