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Comment by tokyodude | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious by what metric? One reason I choose to live in Japan is the respect for others. Drop your wallet you're more likely to get it back and with all cash that was in it. People generally don't party loud in their apartments but in support of that it's easy to find a bar or restaurant you can rent for the night for your party and places than can seat parties of 8 to 20 people without notice are abundant (izakaya). Places to practice instruments are also easy to find. Cleaning up after a picnic or at the beach seems better than most other places.

Whether or not that's evidence of collectivism I have no idea.

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I haven't read the specific paper, but there are studies that try to classify countries by "cultural dimensions", of which "individualism" is one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio...

"Individualism vs. collectivism (IDV): This index explores the “degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups.” Individualistic societies have loose ties that often only relates an individual to his/her immediate family. They emphasize the “I” versus the “we.” Its counterpart, collectivism, describes a society in which tightly-integrated relationships tie extended families and others into in-groups. These in-groups are laced with undoubted loyalty and support each other when a conflict arises with another in-group."

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/

”One reason I choose to live in Japan is the respect for others.”

Interesting. For me this is one of the worst things about living in the UK.

It’s quite normal for many people to go the park or the beach and just leave all their litter on the ground when they’re done. Or to tip out all the litter from their car into the street when they’re done eating a McDonalds meal. Things that would be totally unacceptable in Japan or even many other European countries!

In the UK I don’t think it’s lack of respect for others that is the real problem, however. People are generally polite to each other, willing to help people out and form orderly queues. It’s more a lack of respect for the environment around them (picking up litter is someone else’s job) or lack of awareness of how their actions affect others (I had no idea that revving my loud ass motorbike on a residential street at 1AM was annoying people)...

Sometimes I wish that the UK was more like Japan!

I wouldn't say it is normal but it is definitely common enough to make me pretty angry on occasions. And then there is fly tipping, which seems a real problem where I live here in Fife - which is really odd as there are excellent council run recycling centres that take every kind of waste (admittedly with a charge for businesses).

Perhaps this is a result of two different cultural approaches to conflict minimization? My naive impression of people from these two cultures is that Japanese people are typically willing to confront others but seek to avoid being confronted while the English tend to be the reverse. Both approaches reduce the amount of public confrontations but have very different results in terms of public behavior.

Could this arise from Japan more of a shame-based society than England?

> I had no idea that revving my loud ass motorbike on a residential street at 1AM was annoying people

I was on a train going into London earlier this week and the guy sat behind me insisted on playing music loudly on his phone speaker. Which doubles the annoyance of being both terrible music (imo) and terrible distorted sound quality.

I asked him to turn it down after being annoyed for a bit, which he did for 5 minutes and then took a phone call (speakerphone, obvs) and turned the music back on.

I guess he knew I wasn't going to keep making a fuss and so didn't give a shit. It was mildly infuriating - but what are you going to do?

One possible tactic is to try and strike up a conversation with him. He'll probably turn off or turn down his music if given an opportunity to talk about himself (which most people love doing).

I think I'd rather deal with the music.

That's probably why people think it's okay to listen to music or have conversations on speakerphone. I'm not saying you are obligated to attempt to stop antisocial behaviour. You are proving his assumptions that people don't really mind.

It probably is. And personally, I don't really care. Because I have my earphones in and I can't hear anything coming from the outside world.

That's not to say that I can't care about rude behavior or do anything about it if it starts to persist. I've confronted more than one person who kept on with bad behaviors, at the coffee shop that I go to.

Usually a politely-worded request is all that's required. I may escalate to a second politely-worded request. I think that's only been needed once in 13 years of going to the coffee shop. The baristas handle it if it gets more out of hand.

There is behavior that I particularly don't have a problem with but other people do. This usually concerns the shared resource of space at the bar. One guy really needs his space, about half of a bar intended to seat 3. The coffee shop is his workplace and he needs everything just so. Other people roll their eyes and just give in, in many cases moving before he gets there. This, of course, suits him just fine. He seems to calibrate to just enough disagreeableness to get his way in this particular instance.

I'm just glad I don't have to get involved and can laugh from a distance.

Talk to people...on the train?

Well, in a way he is already breaking one social convention, so one can be hope that he could be okay breaking any of them.

Talking to people near you is not taboo, though.

Very confused about why my original comment got downvoted.

"While in hell, offer to hold the pitchfork for a bit."

>quite normal for many people

Worth clarifying that it's not normal for the majority of people, and only a few people do it in specific occasions. But it does only take one bad apple to spoil things.

True. The optimistic side of me wants to believe that most people do not litter.

But it’s surprising (and sad) to me how many people do do this when they think they aren’t being watched. Often people who you would take to be perfectly fine, ordinary, upstanding types at first glance.

On the other hand, I watched a couple of members of a bunch of “youths” hanging out at a bus stop in London the other day who went out of their way to put their crisp wrappers in a nearby bin. Despite it being a pretty grimy littered street. So perhaps there is hope...

I think it's a subset of people (let's call them "assholes") that do the littering, the engine revving, and so on. This is just an anecdote but usually the people I see throwing their rubbish out the car window are people driving cars commonly associated with young working class men with bad attitudes (boy racer cars like black astras and such). Or in other words: it's chavs. Most people are pretty decent in general, and IME chavs are bad actors along multiple dimensions.

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