How the fuck can you say that? I'm sorry for your friend, but her experience is far, far from the status quo in Japan. I've stayed with dozens of host families throughout the country and met hundreds of kids, and not once did I ever see any signs of domestic violence. If we're going by worthless anecdotes, I think a few hundred beats one.
If you'd rather have an empirical study, here's the first thing I found when googling "domestic violence by country": ( [www.who.int] ). It's a comparative study by the World Health Orignization using 15 representative countries. Out of the 15, Japan has the least violence, and one of the highest violence disapproval rates. The United States wasn't included in the study, but you can bet your ass that it wouldn't do as well.
The truth is, Japan has one of the most peaceful cultures on the planet. Even in the days of the samurai, honor superseded aggression. Japan is the kind of country where if something like this happens, it makes headlines over crushed cities and nuclear meltdowns. If this happened in the USA, I doubt you would have even heard about it.
I don't know what your motivation for spreading this FUD is, but frankly it's disgusting. I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that you should take your xenophobic fearmongering somewhere else. It's not welcome here, especially after such an extraordinary tragedy. Whoever promoted your comment should be ashamed, and I hope Bashcraft sees this and calls you out on it as well.
If you'd rather have an empirical study, here's the first thing I found when googling "domestic violence by country": ( [www.who.int] ). It's a comparative study by the World Health Orignization using 15 representative countries. Out of the 15, Japan has the least violence, and one of the highest violence disapproval rates. The United States wasn't included in the study, but you can bet your ass that it wouldn't do as well.
The truth is, Japan has one of the most peaceful cultures on the planet. Even in the days of the samurai, honor superseded aggression. Japan is the kind of country where if something like this happens, it makes headlines over crushed cities and nuclear meltdowns. If this happened in the USA, I doubt you would have even heard about it.
I don't know what your motivation for spreading this FUD is, but frankly it's disgusting. I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that you should take your xenophobic fearmongering somewhere else. It's not welcome here, especially after such an extraordinary tragedy. Whoever promoted your comment should be ashamed, and I hope Bashcraft sees this and calls you out on it as well.
The only time I've ever come across my name in a video game is in Geist. You fight the boss henchman in the game twice, and the first time I found myself gunning at "Cordell" it sure threw me for a loop. It's an uncommon name, but I don't know why they had to make me the bad guy. It felt so unfair. :(
@Justin: It looks like you're a moron. If you want to be judgmental, don't mouth off without at least reading the article. You might, for instance, learn that releasing the source code for a game under the GPL does not also release graphics, assets, and trademarks into the public domain. You're an idiot, and the game is actually pretty good.
@Onizuka-GTO: Yeah, I... wait, what? GBC?
Does GBCoid force close on you or something?
Does GBCoid force close on you or something?
@DocSeuss: Funny, I never got to choose my orientation...
What's it like? Does Jesus show up at your door like a Gallup pollster? Is it just a checkbox on a form? You should share, the other six billion of us would like to know.
What's it like? Does Jesus show up at your door like a Gallup pollster? Is it just a checkbox on a form? You should share, the other six billion of us would like to know.
@CrashBandicooter: You soulless plebeian. That game rocked.
And for the record, it's "gypped." If you're going to use insensitive cultural slurs to insult one of the best games ever made, at least do it properly.
And for the record, it's "gypped." If you're going to use insensitive cultural slurs to insult one of the best games ever made, at least do it properly.
@Manly McBeeferton:
[ldd.lego.com]
You mean like this?
[ldd.lego.com]
You mean like this?
@Haddock: Have you actually played the game? You can turn off, or turn down the volume of, the rhythm beats. Also, the button presses don't trigger instruments (a la DJ Max), they trigger voice; if you miss buttons, Miku misses words.
And for the record, the game totally rox.
@arionfrost: "If they are such a fucking great country, why is their suicide rate 5th highest in the world? Astounding considering Japan is not a very big country..."
What? Do you even know what a rate is? No wonder they start sounding holier-than-thou, if geniuses like you are the "thou" in question.
Yeah, when someone in Japan goes nuts, it's national news, because it's rare. They are not perfect (even our manga artist OP said that), but they are way safer than the US. You can't argue with numbers like these, I mean, we're talking orders of magnitude here. And suicide is a totally separate issue, albeit an important one.
@ElephantFace: You wouldn't call this a tragedy? What if someone turned YOUR skull into a shish kebab, then would it still be funny?
Christ, some people.
@bakura: I feel the same way. Too soon, Kotaku. I mean, the poor dude gets stabbed through the head, and now this fine establishment is encouraging thousands of people to make fun of him? I would expect this kinda thing from places like 4chan. Excuse me while I find someplace to puke.
@Nero: Sorry. I blame Kotaku's *ahem* comment system... none of these comments are visible to us, so it still looks like your original post only has two replies.
I don't know why I still bother to write comments on this site, nobody ever sees them, much less cares about them.
@Nero: FYI, that's a taiyaki, not a cracker or cookie. It's sort of a pastry with sweet bean paste inside. Definitely try one if you ever get the chance, they're great.
Hey Tim,
A little while ago, I spent a year living in various parts of Japan. I can empathize with much of what you have to say, perhaps more than you might think.
I'm a vegetarian, and I'm with you every word for the meat issue. Subsisting was difficult, and it was a fun point of conversation to try and explain it to my host families over dinner. Eventually, I figured out that if I simply said that "I like animals, so I don't eat them," they could at the very least grasp one reason someone might be like that. I could even go into the more logical reasons with people who were a little more open-minded. Eating out sure sucks, though. I eventually found that Indian places, especially ones that were run by actual Indians, were one of the only places I could count on to have good (and sometimes cheap) vegetarian food. Of course, that doesn't really help with the office-party issue, assuming you're not the one choosing the restaurant.
Smoking? Cripes, you said it. *cough*
Drinking. I don't drink... I'm not allergic, I just don't like alcohol. At some of those company gatherings, I sometimes wished I did like it.
The weather. Yeah, the humidity is awful in the rainy season. Hokkaido and Okinawa weren't bad, though.
The movies. It took me a while to realize that those things on TV were actually supposed to be actual shows and movies, rather than high school film projects. Haven't they ever heard of post-production?
Anime. I don't think you're looking at the big picture on this one. Yes, most anime sucks, but most anime has always sucked. Even hardcore otaku will tell you that for every Haruhi, Ponyo, and Ghost in the Shell, there are a dozen One Pieces, Love Hinas, and Pokemons. It only looks like it's getting worse for the same reason music and books look that way; we only remember the good stuff (and not the crap) from yesterday, but all the crap from today is constantly pushed in our faces. While I don't have all the time in the world, I find it's occasionally worth it to sort through the chaff to find the real gems.
Stereotyping. Yeah, it's an integrated part of the culture. It has to do with a common value of fitting in rather than individuality, and from that standpoint, stereotyping is almost a compliment. I hate it: in fact, the company I was there with is a cultural exchange organization, dedicated specifically to helping Japanese kids grow up with a more worldly cultural understanding, and hopefully less stereotyping. If you're a foreigner (or, sadly, even look like a foreigner) and you want to make a difference, the best thing you can do is to not fit the stereotype. Be friendly when people expect you to be rude, understanding when they expect ignorance, and helpful when they expect indifference. Improving and challenging the way people look at you, even just one person at a time, is the only way we can break down stereotypes, and the xenophobia problem in general.
Pachinko: OONCE OONCE DING DING DING OONCE *door shuts*... peace... quiet... birdie chirping... *door opens* DING DING DING OONCE OONCE. It really is isane, the volume at those places... I'd temporarily lose my hearing every time I walk past one.
Tape. This seems like an odd pet peeve to have, especially compared to the double plastic bags you get if you forget to say anything. Then again, I'm the kinda guy who likes to obsessively put stickers on my forehead just to see how long they'll stay, so to each his own.
The language, and all its surrounding quirks. I doubt I speak Japanese as well as you do, but I know enough to get confused/annoyed over the ridiculous amount of benign formalities and canned conversation. Fun stuff.
Back to your rant in general: These are all totally legitimate complaints, and they do need to be brought to light and discussed. Those saying "tldr waahmbulance" don't understand how real this subject is. I just wanted to say that I know how you feel, on a level that perhaps no one else reading this does.
That said, here's what I think you should do: go back to what you liked about Japan. You know, the trains and the ability to travel just about anywhere you want, without breaking the bank. The video games, the kind you love that got you into the industry in the first place. The music, you know what you like.
Better yet, go find something new. I would sometimes just get on a train and travel for a few days, finding all sorts of interesting shrines, hot springs, and shopping arcades, on the relatively unbeaten path. Beyond just Kyoto, if you will. Get familiar with the fantastic hostels all over the place, where you can meet all sort of interesting characters that will break your own stereotypes of Japanese people. Go hiking and exploring, even the beaten paths of Mt. Fuji are worth climbing just to say you have. Japan, as I'm sure you know, has an incredibly deep culture and geography with many parts and layers. Life is too short to dwell on what you don't like!
*Ahem*
Great column, as always!
~Justme8800
@TechnoAtom: You only can't parse English.
@AndrosZ: It's not a typo. It's rounding up, sure, but it isn't a typo. The real number would actually be significantly higher, with tax (where I live, sales tax is about 9% even):
($299.99 + $59.99)1.09 = $392.38
And I wouldn't even be able to play Yakuzas 1 or 2 on that system. Yakuza 3 was looking like a killer app for me up until yesterday, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy a system for a censored game.
@AndrosZ: Yeah, I kinda agree. I was almost ready to buy a PS3 just for this game. I don't imagine these cuts will break the game, but for some reason I'm not inclined to think it's worth it anymore. I'm not paying $360 for less than a whole game.
Reminds me of this.
[cache.gawker.com]
@Joshua Bell: Did you miss the bit after the K in Kotaku?
Besides, plenty of Haruhi games notwithstanding, the excellent Phoenix Wright episode of the first season alone makes this game-related.
@Beardbeardly: "I choose to pay for content on my system because I choose to support the developers that make the games I enjoy."
So do I! So should everyone! I buy all of my games, every single one of them. My whole point is that my flash carts have nothing to do with piracy, not any more than your PC does.
I don't mean to insult you personally, any more than you meant to insult me by saying "you should too." But it's not a fallacy to recognize that hacking OUR electronics that WE paid for is a freedom we should have, one that is being taken away from us. Nintendo wants us to see "R4 == Piracy," and that's how they've gotten so many people to support them here. Sure, admittedly most of them have pirated games on them, but then again, I bet an equal number of iPods have pirated music on them. Or PCs warez.
I don't pirate, I support the developers, and I am being punished for it. You think Nintendo is going to stop here? Region locking, DRM, etc... it's within their rights to try that stuff, but it should not be within their rights to sue me for having to break through it to play my games.
As for a slippery slope, how is this anything but? All I know is that we've been sliding down at a constant pace for years now. If you're not a hard core gamer/importer, you may not remember what Sony did to Lik-Sang. And that didn't even implicate piracy! This is a power struggle between the corporations and hackers about control, and the corporations are cheating by buying off the law.
Again, I say this as someone who has shelves upon shelves of legally bought games, for all sorts of systems. My PSP collection rivals my DS collection, even. The same arguments I'm making here for the R4 apply to CFW as well; it turns the PSP into a much better system, and it is not and should not be illegal.
Prosecute the pirates, not honest gamers like me.
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