Roflkopt3r

I've seen enough anime live action adaptations to know it's a terrible idea.

Yeah but we're literally talking about intentionally used toxins here. You're not going to find anything more toxic than herbicides and insecticides in a typical rice field.

And the major consideration of reducing the use of toxins in agriculture is not even so much the effect on the food, but the effect on the ecosystem in and around the fields and the waters they end up in.

Also there is a general argument to be sceptic of synthetic substances. "Natural" substances are what living creatures have evolved to deal with. Artificial processing can introduce problems we didn't even know existed. In case of the often discussed issues with nutrition, allergies have become a major focus. Modern flour for example no longer contains the germ since we can now accurately sort it out, but this may have increased the rate of allergies by depriving the immune system of an impulse it used to receive.

It is amazing for an animal, but it's also amazing to consider that humans keep developing practically exponentially after that. When we gain knowledge, we use it to aquire even more knowledge. The more we know, the faster we can learn - especially as a full scale society, hence the amazing speed at which our progress has accelerated over the last generations.

So it's interesting to see what exactly causes this chain reaction that makes human so much smarter than any other species. If I remember correctly, Noam Chomsky believes that it is the ability of recursion.

Programmers won't need the explanation, but in essence recursion is "a procedure that uses itself". In terms of human language, our "sentence making function" can call upon itself to nest sentences within each other. For example "the sky is blue" can be nested into "I think the sky is blue", which can again be used to form "She knows that I think the sky is blue". In the end there is no theoretical limit, we can go infinite.

So with this ability of recursion, you can also start thinking about thinking itself. Rather than just using intelligence to solve external problems, one can use intelligence to improve itself.

Or to put it more positively: Sanders had attracted voters who would never have voted for Clinton (or most other Democratic candidates for that matter) in the first place.

After all that's one of the things Clinton completely failed to do. While the people who failed to vote for her should be blamed, it was also a predictable disaster from a campaigning standpoint. Clinton's lack of attractiveness towards really any demographic was pretty well known. Even for most Democrats she was just a "well, I guess we got no choice"-pick. A low turnout is to be expected.

It's grammatically correct, but in language that means absolutely nothing. It sounds nothing like normal English and is a huge mistake especially for a textbook.

During Obama's presidency they literally ran on starting a war with Russia, claiming that Obama's weakness against Russia would let them take over Europe and so on.

Then Trump comes and they made the biggest turnaround imaginable, suddenly the same Democrats who were too soft on Russia by sticking to sanctions rather than starting WW3 are actually Russian-hating warmongers...

I thought the second half was the point all along. It was set up as a romantic interest that cannot and should not work out. The clues where there all along. The happy outcome always would be that Akira would get over her affection with Kondo, while she learns some of his maturity and he gets some of his passion back.

That's what the show built on, and if this was a surprise at all it should be a positive one, as the show stays on track instead of falling for the usual romance stereotypes of making it work somehow.

Seems to be a cultural thing, in Japan they even have city mascots.

And have them do some very intense stuff.

And a bunch of weebs!

[4.8K] Mangas [Anime] 2016

There are hundreds of anime episodes in there. 80 Episodes of Inuyasha, some One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Pokemon, Conan, Flip Flappers, Gundam, Clannad, Hellsing, Nozaki-kun, Hokuto no Ken, Natsume Yuujinchou, Touken Ranbu, Yuri on Ice...

I made the according noises

They do, the translation is just hilarious.

I've had managers who didn't really alert me to annoyances because, and I roughly translate here, "I wanted to maintain the 和." Of course it came up on my evals later, though... When I brought it up, it was all the typical other arguments. It definitely soured me toward the work culture in a couple of places.

I think that would be fairly typical if you aren't visibly Japanese. Japanese people have this reputation to be really shy about foreigners who they see as sort of outside their normal social hierarchy. Many have this prejudice or impression that all foreigners are super confident or even scary, so they don't want to try to match themselves against that.

If that was the case, he didn't really see you as below him in the hierarchy, so you might not have gotten the sort of treatment a subordinate would normally get.

When I tell you about my personal experiences it's just bias, when I tell you about the opinions I heard from others it doesn't count because it's not first hand. That's some impressive twisting.

The one who gives no insights into the Japanese reality would be you. Your only argument is that they have creative professionals, which I included from the start.

I wonder why you keep talking about online forums, but I just told you about school and I can tell you more about people.

Regarding creativity, it can roughly be described as coming up with inventions, scenarios, and solutions beyond what is already known.

With Japanese people I find a very strong adherence to what they already know. They tend to be hesitant to put out proposals when they don't already know the solution to a problem or question. That fits to what I described about the school system, where the answer to a lack of knowledge usually is to memorise an already existing solution.

In contrast, in the west you're much more likely to get to hear some personal ideas. Sometimes those people are ignorants who don't acknowledge the fact that they don't really know. But often people are completely willing to admit that they don't know, yet still have the courage to come up with some ideas, even at the risk of appearing stupid.

I believe the west also has a huge advantage through diversity, giving people more points of views. Europe has opened up a lot internally, and America is an immigrant nation. In many European countries people speak at least 1.8 - 2 languages on average, while some get even higher up to 3.2 in the Netherlands.

Japan in contrast is both very homogenous and has an extremely low rate of multilinguals, with an average of just 1.2 languages. Which again comes back to the issue of creativity, as Japanese English learners are often hindered by their fear of making mistakes.

Crosspost from /r/engrish, thought it belongs here.

So this is the Gay Agenda.

I went into more detail here.

I don't think I'm anglocentrist at all. I'm quite a critic of America in particular, and seriously like Japan. But the criticisms I mention here came exactly from getting to know Japan better, not from prejudice. And they're are in line with what most young Japanese will tell you as well.

Between all of this, I still like Japan a lot. But this is a discussion thread about Japan's drawbacks in particular. It would be nice if you could see that we're not dealing in black and white here, that criticism of certain parts of Japan aren't the same as claiming that it's a bad place overall.

Sure, only a fraction of the population is in a creative industry, but how much creativity is expected or tolerated in the main stream of people who aren't professional as creatives still varies.

For example, Japanese school is extremely test focussed. Students are to learn exactly the elements and techniques you need for a test, and for this purpose the main tool is pure repetition.

In contrast, even in Germany which is known as a very technical minded country, school has gotten a lot more creative. Classes feature much more creative writing and open discussions now, and encourage students to come up with their own solutions. Tests are still there, but play a smaller role in grading. Multiple choice tests are strongly discouraged, language classes preferr to test creative writing rather than grammar questions, and even classes with clear-cut answers like physics or maths use tasks that require more context and allow for more solution processes. Our school systems have become aware that the old ideals of technical perfection through repetition is extremely inefficient and often not even what businesses are looking for anymore.

I think that "political correctness" in and of itself is just a loaded garbage term that people put in place to have a euphemism for "I don't get to call groups slurs anymore, oh woe is me."

Today that seems true, but I did follow the whole affair when "political correctness" first came up not as a slur but as real progress. It used to have an actual meaning and an actual benefit. Since then we have just accepted that not using slurs and unnecessarily charged language should be normal anyway, so you're right that the term has degraded in that sense since it's only used negatively anymore.

"This subordinate is fucking up, so I'm going to 我慢 until they learn,"

Is that really a place for tatemae though? I have experienced Japanese superiors as very straight forward towards subordinates due to the whole hierarchy concept. The tatemae aspect would be more like telling everyone else that things are going fine even though they aren't. Which, I suppose, is nothing rare in western businesses either.

I dunno, part of me likes it in the sense that nobody holds it against you for having a "professional" self, a "leisure" self. Because no matter how direct a culture is, you still need to have some kind of compartmentalization socially. I sure as hell don't talk to my boss like I do my wife...

Sure, it just depends on the degree. When we just call it politeness, we go by the same concept.

I think in Germany the compartmentalisation works somewhat different though. Here it's more like being fairly direct even to strangers, but not disclosing as much about oneself. Which, in part, might also be because we might be afraid to get criticised about such things. So our public face is more like "here are the things I'm willing to get criticised on", and our private face is "these are the things I'm sensitive about".

While realising that some are just being polite, it also opens you up to acknowledge those who really mean it, and to make a deeper contact with people who are interested.

And it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. Being too weary of people being superficial will put a distance between you, which really does make people act purely formal. So while being aware that not everyone who's acting nice is interested, it can still be very helpful to just embrace it for what it is.

So while this may be a bad feeling at first, it can also be the gateway to the next level of even better, more meaningful interaction. Maybe you can find some place or contact that lets you do that.

There are different cultures that exist in Japan just as there are here in the states.

That's exactly what I'm talking about though. There are subcultures that are extremely creative, and there is a mass culture that is less so. And to the best of my experience, that mainstream culture in Japan has a very significant treshhold against creativity. It is shaped by a learning culture with a very focus on repetition, technical perfection, and conformity, with very little tolerance for individual expression.

Do you have any examples of radical social change in Western or other countries in the past few decades?

Within the last few decades in western countries...

• Homosexuality was legalised

• Same sex marriage has become a prospect if not already a law

• Women no longer require permission of their husbands to work

• Marital rape was acknowledged

• There was a major pushback against pedophilia

• Sexual education was revolutionised

• Racism has become a major focus and no-go, even the civil rights act was just 54 years ago.

What's being done about all the hate, racial strife, police brutality, road rage, muggings, murders and school shootings in, say, America? Just look at a snapshot of /r/news from any day.

Violent Crime in America has been on a downwards trend for a long time. Police brutality is nothing new, in fact the increased attention on the topic is a positive development showing that increasing parts of society no longer put up with it.

Mass shootings are somewhat of an exception in America, since amongst western countries they have an exceptional resilience against both public health care and firearm regulations. Yet the total rate of gun ownership and total gun deaths are on a downswing.

OK this is where we know you're fucking pulling this out of your ass. Lack of general creativity, in Japan??? Have you somehow missed all the games, music, anime, movies, manga, novels, virtual celebrities, fashion, cuisine and other shit coming from there which many people in other countries try to emulate?

I'm talking about general creativity amongst the population, you are talking about specific creativity in particular creative scenes. There is indeed an interesting contrast between the two. There are some distinct circles with highly creative people, and masses that are extremely shy to show any creativity.

Honestly, the entire rest of the post reads like you talk from a glorifiying otaku perspective with no interest whatsoever in the reality of live in Japan.

That's what I mean by calling it a certain level of dishonest rather than outright false.

And of course there are benefits to it. The whole idea behind political correctness was to foster a respectful relation to be as productive together as possible, rather than getting stuck on useless bickering. That's exactly what politeness/tatemae provide at their best as well. But at their worst they avoid or even whitewash the actually relevant problems.

In my country, Germany, people are known to be very direct in contrast. Sometimes that's a great thing because we acknowledge the issues and can work on removing them. Sometimes it's a mistake because we end up only arguing and not working at all.

Sure, but I wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't especially noteworthy in China. The death of Wang Yue was an especially prominent case, but it's a generally well known phenomenon in China far beyond the bystander effect as observed in the west. I think Japanese and Koreans are also a lot more responsive than that.