3 ms·

I lived in Japan in the early 2000s. I don't know anything about anime or videogames, but everything else in the article seemed accurate. Personally I loved it,

I lived in Japan in the early 2000s. I don't know anything about anime or videogames, but everything else in the article seemed accurate. Personally I loved it, but I left before things started to wear me down. Much of this is a critique of salaryman culture. Salaryman culture is bananas, a bi-polar combination of Kafka-esque hallucinatory boredom during the day, and 'girls gone wild' at night. Except, it isn't girls going wild, it's 48 year old men. It's interesting for about 2 weeks, and then becomes completely tedious, and slightly scary if you care about your health at all. I'm astonished that the Japanese still top the life expectancy charts. When I wasn't working, I hung out with artists, skaters and surfers. I visited small towns on weekends and spent a lot of time at the beach. Life outside of Tokyo and the salaryman grind is much more relaxed, fun, and "good" weird instead of "WTF" weird. Whenever I have a friend interested in relocating to Japan I plead with them to NOT work at a Japanese office. Only go there to work if you're the best fixed-gear bike welder, or are a popular underground DJ, or some other sort of "big in japan" folk hero. Anything that keeps you out of salaryman-land.

neilk 17y ago
When it comes to entire countries, or even large cities, they usually have every possible lifestyle within them -- somewhere. It's never what you know about a place; it's who you know. You may have to make different choices though. It's probably possible to be a teetotalling vegetarian in Japan, but you might have to go to a monastery or something. Whereas you could easily be a games developer with those traits in the USA.
nandemo 17y ago
I couldn't make myself read the whole thing, but I think it's far from accurate. For instance, he seems to be able to communicate in Japanese but he still doesn't grasp that "otsukaresama" and "irasshaimase" are really only greetings. I wonder what would be his reaction if he heard that in some places it's usual to say "ohayou gozaimasu" (usually meaning "good morning") when you get to the office in the evening. Mandatory parties aren't really mandatory, you see. Many Japanese do "escape" the parties. You just have to do it tactfully. And so on. That said, I agree with you about avoiding working in a Japanese office. The usual English teaching path seems to work for a lot of people, though.

neilk 17y ago

When it comes to entire countries, or even large cities, they usually have every possible lifestyle within them -- somewhere. It's never what you know about a place; it's who you know. You may have to make different choices though. It's probably possible to be a teetotalling vegetarian in Japan, but you might have to go to a monastery or something. Whereas you could easily be a games developer with those traits in the USA.

nandemo 17y ago

I couldn't make myself read the whole thing, but I think it's far from accurate. For instance, he seems to be able to communicate in Japanese but he still doesn't grasp that "otsukaresama" and "irasshaimase" are really only greetings. I wonder what would be his reaction if he heard that in some places it's usual to say "ohayou gozaimasu" (usually meaning "good morning") when you get to the office in the evening. Mandatory parties aren't really mandatory, you see. Many Japanese do "escape" the parties. You just have to do it tactfully. And so on. That said, I agree with you about avoiding working in a Japanese office. The usual English teaching path seems to work for a lot of people, though.