Comments by "Morgan Olfursson" (@morganolfursson2560) on "Life Where I'm From"
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But when you are bad , you are worse than anyone , and that is enough to make it a shithole. Let's say that when Brazilians stop destroying the amazonian forest, selling endangered animal species overseas , overthrow their immensely corrupted government , deal with the favelas , deal with racism and white supremacy , deal with the drug business , the gangs, and stop killing people at randoms for a few bucks , then and only then i will stop calling it a shithole . Until then, i don't think i am generalizing at all , i think i am being very kind in fact , because to my opinion this country is far worse than a shithole , it is a mistake .
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Timo , this is a very vast topic so i would rather answer to your other comment first and then if you have any specific other questions i will give me my opinion .
First of all , i am the guy on the photo on the left and as you can see , i am not Japanese . But i am married to a half Japanese half Icelandic who was born and raised in Kyoto and we now both live in Switzerland with our kids .
The things about halves or mixed race people WITH ONE OF THE PARENTS BEING JAPANESE (as opposed to the other mixed race Gaijin who are just called gaijin in Japan ), is that it all depends on the other half of the race . If you are Hafu (as they are called) with one of your parents being white , it will make things A LOT easier for you or for your kids. The darker the other parent , the harder it is going to be . They will face bullying at school , unless you send them to an international school , they will also be discriminated by society and they will feel it from a very young age hardly able to find any role model to identify with , because they just aren't any in Japanese society , except on some stupid tv programs . If the mother is not Japanese it will actually be a lot easier than if the father isn't, just because Japan is still a very male oriented society and also because the kid will have a Japanese family name which will help a lot when he or she looks for a job later.
My Japanese spouse (just to set the record "straight" i am married to another man) was born from a Japanese mother and Icelandic father and in spite of the white father , things were tough at school (it was the 70s, mixed race kids were VERY uncommon back then in Japan) . Things got a lot better when he was 14 and was scouted by a model agency , it surely mended his ego a bit . But had he been an unattractive Hafu , things would have been really difficult, especially during puberty . He was raised polyglot , Japanese , Icelandic, English and French because after a few catastrophic years in public school , he was sent to a private English and French one were things were far better .
So my advice to you, if you are going to have kids in Japan, you have to already think about their future . If you believe that you are going to spend the rest of your life in japan , then let them go through Japanese school for the first 13 years of their life so they actually learn proper Japanese and feel comfortable in the country . But the problem is that if after 10 years you decide to leave Japan , your kids will feel extremely awkward anywhere else (at least make sure you teach them your language at home so they actually have a way to adapt to a foreign country if you ever decided to leave Japan . But also while they are attending traditional regular Japanese schools , make sure you keep an eye on the bullying and let the teachers know that they need to report you any harassment your kids may be going through .
There are a few "progressive" Japanese kindergarten and primary schools appearing all over the country, make sure to check these one out and to apply the second you are pregnant , because it sometimes takes years for the kids to get accepted .
But if you believe you are not going to spent the rest of your life in Japan , then send the kids to an international school in Japan . At least you kid will not be bullied for being Hafu and won't even be called Hafu because he will be surrounded by mixed race kids who probably will become lifelong friends , like it was the case for my husband .
If you have any other question feel free to ask , but i'll answer later , because this is way past my bed time here and i am working in a few hours .
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Super high tech but the house has no soul . It has zero charm and feels like living in a hospital or an administration building .
I am not trolling, i know Japan needs to build very light houses because of earthquakes , and these houses are insanely safe and resistant to quakes , but what they gain in efficiency and modernity they have completely lost in charm and beauty . Compared to a traditional Japanese house like a Kominka or Nagaya , this is hideous. I left Japan after nearly 25 years in the country because i could never picture myself living in one of these modern houses and so far away from nature . I would have loved to have a traditional house in Tokyo o\with a garden , but only a billionaire can afford that , and i needed a house with a soul. Now i am back to Switzerland , i live in a 500 years old house with a view on the mountains and the lake , nature is on my door step and i do not have to worry about earthquakes or pollution and radioactivity .
The realtor is fantastic and i used to meet with many of them just like this guy but when they tried to sell me a house , i always told them what i wrote here, the house is great but it has no soul, no charm , no personality, it is empty and feels empty and sad. And Japanese people of my generation or older, ALL have a nostalgia of the old aesthetic and memories of their grand mother or great grand mother's house as kids , and all the realtors understood exactly what i meant.
Eventually i chose soul over a life in Japan . It was heartbreaking to leave the country after so many years but it was unthinkable to raise my kids in a house like this and turn them into zombies . Our house is part of the family, the kids will grow up in it, it will still be there in a hundred years so their kids and grand kids will enjoy it too . No modern Japanese house can provide any of these memories to kids and families , and those memories are priceless and to my opinion extremely important to keep families together. These modern Japanese houses are not built to last long, they will be destroyed and rebuilt within less than 50 years , usually even within 30 years or less which is unthinkable to me, because when even the house you live in is disposable , you can't really build anything solid in it.
My Japanese better half was raised in a traditional house in Kyoto so we perfectly agree on the importance of raising kids in a soulful house . and in contact with nature . Kids who are raised away from nature and in soulless environment become depressed and can even develop anti social behaviour, sometimes even flirting with neurosis and sociopathic tendencies.
Japanese commit a lot less suicide in rural areas and traditional housing , and i am convinced that there is a correlation between the house people grow up in and the kind of person they become.
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I wear a mask every time i am out here in Switzerland during the flu or cold season and if i am on a train or a plane at any time of the year i wear a mask as well. And i dare anyone to ask me to take it off . My kids wear one at school since i visited it and explained to the board members that if they refuse to allow my kids to wear one, i will demand the school to pay for any medical fee my kids may have to go through and that if they happen to miss school because of the cold or the flu i will also demand that the teachers visits them daily to make sure they do not miss anything from the curricular , since they will be responsible for my kids being sick . They will also have to pay for the day care i will hire to look after my kids while i'm at work .
Trust me Jocelynne you can do exactly the same with your school .
I lived in Japan for 20 years , and there , if you are sick (i mean sick as flu and other seriously contagious diseases, not just a little cold), you are not allowed to go to school , to avoid spreading disease. Same if you are an adult, you must stay home and work from home or take a few days off until you get better .
Masks are not an alternative to hygiene though . Even if you wear a mask, you need to wash and sanitize your hands several times a day , and the mask must be put in a plastic bag before being thrown , and they are of course used once and only once .
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@blosphere1234 That is because Japan is so adapted to technology that for Japanese this is called average when for someone like me, this is called unnecessarily high tech.
I think technology is great if it makes your life easier so you can have more time for yourself or your family and friends, but in Japan technology helps people have more time to work , which i find so depressing .
I have a friend who is an ex colleague from work and she could start her laundry machine and even microwave from work, so that when she arrived home she just had to get the clothes off the washer/dryer and dinner would be ready, plus she shopped online so she didn't have to worry about wasting time at the supermarket . I thought this was brilliant, until she added that thanks to that she could leave the company at 9;30 pm instead of 7:30 . I felt extremely sad for her . I left the company at 5;30 every day and went straight to meet my friends and have dinner or see a movie or have a walk in the park, get a drink in a pub and still had time to unwind when i got home around 10:30 before getting myself to bed, while my colleague probably reached home at 11pm and just collapsed on her bed .
Japanese .
Japanese are insanely good at inventing technological devices, .....
for all the wrong reasons.
Don't get me wrong i love Japan, i just feel a little sad for most of Japanese people i have met who seem to let life passing them by.
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@Gengonglike Arbukle Then what's the point of living there if you don't want to comply to the rules of the country . And how pretentious of you to believe you should expect people to identify with you, whatever the country you live in . In hat case stay in yours . Japan is not a great place for foreigners but at least during my 25 years there i played by its rules . I learned the language perfectly , graduated university there , worked for countless Japanese companies, immersed myself completely in the culture(both modern and traditional ) to the point of sometimes not speaking anything but Japanese for years . 90% of my friends there were or still are Japanese . And i ended up working for the ministry of foreign affairs , and was eventually offered citizenship (though i didn't ask for it ) something they offer to about 4 people a year , and grant to less than a hundred . I left for the very opposite of the reason you invokes , You want to change the country so it adapt to your little self . I was raised right and understand that you can only change yourself not the people around you and should adapt to their lifestyle or leave . So i left when my human rights bumped into a wall or a door that i could neither break nor open . Japan is not a great place for foreigners to live , but as a society it functions far better than 99% of western , african and other asian nations . They have a saying in Japan . Hito furi mite waga furi naose , which means do not judge others before judging yourself . I think you should meditate on that . Because your comment was really embarrassing .
where are you from and what is your ethnicity ?
Gengonglike Arbukle
1 month ago
@Golden_ Sh0t It's a bad place if you want to get deep in the culture and work as they do. If I were to live there I would have my own property, my money would come from the internet, I would comply only with street rules and reasonable manerisms. Beyond that I would not work fora Japanese company, I will associate only with individuals who identify with me.
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@seboritter Customer service and friendliness to customers in Japan is like nowhere else . Japanese re BY FAR the most amazing people when it comes to customer services . Let me tell you a short story . I once ordered a pair of shoes (just a cheap simple pair of shoes online) it arrived the very next day in the morning . It turned out the store sent me two left foot shoes . I contacted them and told them that there was a problem . They not only apologized for what seemed hours, to the point that i was the one feeling embarrassed but when i said that i would return the shoes that day and they can send me the pair i ordered later they told me not to do that and that they would take care of everything (which i thought was that they would contact the delivery company and have them come pick up the parcel and then would send me a new pair ) . in the afternoon i got a phone call from and employee of the store , asking me if i was home . I said yes , he said that he was on my street and would arrive in a few minutes with the pair i ordered and to pick up the other shoes . He rang the bell , i opened the door , he gave me the new pair of shoes , asked me if they were for me and if so to try them on and see if they fit as he had also brought the size above and the size bellow just in case . I asked him how he came and if he came just for me , and he said yes and that he took the train , from Osaka to Tokyo right after i called . He left after giving me another paper bag which contained chocolates , a little gift and a 50% discount receipt for any further purchase at the store . I offered him a coffee or tea or a beer but he refused politely , saying that he had to be back to Osaka soon .
This was december 31st .
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@DrewPicklesTheDark I have done both Africa (well i have done about 15 countries in Africa) and Brazil and Africa was safer especially Northern African countries from Morocco to Egypt and South Africa which are both far better than Brazil . The only place in Africa i found worse than Brazil were Sudan , Somalia and Congo , but it is the corruption and the fake government that is terrible there and makes everything unsafe and unreliable , while people in those countries were actually incredibly kind and friendly , something i really can't say about Brazilians. When Brazilians are kind with you, that's usually because they expect something from you . You were right not to go and if given the opportunity again, you should decline it . Brazil is beautiful, the forest is amazing , the ecosystem (or what brazilians haven't destroyed yet) is unparalleled , the fauna and flora is exquisite , but man , the people , are an absolute disaster . The government and people of Brazil are as fake as the tits and asses on the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana .
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