lol Pachinko!!
I'd visit, but never move there. Wonder how their economy really is doing right now. Heard that despite the enormous prosperity that they've had recession the last couple years. Wonder hoe long they'll last as a world power.
Thier economy was in the doldrums from 1990 to 2004. Thier picking up steam now because of the Chinese market providing a new market for exports.
I'm really confused about Japan's culture. On one hand, you hear all over the place that Japan is a very traditional society; they have strict discipline at home and everyone is expected to have a sort of filial piety towards their superiors.
And then you see this anime/manga stuff and the movies that come out of Japan, and lots of it is just disgusting. Animated kiddie porn, all sorts of crazy psycho-killer type perverse violence, really disturbing stuff. Has anyone ever seen/read Ichi the Killer, Battle Royal or anything like that? What kinda "traditional" society full of supposedly modest, humble, obedient people publishes that sorta stuff?
It just really confuses me. Not that they don't have a right to do it, it just seems that they've got a reall bi-polar society. The whole suicide trend also makes me wonder about how healthy their society is.
It shouldn't confuse you at all, Jacobtm - tightly controlled societies, such as the Japanese, or the American Puritan, produce an enormous amount of sexual frustration, which is manifested in rape, serial killing, or fantasies thereof - either privately or in film/art.
Open, sexually permissive societies, such as say the Scandinavian, Dutch, Thai, etc., produce sexually satisfied, happy people, who have no motivations or drives for extreme behaviours.
