- 17 Sep 2005
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Yes, and I hear the same is true of Korea, too. However I've noticed that there seems to be a growing population of people who have realized that they can take this inclination for nonconfrontation to their advantage and purposely confront people to get their way. For example skipping in a long line to get into a restaurant. If someone politely mentions that the end of the queue is w-a-y o-v-e-r t-h-e-r-e, the skipping culprit will get angry and yell at the unlucky person trying to do everyone a service. Of course he backs down and the skipper gets his undeserved place in line. It's not common, but I do see things like that from time to time.Maciamo said:I have no doubt that there are many very kind and truly polite people in Japan, but what characterise better the majority is to be conventional and non-confrontational (which isn't the same as truly kind).
I understand it's very easy to get jaded after living here for several years, but please remember that you're talking about the average person. There are plenty of people who are more "enlightened" so to speak, and like learning difficult things. People from my native country (USA) on the whole are no better than Japanese on the whole. Or at least that's in my experience. You might say that I have very low expectations of Japanese people, but no lower than I do of anyone else. If you want to find intelligent people, you can find them, but when you talk about people in the aggregate remember that what you say can only ever apply to a certain percentage of the population. Please don't get too jaded, Maciamo!Maciamo said:Don't even get me started on that. Education in Japan is lamentable, and people are usually disinterested with learning for itself. Typical Japanese prefer what is easy, simple and cute. This strongly contradicts the image of high-tech and hard-working country ("long-working" would be more appropriate, or even "long at waiting in the office for the boss to finish his work and hanging with colleagues in bars after work, and so comes back home at 1am" type of society).
As far as the hard working mentality goes, every Japanese person I know above a certain age laments the exact same thing. I think there's a certain lack of direction and a certain amount of soul-searching in the country as a whole behind this, though.