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Tech industry needlessly idolizes the country, so you're unfortunately bound to read this slop until the heat death of the universe.
by Klonoar 4mo ago
Tech industry needlessly idolizes the country, so you're unfortunately bound to read this slop until the heat death of the universe.
- alephnerd 4mo agoIt's an age thing. Most HNers are in their 30s-50s so would have been impressed by Japan in the 1990s-2000s. Japan is a decent country but everyone who writes about it tends to overindex on the posh parts of Tokyo.
- tjpnz 4mo agoAs someone who's lived in Tokyo for 10 years it's largely met my expectations. My living situation is far more modern than the western country I'm from, even if my suburb looks a bit plain (my only real complaint is that there's too much concrete and not enough trees). Would even go as far as to say many comments about the place being trapped in the 80s or 90s don't match reality. For instance, the only time I've ever been asked to use a fax machine was by a US company.
- pibaker 4mo agoThe decaying rural areas of Japan would probably love to be stuck in the 80s if they can. Too late, now they have hollowed out and everyone young is moving to the same cities most tourists stay at. Every time you read a story about some Japanese town offering people, even foreigners, money to move there and occupy an abandoned house, keep in mind this is a gesture of desperation, not gratitude,
- alephnerd 4mo agoAdditonally, most foreigners who would comment on HN or Reddit are earning significantly higher than the average Japanese or even Tokyoian.
- tjpnz 4mo agoThe people you're probably thinking of are working in finance or Japanese mega venture/US tech companies. They make up a vanishingly small percent of foreigners working in Japan.
- alephnerd 4mo ago> finance Most finance roles in Japan almost exclusively hire Japanese nationals > Japanese mega venture/US tech companies They don't tend to hire foreigners in most cases except for Chinese (Taiwanese and Mainland) and Koreans
- golemiprague 4mo ago[dead]
- harrall 4mo agoDecaying rural areas happen in every country, throughout history, throughout time. It’s just how the world works. The only reason it recently reversed in the US was due to COVID. Second, many countries are modern in some ways and backwards in some other way. To label a country as modern or not is silly. Here how it works: I build a porch today and my neighbor builds a pool. In 30 years, he builds a porch but I build a pool. If you cherry pick porches, I look outdated and he looks modern, but it’s reversed if you cherry pick pools!
- nihonde 4mo agoJapan has seen millennia of huge cultural shifts. Its strength is its ability to adapt and survive with some measure of continuity, even while embracing the new reality. Go watch some Ozu films. They're all about the "hollowing out" of traditional small-town lifestyle and culture. It isn't so much a problem as a feature of the landscape that reminds people about how transient their reality can be.
- socalgal2 4mo agoNeeding a fax machine was something from 1998-2005 ish. The USA and Europe had switched to email. Japan was behind. If you want examples, unless something has changed, if you run a business (for example consulting) and you make a new contract, you must register the contract with the tax office in person. The Japanese government apparently made moves to fix this type of "must be done in person" stuff because of covid. I haven't registered a contract since 2019.
- Klonoar 4mo agoIt’s not just an age thing; the younger part of the tech industry has the same issues.
- queenkjuul 4mo agoWhile i am admittedly in my 30s-50s i don't believe this to be an age problem; Japan is still held on a pedestal in a lot of American pop culture
- throwaway2037 4mo agoYou don't think the reverse is also true? When you see Japanese people write about the United States, it is pretty similar -- they tend to overindex on the posh parts of major cities, like Manhattan, Honolulu, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
- alephnerd 4mo agoThe posh parts of America are suburbs or outer neighborhoods, not the inner city which is where most visitors end up staying. For example, when you visit the San Francisco Bay Area, the actual posh areas are Marin, the Tri-Valley, and the hill adjacent areas of South Bay suburbs (eg. Woodside, Atherton, Saratoga, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Foster City, San Mateo). Your average Japanese or other foreign visitor isn't visiting or staying in those suburbs nor would they be able to afford the hotel fees for hotels in those areas. This is a major reason why Japan and Euro-trips have become fairly common amongst younger Americans now - renting a decent 4 start hotel room or Airbnb in a posh area of Japan that is out of reach for most Japanese comes out roughly the same as a middle-of-the-pack experience in the US because an American median salary is double the Japanese or European one.
- akimbostrawman 4mo agoIts because deep down they know japan has something which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country.
- d5lt5 4mo ago"which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country" Arguably the ideology and hate are prerequisites for a country to have a monoculture. With ideology and hate comes xenophobia and racism == monoculture.
- akimbostrawman 4mo ago[flagged]
- bluebarbet 4mo agoThis comment clearly does not meet HN benchmarks for civility and good faith.
- d5lt5 4mo agoUSA is a melting pot and is not viewed as a monocultural country.
- creaturemachine 4mo agoIts leadership sure doesn't see things that way.
- klausa 4mo ago>If you love different cultures you want them to continue to exit independent of each other to preserve them. The only outcome of a melting pot is literally a monoculture by design. This only makes sense if you think as "culture" as an immutable snapshot in time, which is... sure, I guess, a point of view to hold, though not a particularly interesting one.