Ah, Japan.

[Svartalf]

can anyone seriously drink sake?, i mean wtf is that shit?

What's wrong with sake? Sake is nice, even though umeshu and some kinds of shochu are nice too... and truth to tell, the Japanese rice wine is much better than its Korean counterpart (but Korea has its own selection of treats)

[Hermit]

I think a better way than to resort to what you see or read in the tabloid media when comparing the various virtues and shortcomings between any countries is to look at statistics. Look at these, for example. They are taken from Nationmaster:

Murder:
# 24 United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
# 43 Australia: 0.0150324 per 1,000 people
# 60 Japan: 0.00499933 per 1,000 people

Rape:
# 3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
# 9 United States: 0.301318 per 1,000 people
# 54 Japan: 0.017737 per 1,000 people

Fatness:
# 1 United States: 30.6%
# 6 Australia: 21.7%
# 28 Japan: 3.2%

Getting the picture yet?

[Trolldor]

lol, not tabloids. Maybe if you resorted to more than just web surfing you'd know a little about the subject you're trying to argue.

[Hermit]

Maybe if you resorted to more than just web surfing you'd know a little about the subject you're trying to argue.

So, what are you resorting to, and how are your sources and consequent opinions superior?

[redunderthebed]

I've never heard Koreans saying that Japan is weird, just different. Seems to me that Japan's weirdness is the result of many centuries of cultural inbreeding. Apart from being geographically isolated, they're convinced that their culture/race is superior in the first place, so whatever cultural icons they import from outside are just assimilated into the pre-existing cultural framework (as more weirdness). Japan's popular culture is weird, but not fucked up, if by 'fucked up' you mean degenerate. And it doesn't seem weird if you grew up there, I imagine. Weirdness (and probably fucked-upness) has an inverse relationship to proximity, seems. There are people here in TN who still wear cowboy hats and boots as their 'normal' attire. Srsly. They're not out rustlin' cattle. They're just 'normal' people. I've learned to stop assigning degrees of weirdness or fucked-upness and just enjoy/marvel at/celebrate the diversity.

I'd agree i get the vibe that japan is a very uptight and repressed society all due to "harmony". All this weird shit is just letting off steam for the vast vast vast majority of society if they partake at all.I mean stuff designed for pedos might be of benefit as mentioned by FBM. Ban it and it will take it underground or further underground and pedos don't need it to get off.I mean in Australia where its strictly banned and rightly so cops have raided pedos houses and found scrapbooks with pictures cut out of children wearing clothes from the local junk mail delived to their house and needless to say there is the internet as well.

What we should worry about is the Japanese attitude to suicide i mean a best selling book there was methods of how to kill yourself . In Australia its illegal and before that very much underground and taboo, one MP in the South Australian parliament a few years ago used parliamentary privilege to detail methods of suicide as an act of civil disobedience, but of course was very democratically expunged from the hansard. However in japan there answer of a new york times best seller.

That said to single out japan is unfair ALL cultures especially asian ones have their idiosyncrasies.



Now if THAT isn't fucked up i'll be damned if i know what is. Oh and thats in FBM neck of the woods i believe.

[Trolldor]

Maybe if you resorted to more than just web surfing you'd know a little about the subject you're trying to argue.

So, what are you resorting to, and how are your sources and consequent opinions superior?

Oh, I'm just being as dismissive as you are.

[Trolldor]

Hey, Red, pappa, I wasn't the one who started comparing countries.

[Hermit]

Maybe if you resorted to more than just web surfing you'd know a little about the subject you're trying to argue.

So, what are you resorting to, and how are your sources and consequent opinions superior?

Oh, I'm just being as dismissive as you are.

Excellent riposte. Perhaps, once you have got over your tanty, you might address the issue, which is this: how is your opinion that "just how fucked up that country is", being based on sensationalistic and emotive snippets, better grounded than mine, which is based on facts? I mean, for example, your objection to sumo wrestlers. Does it follow that Japanese are therefore a nation of obese citizens? Does a magazine of teenage girls - thirteen, fourteen dedicated to middle aged and older men result in a greater rate of paedophila in Japan than in the US or Australia?

I suggest once again that opinions based on facts are better founded than those that result from reading emotive, tabloid stuff, and I'd like to know just why you feel justified in being dismissive of that conclusion.

[Trolldor]

*sigh*
Japanese documentaries, my sister who's living and teaching there, my father's partner who's a Japanese ex-pat.
Newspaper articles, other news media. Journal articles.

Now why did you feel it necessary to start something based on your own assumptions about what somebody else thinks?

[Hermit]

*sigh*
Japanese documentaries, my sister who's living and teaching there, my father's partner who's a Japanese ex-pat.
Newspaper articles, other news media. Journal articles.

Now why did you feel it necessary to start something based on your own assumptions about what somebody else thinks?

Never mind. Just keep ignoring facts like the ones I mentioned in order to maintain your opinion that Japan is fucked. If you cannot even acknowledge that Japan has lower murder, rape and obesity rates than the USA and Australia, and that is therefore not as fucked as you claim it to be, I don't see any point in you making another post here.

[Trolldor]

And thus, the perfect demonstration of how narrowly you approach just about everything. Be comfortable in your little box, with your uneducated assumptions and presumptions and absurd claims and unnecessary and unrelated intercessions about passing remarks on topics that have nothing to do with you.

[Coito ergo sum]

Oh, and no, Japan is more fucked up than the US. American's are violent, but the Japanese are the ones who invented a whole genre of pornography based on the rape of mutilated women and children.

You're just tarring all Japanese people with the brush meant for a few weirdos. It's like saying "niggers rape good Christian while women".

Well, how can we describe any culture at all without using a broad brush. If using a broad brush is not acceptable, then we can never say that any culture is like anything, since it is suggesting something about "all" of a people when not all of any people behave in any particular way.

I think what DJD is saying is what people say about any culture. People make generalizations about what sufficient numbers of a given population do, such that it can be described as cultural. It's not an easy line to draw - and it's certainly not subject to mathematical precision, but if we can't make such statements then we can't really describe groups of people at all.

I've heard it said that female circumcision is a "cultural" thing for Somali Muslims. Is it? Or, are we "tarring all Somalis with the brush meant for a few weirdos?" I don't know. It's certainly not "all" Somalis. But, there are enough of them to suggest that something is "cultural." Similarly, DJD is suggesting that enough Japanese engage in the weird practices he described to as to attribute it to the Japanese culture.

I think that's my point. I would imagine that the number of Japanese into rape porn is fairly low as a proportion of their population (I may be wrong). Though, I can understand holding all Japanese people accountable for allowing a minority of their own culture to be into rape porn.

There are enough of them involved to make some of the stuff they do noticeably Japanese.

Nobody is holding anyone "accountable." It's just a statement regarding a culture. Like "Japanese are into bukkake." They must be. The porn fad seems to have been big first in Japan and exported from there.

[Coito ergo sum]

I think a better way than to resort to what you see or read in the tabloid media when comparing the various virtues and shortcomings between any countries is to look at statistics. Look at these, for example. They are taken from Nationmaster:

Murder:
# 24 United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
# 43 Australia: 0.0150324 per 1,000 people
# 60 Japan: 0.00499933 per 1,000 people

Rape:
# 3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
# 9 United States: 0.301318 per 1,000 people
# 54 Japan: 0.017737 per 1,000 people

Fatness:
# 1 United States: 30.6%
# 6 Australia: 21.7%
# 28 Japan: 3.2%

Getting the picture yet?

Exactly. Americans are fat. Great example. That's painting Americans with a broad brush, but, generally speaking, we tend toward the fat side. Culturally, we are fat. And, Americans shoot each other a lot.

[Trolldor]

That also means, by proxy, that obviously other countries don't shoot each other lots and don't have fat people.

[Coito ergo sum]

That also means, by proxy, that obviously other countries don't shoot each other lots and don't have fat people.

No, not exactly. It means the US is culturally fatter than most. There's porn, including rape fantasy porn, in other countries too. It's just more culturally acceptable in Japan. In the US it's culturally acceptable to be a fat tub of lard.