I was led to expect restaurant recommendations from the toilet.
Welcome. I am honored to accept your waste.
Due to the timeliness of this thread, I would hazard that the OP came across that article via today’s Cracked, where it’s linked in a brief part. I can’t comment on the accuracy of this one, but Cracked tends to be hyperbolic.
Yes, that’s exactly where I found it. And it seems like that Cracked article relied on that article rather heavily. I would welcome TokyoBayer and T. Mangrove to send responses to Cracked on the inaccuracies in that article. Believe it or not, I get a lot of what I assume is factual information from Cracked.
You guys might have a point if we were talking about why the MSX* was beating the Commodore 64, but we’re talking about Windows vs Mac. Which are both from American companies. (You may have a point about phones above, but I know there was a deal in Japan not too long ago giving out free iPhone 4s/5’s with a phone subscription, so there’s probably a lot of them now)
- Yes, I realize the MSX was technically Microsoft too, but it was almost entirely developed, manufactured and distributed in Japan.
I lived briefly in Japan about 10 years ago, and I’d say that while everything on that list has some basis in truth much of it is exaggerated – both in terms of how inconvenient it is to live in Japan and how convenient it is to live in the US. When was the last time I had to use a fax machine in the US? A couple of days ago. I regularly have to deal with forms that cannot be submitted electronically, but must be either faxed or sent through the mail. And while it’s true that it’s not always easy to do things in Japan if you don’t speak Japanese, it’s not always easy to do things in any country if you don’t speak the local language.
I do like the #1 item on the list, though. On the Internet I regularly encounter the idea that the Japanese media consists of nothing but ultraviolent porn cartoons, that Japan is the weirdest/wackiest/sickest place on Earth, etc., but everyday life in Japan is as mundane as everyday life anywhere else and in some ways the country is more socially conservative than the US.
Ha, I actually was impressed by Japanese technology almost as soon as I landed. Within days of arriving I saw 1) ordinary people using their cellphones to take pictures on the street and 2) a robot dog on display in a department store. IT WAS LIKE STEPPING INTO THE FUTURE! Earlier that year I’d seen commercials in the US for camera phones, but at the time I’d never seen one in person. I remember actually being briefly confused about why I was seeing people holding out their cellphones at arm’s length.
Do Japanese girls duckface in a poorly lit bathroom?
From the Cracked list:
#5 was surprising
#4 is less so, but maybe seems like the author’s experience
#3 is :eek:
#2 is not news. I know about racism, like that fuckhead Shintaro Ishihara, Governor of the biggest metro area in the world. Although, and I have no experience, it seems a white person’s experience will be less “get off my lawn” and more “look! something new!”
#1 was very refreshing. Most Japan references focus on the differences
No, they just do Ganguro fashion instead.
Disclaimer: I’m not saying Ganguro is a direct analogue to Duckface in frequency, intention, or severity
^Note that this was written in a country where you often find products labeled “proudly made in the USA”. Also, how many times has someone in these same boards talked about being scolded for driving a (made in the USA) Toyota? The scolder had a Ford! He was a proud American citizen and only bought American! (well, except for the Ford being made in Mexico, and the stuff from the supermarket made in God-knows-where, and the toys made in Don’t-look-at-me, but hey, who’s checking).
There are people everywhere who “buy national” out of chauvinism, but my experience is that you actually need a big enough population and country before those are even noticeable. The country needs to be able to provide enough “national” things, you see - you won’t find people like that in Andorra or in Costa Rica, where anybody is conscious of how many things they import and export.
Duckface?
That Cracked article seemed a bit uneven. His mention of Japan not being high-tech because they still use fax machines in business makes me go ‘huh’? Lots of companies in the US certainly still use fax - faxes don’t accidentally end up in the SPAM folder or get rejected by a finicky email server, plus they have a hard copy right and ready to go rather than having to go and print the item. Not to mention setting up accounts, passwords, scheduling a check of the email…
Sounds like small stuff, but it adds up. I would hardly consider Japan to be backwater just because some still prefer faxing.
Google it.
Great username/post combo. Please Google something that will permanently warp your mind and make you see eldritch horrors everywhere that didn’t exist before in this dimension and cannot be unseen. If you value your sanity, turn back from the facial contortions that only exist in a non-Euclidian universe!
Less than 15% = “pretty much no one” to you? I don’t know if you are just horrible at math or not thinking straight.
Oh, say, ones who who vastly reduced repair and support costs. Ones that have to work with what executives and traveling clients buy when they get to choose what they want to use instead of being forced to use what some server room shut-in who has problems with the real world wants to force them to buy. Ones that realize that it’s pretty much essential to support the best selling laptop and tablet models in the US.
I thought it was funny that the heading for #4 was “The Houses Have No Heat” when the rest of the entry describes some of the different ways Japanese houses are heated. Of course they have heating, they are just a lot less likely to have central heating than American houses. I assume this is mostly because central heating takes a lot of energy – and doesn’t use it very efficiently – and Japan has very limited domestic fossil fuel reserves.
The author makes it sound like an AC/heater unit is a rare luxury item that you’ll have to go to special trouble to purchase yourself, but a decade ago my rather shabby little apartment came with one and they seemed to be pretty common in other buildings.
While the Cracked article is a couple of steps above the typical spam Five Secret Ways To Lose Weight Which Your Doctor Won’t Tell You, it’s hyperbolic. It’s the nature of the Journalism Lite[sup]TM[/sup]. Who is going to click on an article which isn’t over the top? That would take actual writing skills, which would mean paying people. Fuck. Am I in a crotchety mood these days?
First and foremost, the comment about Japan hating Apple is fucking stupid and not just because its quoting some twenty-two year wannabee blogger whseo writing is worse than her fact checking, it’s that its wrong, but more about that below.
Look at the wannabee’s article, linked by the OP.
my bolding and other crimes.
The first rule of really sloppy journalism is when you want to say something shocking, but don’t have any real support, just keep repeating yourself. Three times. In a ten-sentence paragraph which Mrs. White would grade as a C- in Sophomore English.
Then pass along some story, or give a throwaway anecdotal evidence with no background. What schools? What was the price? Did Apple offer it for free? Offer to train people? Nope, in Bad Journalism for Dummies, the lack of context is paramount.
Then quote your fellow foreign friends in bumbfuck towns. Two of them. And pretend that they are representative of 128 million Japanese, because you don’t speak Japanese and the only Japanese you actually interact with are thirteen-year-old boys and girls in your English classes.
But don’t waste twenty two seconds of your precious life googing Mac share of sales in Japan or you’ll see they’re doing as good here or better than in the States (10% of laptops, 15% of desktops, sorry but the cite is in Japanese.) And that cite? Nikkei. If you’re interested in Japanese business trends, you’ll know who they are. Which Cracked doesn’t seem to.
So going back to my initial point, not only is it bad writing, it’s wrong.
And that’s what’s wrong with the wannabee piece in a minor site run by journalist students, which is forgivable, but but even more egregious by a site with slightly higher pretensions. One that some people trust for truth.
Don’t spend a few seconds googling. Don’t talk to Japanese. Instead, link to some kids blogging. If you read the Cracked article, this is what they’re doing. All the “news” is just snatching things from third rate blogs. The bank card and ATM bullshit? Every single convenience store nationwide has an ATM, 365 days a year, 24 days a week.
It’s fluff. Entertaining, I guess if you don’t care about accuracy.
Back in the 80s, the Apple II was a bitch to use, especially in dbase and spreadsheets. The culprit was the keyboard. The IBM PC and its clones were far easier to use. Now that’s for Americans and other people who can read and write in English. The Japanese had a devil of a time getting used to the personal computer. That much I knew.
do you not know what Cracked is?
The inaccuracy doesn’t bother me, really.
I figured out the Cracked article was wrong by reading the comments. And I’d already assumed that one person’s experiences wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. And, yeah, I always assume that I’m getting a hyperbolic version of the story when I read Cracked, and don’t trust them until I’ve at least looked at a Wikipedia article (with sources other than that Cracked article).
Dude, I don’t talk about what you had for breakfast, so don’t talk about what I had for mine!