RetroCora wrote:
They also have signs on their public transport network asking men not to take upskirt pictures of women, or did in 2016 anyway. Aaron told me last night you can't turn the photo-click sound off on Japanese phones for this reason, and they have safe, women-only cars on their trains. So attitudes to women seem to be pretty grim.
As I also mentioned last night I can't really be bothered going into too much detail as it's mentally exhausting (feels like I'm always talking about this to someone lol) and I have a complicated personal relationship to the country (for the record I lived there 3 years total which pales in comparison to Parksey who I think married a Japanese lady and is living there now!).
However on the attitudes to women - they would be expected to pour all the drinks for the men all the time. Obviously this was true of social occasions but also of the tea throughout the day and water at lunch.
The worst moment I saw was a member of a girl band (maybe AKB 48) shaving her head and crying on live Japanese TV because she was papped leaving a dudes house early in the morning and she wasn't supposed to have a boyfriend to be in the band. Basically I would not want to raise a daughter in Japan.
Skarjo wrote:I think, especially on the politeness front, it's worth remembering that it's not politeness per se that permeates the whole society; politeness is simply the most palatable aspect of what is actually an incredibly rigid and traditional system of social interaction. Sure, you'll probably notice the politeness most as a tourist or only living there for a short time, but when you get deeper into the unspoken social rules and the rigid expectations in work or gender or whatever you see that politeness is really just a nice sheen on an otherwise deeply unhappy system.
There's a moment in the new Shogun show (and probably the old one and the book!) where the white dude rages at the Japanese characters for living behind their poxy traditions and (internal) walls and not caring about things that matter. I just thought "vibes" the whole time as it's a really frustrating country to get to really know as it feels like you can't break through. A lot of people in Japan have been conditioned to largely act the same way, think the same way and feel the same way on huge swathes of issues and it filters down (in my experience) to the average local person feeling a bit... Fake and boring?
One final thought from me, while I was living there I saw this advert on TV. It was for a bread maker. It shows a Japanese lady eating rice for lunch and a foreign, white lady eating bread for lunch (coz white people eat bread innit) and speaking bad Japanese (subtitled in a racist way as it's using katakana for all 3 language types to highlight her foreigness). Can you imagine the reverse over here? Asian lady wanting rice in an office full of white people as an ad and speaking with an exaggerated Asian accent?
Oh and there's just one more problem with it. See if you can spot the problem:
(Kotaku link as I can't find the ad anywhere else )
https://kotaku.com/toshiba-commercial-c ... -606881529Spoiler if you can't watch the ad (but please do):