Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Abroad in Japan" channel.

  1. Shame culture face-saving goes to blandness of the most excruciating sort, and (unlike the Chimese) the Japanese are very polite, which makes it sort of worse. It's a kabuki theater of understanding the degree of the bow to discover your ranking in society, and social nicities which kind of make your head impode with it's careful subtleness. Leaving a dead fly on your neighbor's doormat is a declaration of war, yet the Japanese army acted with extreme brutality during World War 2, which made the Waffen SS look like jolly nice chaps. So definitely volcanic level of schizophrenic destruction there if the kill switch is flicked. Incomprehensible, baffling and time-wasting from a more direct Westener point of view (Westerners are bigger on guilt culture than shame culture). Probably the Japanese feel negativity about Westerners being crude and rude peasants in return.
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  2. Great comment about the safety record of the Shinkansen. Japan innovates while China copies everything (of the Shinkansen), except the safety, and claims it as it's own. China still cannot properly manufacturer high speed bearings.
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  3. Tokyo, the city that never sleeps. Been there 😍
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  4. Top class restaurant with a taste tone deaf chef and shit dish in Japan. Especially if he stands there, paring knife in hand. Solution is easy, be very British and damn with faint praise. For example; "oh, this is nice. I like the food arrangement and the colours". Nothing to say about the actual taste. A win-win situation, you have expressed your disapproval and the lobotomised and monoglot chef is none the wiser. Smart eh.
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  5. TV is awful in any culture. The number of foodie shows leaves one feeling sick, and I'm not a fan of televised sport at all (fine if you play the game, awfully boring to watch it). Not to mention the number of commercials force feeding you images of stuff that you never want to buy (why the hell do you want or need an Apple Watch? i rather buy a Tamagotchi). That is why i rarely watch TV these days. Better to read a book; no commercials, doesn't need power or connection to anything to work, no lost remote control, it's not noisy, and I'm using my brain more.
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  6. Weirdly, Australia has some commonality with Japan, in terms of politeness and aloofness, but less so, and for different reasons. For example, Japan is strongly resistant to foreign immigration, so foreigners (other than temporary tourists) are seen as a people apart, almost untouchables (helped along by recent Covid agrophobia) . The quite rare foreigners residing in Japan, after the polite formalities are over, are unspokenly inferred to quietly go away into a corner somewhere. Australians are a bit like this too, but from the other end of the argument. As many as one third of Australians are first generation migrants, many from non-English speaking backgrounds. However, due to it's inhomogenousness, Australians generally keep to themselves and don't mix with their foreign-born neighbours much. This also includes the foreign born immigrants, of whom probably find Australians to be on the surface friendly, but unable or unwilling to seriously socialize later. This was the experience of an Argentinean born woman who immigrated to Australia. She said it took her years to make genuine friendships with Australians. In short, neither the Japanese nor Australians are all that friendly. Polite, but standoffish.
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  7. I love the way Tokyo has electronics currently on sale 40 years ago 😂
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  8. Well, i'd liked the idea of Japan (i've been there once over 20 years ago), but wearing shorts and sunglasses while taking a call on a train, then walking down the road eating a soy sauce drenched bowl of rice seems a normal attractive thing to do, which is a faux-pas in Japan. I've now the urge to do that hearing that it's forbidden (although i don't want to outrage the Japanese more than an uncouth gaikoku hito can achieve, so i probably won't do that there). It's rather like telling a child not to open the cookie jar and eat the cookies, then place that jar on the top shelf (out of reach) and the moment your back is turned and hearing a loud crash behind you, you see a guilty looking child sitting among fallen shelves, broken glass and loose cookies, with chocolate mint cookie smeared on his face. If i never heard it was forbidden; i wouldn't have the urge to put my hand in the cookie jar. Maybe eating choc-mint cookies will be now faux-pas in Japan. Yeah, pointing a someone, not cool, i'm agreeing with that.
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  9. Next challenge, stay on a tiny island with just a chocolate bar
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  10. Tesco looks like Coles Express or OTR in Australia. Sandwiches are inedible. 😅
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  11. In Shepton Mallet prison, in the single bed cell. One drink of water woulld eat the other, and flush the grisly remains down the toilet. Then there would be one prisoner per cell 😅
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  12. .."while we in ths UK still ride around in a horse and cart". That droll comment by Chris is actually not that far from the truth. When Japan was inaugurating the fastest train in the world in the 1960s, the UK was still using steam trains. Yes, from the country that invented railway. If i was British, i would bury myself in shame over that.
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  13. Why did one of the Japanese political sound vans (for a lack of a better name), bedecked with banners and loudspeakers had the national flag of the USA on it? It had the national flag of Japan on it, one expects that, but a foreign country? Why do that? In Australia where i"m from, we have democracy but we don't; 1.Have political sound vans cruising around the streets and 2, Have the flags of foreign countries bedecking anything (except embassies and international sporting events) while an election campaign is happening.
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