(My room was video games, and I'm glad I found the doorknob.)
I don't know anything about Japanese culture but just based on whatever random bits I've picked up - it doesn't surprise me to see a video or a robot used to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation with a depressed person.
Don't know what she say but I was paying attention :).
It's used as you'd expect: to let somebody know if a sink is overflowing or if a bag tears open and things are falling out.
In the context of the video... I have no fucking clue.
Sometimes I still can't believe I found the "doorknob", but I'm really glad I did.
Also, reading the term NEET here reminded me of Eden of the East, which is a cool Anime if anyone is into that.
It makes up for it by being entertaining though.
Also, people devoted to exercise are probably not recluses (which is what Hikikomori are), but they may be introverts. Reclusion != introversion.
This is even mentioned in the BBC article.
"an adopted British acronym meaning "not in education, employment or training"
Also Hikikkomori means that you literally don't leave your room at all (which is not the case for a NEET). If the hermit needs something, they'll often bang the floor to summon their mother (typically for food)
Agreed. But that doesn't change the origins of the word - it just highlights the cultural (mis)representation of the term.
> Also Hikikkomori means that you literally don't leave your room at all (which is not the case for a NEET). If the hermit needs something, they'll often bang the floor to summon their mother (typically for food)
To be fair, Hikikkomori and NEET aren't meant to refer to the same people anyway. It just so happens there's overlap in the context. An example in western culture could be "freeloaders" and "unemployed". The former has negative connotations (ie they live of others like leaches) where as the latter just states they don't have a job. While some who are unemployed could be classed as freeloaders, it's also fair to say that some who are unemployed are very keen to find work and support themselves. So there's overlap in the people covered by those two terms but they don't automatically refer to the same group of people.
Great example with the freeloader/unemployed comparison. I'll put that in a mental drawer so I can use it in the future :)
It certainly has a large amount of social condescension in Britain -- "not in employment, education or training" was taken up with glee by the tabloids.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni-Ni
which according to Wikipedia is equivalent to NEET.
However, they're NOT shut-ins (many live in hovels, no place to shut in), so many become thieves and vandals.
Eighteen percent of youth in my country fall in this category (!!!!!)
There is, however, a risk that a Ni-ni may become a hikikomori, or something very similar.
Ni-Ni's here in Uruguay live in "cantegriles" (similar to Brazil's "favelas" or Argentina's "villa miseria")
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantegril
Unlike Spain, there are opportunities, there's full employment for youth who want it in construction and other heavy work, but "Ni-Ni's" don't want to have anything to do with that.
There's a huge government "free money" project that's heavily criticized as a "Ni-Ni" enabler.
I'll have to look up that show from La Sexta.
Oh, yes, computers can make people look so busy when really they spend all day what I am doing now.
I'm off to the shop to get the tea
Being a shut-in is nothing new, but most of those are either very old people (who are shut in for partially physical reasons) or people with severe agoraphobia (who can't leave their houses without having panic attacks) or biologically-rooted mental illnesses.
What's happening now in many countries is that people without anything physically wrong with them are becoming shut-ins at very early ages-- 20s instead of 80s.
I feel like corporatism is cultural alcohol (alcohol was more devastating to Native Americans than Europeans, who built up a tolerance over millennia) whose psychological effects are probably somewhat worse in East Asia. Corporatism is everywhere, but when it fails us in the U.S., we don't internalize it. Compared to people in Japan or Korea, we laugh it off, work odd jobs, take a couple night courses, and maybe move to another part of the country. We're used to the industrial-corporate economy melting down every couple of generations (1929, 1973, 2008) and we know that it can be awful, but we don't take it personally. We'd rather pull up stakes and move across the country. In East Asia, there seems to be much more shame to not finding a place in the salaryman system.
Hikikomori is the response, on a large scale, to the decline of a system (world corporatism, which reached peak employment in 2008) in a world where the resulting negative impacts are internalized and personalized to a much larger degree than here.
http://www.anthonyworlando.com/2012/08/02/the-myth-of-the-la...
I think the important dynamic you're hinting at is the failure of the Protestant Ethic. The Protestant Ethic brings material achievements into measure of your value as a human. This was generally warned against in Catholic and Orthodox theology.