I’d say just as much as in America. Probably somewhat more now. More individuals are investing in the stock market as the minimum investment cost has become more affordable. (In Japanese markets, you can only buy shares in certain units, which means that even though a stock may be valued at 2000 yen, you can only buy/sell them in units of 100 shares, for instance.) People also, of course, check on the American markets as their trends might influence the course of local markets.
This esplains something that intensely irritates me about the Japanses porn I’ve seen: the passivity of the women. I’m not speaking about anything with rape or violence (I prefer a willing partner), but depictions of consensual sex.
However, even the porn that depicted pleasure being given to women showed the women laying back like lumps of meat while they were poked and prodded with various buzzing and vibrating implements. In very few cases were the women actively taking a hand in things.
Dear Og, it was a relief to find some where the women was enjoying herself by herself.
This reminds me of something I read in Antonia Levi’s abominably-titled but otherwise pretty good history of Japanese cartoons, Samurai from Outer Space*: the stereotypical symbols of the uncanny and “occult” differ between Japan and North America.
According to Levi, in North America, the eerie, uncanny, occult, or downright evil is announced with darkness, nightly hunters such as bats, the classic crack of thunder and lightning outlining the evil castle, and even symbols that invert Christian symbology such as the point-down pentagram or inverted cross.
Levi goes on to say that IIRC, the eerie is often announced in Japanese comics with regular Christan symbology. The creepy possibly-evil sorcerer will wear a Christan cross, for example. I suspect this is an example of foreignness being exploited as uncanny.
Does this affect the desirability of Western-style wedding ceremonies? Does the foreignness add to the allure?
Do you need any accreditations to do this? Or is the civil part of the marriage handled separately?
[sub]*Also IIRC, Samurai from Outer Space had a reproduction of Hokusai’s Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife among the colour plates. Definitely not the thing you want to book to open at first when you’re explaining Japanese animation to your rather conservative aunt…[/sub]
From a legal point of view, getting married in Japan is just a question of filling the appropriate form at your local city hall. It works like a regular contract and there is no authority (judge, priest) that is required to preside. Since this is highly bureaucratic, people have ceremonies which they consider their “real” wedding but which has no legal value. You can get married without a ceremony and you could have a ceremony without legally getting married.
I lived in Aomori (the far north of Honshu and the second poorest prefecture in Japan) for 7 years. I used to have many theories about Japan and Japanese men, some of them have faded over the years.
Someone mentioned something about Japanese men not being confident in their sexuality - I would say that is damn straight. Whilst Japanese women flock around western blokes (even the major nerds), Japanese men do not flock around foreign women. I have asked them why. It appears to be that they are ashamed of their small sized penises in comparison with the gigantic western male penis (tee hee) and the size of western women. I had one bloke actually say: “you western women have big equiptment”.
I also think that the Japanese are far more into tittilation than the act of sex. They don’t appear to be a highly sexed nation, however they have porn and sexual references coming out of their ears (so to speak).
As to zenophobia - there is certainly a hierarchy of foreigners, Americans being at the top and probably middle Easterners being at the bottom. In Aomori, there was some fear, but mostly great interest in foreign people and things. I had friends who hitchhiked from Aomori to Tokyo, they had no problems being picked up in the north but when they got nearer Tokyo, no one wanted to pick them up.
I second or third being asked the questions: ‘can you use chopsticks’ and ‘can you eat raw fish’ and ‘can you understand Tsugaru ben (dialect)’. I lived in an isolated fishing village - like I had a choice!
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As for the iconology, a lot of women wear cross pendants while not being Christian. People like the “Christian” weddings because they’re seen as more romantic than the highly formal Shinto wedding. By now, these weddings have become so common that they’re not really seen as foreign anymore. It’s the Shinto weddings that have become the more exotic option! (By the way, I had a genuine full-fledged Shinto wedding, if anyone has specific questions, ask away.)
I think the use of Christian symbols with evil characters in animation is simply a matter of recycling iconology from sources like The Exorcist and whatnot without really understanding its meaning. A student at my school made an CG short that featured a swordfight in the bad guy’s lair, a gothic church. Why was the bad guy living in a gothic church? Well, it’s middle-agey and it looks cool, there’s no deeper meaning intended.
Q. Tokyoplayer - have you lived anywhere else in Japan besides the Tokyo area? (I assume you live in Tokyo, given your screen-name)
And a whole lot more don’t have problems. There’s a lot of Western men who have difficulty communicating with and relating to women
I’ve got a Japanese friend who used to edit porn, and he said the difference between the actresses on camera and off was night and day. Come to think about it, it’s called acting.
I don’t watch porn much at all, and the times I’ve flipped through the channels at love hotels I’ve never seen rape ones, so I have no idea how common they are.
Yet Japanese guys have no problem at all picking up Asian women, which would lead me to believe that it’s not a question of them having no confidence in their sexuality, but having none towards Western women.
And the reason that “Christian” weddings are seen as more romantic comes from Western movies.
I had a full-fledged Shinto wedding as well, with my first wife.
For most Japanese, they’re not into religion that much. They will do some ceremonies, but don’t identify themselves with a particular religion. There are some who are quite heavy into a particular religion, but this is a small minority.
Japanese kids will be taken to a Shinto shrine as a baby, will get married in a “Christian” ceremony and will have a Buddist funeral. They don’t see any problems with this.
I’m guessing you may be disappointed. 
Japanese have their own hangups to compensate.
She’s probably going though a driving school. If you don’t have a valid license from another country or have not driven there long enough to qualify for a simple transfer, you have to go through the same process a Japanese person would in order to get a license. I’m not entirely clear on the rules, since I already had a license before coming here, but I believe that whether or not they’re officially required, in practice a course is the only realistic way to get a license.
I checked with a friend from Australia who didn’t have his license before coming here to fill me in on parts where I don’t have direct knowledge. He’s heard of only one Japanese person who got a license without going through a school, and that guy reportedly got his a couple decades ago. Because the schools are more or less the only way to get a license, they’re expensive. Your basic monopoly/legally mandated requirement situation. Same thing with the biennial car inspections (shaken). You could take your car through a shaken inspection yourself, but realistically the people at the shaken center would be a lot more strict with you than a mechanic, and you might get failed on general principles. So, you pony up twice the real costs to have a professional deal with it. Fighting the system rarely works in Japan.
She must have gotten a pretty good deal, actually. My friend, started the course but couldn’t finish due to getting a better job and relocating, had to pay about ¥300,000 (about $2,600) in advance, and was only able to get back part of his money after he moved.
Re: lack of Abrahamic cultural influence.
Oh, I’m quite aware of that. It’d simply be different, not better or worse. But difference is interesting.
I’ve been wondering for a long time what a Western world undominated by the Abrahamic religions might look like, and Japan gives a hint of this.
I don’t read comics or watch anime too often (ok, not at all), but I do watch a lot of Japanese horror movies, and I haven’t really noticed this. One I have noticed is that a lot of companies use the Star of David to symbolize the mildly occult. Not evil things, but horoscopes, magic, etc.
The only thing that counts in the eyes of the government is the paper signed at the city hall, and the city hall is the only place where it can be signed. Anything else is just for the pleasure of the couple and their friends and families.
However…
There are accreditations (of a sort) for the ministers. Weddings are a huge and very competitive business, and of course anywhere there’s money, there will be regulations. Back when I started, anybody could work as a professional wedding celebrant with any kind of visa (visa issues only cover working for money. If you want to wave a dead chicken around for free, knock yourself out). All you needed was to be ordained by a recognized minister, and most wedding companies have a contract with someone who’s willing to do this without asking too many questions. Now the regulations have been changed, thanks in part to one old American missionary who’s been here since the occupation and was intent on bringing as much of the business under his direct control as possible (He did my first ordination (for a $300 fee), and as soon as the regulations changed I started receiving threatening letters from him demanding “names and addresses” of celebrants not affiliated with his church so he can report them to immigration as undesirables, as well as demands for contributions to ensure I don’t become undesirable myself. These went in the circular file). Now, one is required to have a missionary visa, or (like most of the celebrants I know) one of the all-encompassing permits like spousal or permanent residency.
Being religious isn’t a requirement. When I first interviewed, the manager asked if I was Christian, and I answered honestly that I wasn’t. She shrugged and advised that I don’t mention that to the minister who does the ordinations. It was far more important that I was punctual and could speak Japanese reasonably well.
I lived in Kyushu for a total of two years, 16 months of which was as a missionary. I still work in Tokyo, but live in Yokohama, and since marrying and settling down, no longer live up to the first part of my screen-name either. 
There’s as much difference between living in Tokyo and Kyushu as there would be between NYC and the mid-West or anywhere else between the coasts.
You mean you don’t tokyo around so much anymore?
Second part. :smack: