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Comment by ianpenney | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been 18 times and I had a good chuckle at this story and the comments. All largely inaccurate. Especially the bits about APA and Kyoto.

Y’all reek of FOMO and exoticism. Chill.

Just go with it. You’ll be fine. Live your normal life, just in a different place. You can gaijin smash through anything if you’re a jerk. If you’re not, I’m sure you’ll find a way to be less shitty as a tourist and someone will appreciate it at the time - and forget about it the next day.

My favourite dining experience was going to Savoy and leaving it to the staff to make whatever they’d recommend. おすすめは何ですか? They have a pizza that’s not on the English menu. A woman from Boston sat at the counter and annoyed absolutely everyone in the restaurant with her loud, obnoxious behaviour, poor Japanese accent, and “I’m the main character” vibes. Classic Roppongi.

She didn’t get the secret pizza.

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I lived there for over six years and moved away because I got tired of the country - which is to say, I really get tired of reading Japan fetishism/worship/exoticism takes. The pedestal people place it on is absolutely not needed.

That said, Patrick’s takes are pretty much as bad as people in this thread are pointing out.

(Side note: take a shot for every random article about Japan that gets to the front page and you’ll start to see the tech industry’s penchant for it in a different light - this doesn’t happen with other countries)

When did you start noticing this enter the mainstream? For me it was ~2015. I remember when anime avatars were mocked and ridiculed, and "weeb" was used an an insult. (admittedly both by poeple who did and did not watch anime, but that itself is a point I won't touch on here.)

Yet I find "thing, Japan" to be 10x worse than that. So much so that I stopped watching anime completely. I see the most boring, time wasting and irrelevant videos on youtube in the default youtube homepage (no cookies) that simply have "Japan" in the tittle with millions of views and thousands of comments half about anime and half about how Japan does the thing in the video 10x better than everyone else. And 90% with anime avatars. So much for escapism... Japan is now everywhere.

>take a shot for every random article about Japan that gets to the front page

Just this or last week there was a Japanese university compsci cirlce-jerk here on HN. Apearantly, Japan is known for it's unbeatable hardware design programs, unrivled by any gaijin education. And yes, Japan is of course a top country in tech. But these claims are ridiculus and unfounded, especialy as Japan's hardware industry has been on the delcine. For example, Samsung is rapidly removing them from their supply chain (even the chemicals that ONLY Japan can produce, or something) and Chinese cameras have made it into the S23 Ultra. Of course little to no mention of Korea in the replies to that post desipte being a leader in almost all hardware tech: DRAM (1); Fabs (2); display (1); smartphones (2); SSDs (1 or 2) and recently some "heavy industry and chemicals" that Japan is still known for.

I don't hate Japan, far from it, but this needs to stop.

>When did you start noticing this enter the mainstream?

I'm unsure of a specific time period that I'd feel comfortable putting on it, partly because it's honestly been an underlying aspect of tech/cyberpunk culture for as long as I can remember. I mean, go back to the early William Gibson stuff and the "Asian-Megacity-Tokyo-Aesthetic" is shoved down your throat - and I say this as a guy who thinks Neuromancer is one of the best books ever written.

I think the other issue I have with the Japan pedestal-ization that happens is that, if you actually live there, it's got its own arguably fucked up societal issues and isn't necessarily better than here - just different.

I visited Japan for the first time a month ago, and basically followed this advice. Got lost in Tokyo. Well as lost as you can be considering Apple or Google Maps and SUICA are pretty much universal wherever I went. And cash.

Didn’t speak the language, didn’t try to make people speak English - asked for the Japanese menu and used Google translate to figure it out.

Kyoto was incredible.

Cool so we shouldn’t try to go to Japan if we don’t speak the language is what I got from this. Aka gate keeping. You are worse than the people you are trying to admonish in the beginning of your comment.

> Aka gate keeping.

I've traveled all 47 prefectures and I had a good chuckle at OP's comment. Among locals, Roppongi has a reputation of having one of the highest concentration of trashy foreigners. Classic with main character vibes.

Learning to say the following in the language of the land will get you further than 99% of tourists.

Hello

Please

Thank you

Excuse me

I’m sorry

Most notably - speaking Catalan instead of Spanish in Barcelona will endear you to locals in a way you wouldn’t believe.

You do you, though. I had to google the hiragana for that phrase. I can’t read Japanese worth a damn.

Where, exactly did you get that? By the fact that there’s a single secret item only in the Japanese menu? Oh no how exclusive!

Just don’t be an rude boisterous tourist and you’ll be fine. That’s the actual message in the parent comment.

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