Opinion of Japan

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I would've been living there for 2 years had I stayed in the Navy.  Absolutely love the place, but wasn't willing to move that far from everyone I know.  Still have a small twinge of regret for refusing that opportunity, but I had a multitude of other reasons for getting out.  I want to visit so, so bad. 

[politicallefty]

Massive FC. There's so much I love about Japan. If there's one country in the world right now I'd like to visit more than any other, it is Japan. I just have a fascination with country that is hard to describe. The culture is one of the most interesting in the world and I'm a huge fan of the food. Japanese is also the language I'd love to know more than any other.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

'The most normal and straightforward interpretation of Japanese history' most certainly does not analyze the Meiji Restoration-to-Pacific War period and the Occupation-to-Lost Decade period as one continuous era, far less parts of the same 'golden age'.

I don't blame historians for dividing up such a long and interesting period into parts; especially since when these two periods were delineated, the golden age was still going on and seemed 'normal.'

I...I can't respond to this. You've made a profoundly odd historiographical assertion conflating two vastly different periods of history that have next to nothing in common except the epoch between them and the 'strength' of the country in question (it wasn't even strong in the same way), defended this assertion by claiming that it's 'normal and straightforward', and then responded to the point that reputable historians do not understand things this way by claiming that they just aren't/weren't privy to the same insights as you.

Also, Sol, you underestimate my ability to go on for hours about which anime series suck and which ones are good. I have very strong opinions on this.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

How does the Pokémon anime and Cowboy Bebop rate?

[Antonio the Sixth]

the Pokémon anime

Seriously?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not great, but I did enjoy a few episodes, mostly the Team Rocket heavy ones (who doesn't love the Team Rocket motto?) and the first movie. Though moreso than Pikachu's Vacation short before the movie.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How does the Pokémon anime and Cowboy Bebop rate?

Pokémon: Serviceable. It delivers what it promises. It's interesting as a cultural phenomenon but not in itself particularly fertile ground for analysis.
Cowboy Bebop: Very good indeed but not quite as good as its inflated reputation in the West would suggest. Far and away the best anime of the period throughout which it aired* but not the best anime of the late nineties (that's Shōjo Kakumei Utena).

*I'm counting the continuous period between October 1998 and April 1999, not the few months earlier in 1998 in which it started to air and was then temporarily cancelled. Serial Experiments Lain ended in September 1998, and that's the only credible challenger for Cowboy Bebop in any definition of its airing period.

[Kushahontas]

A weird country. A very weird country. Most of you kids are too young to remember when the U.S. was paranoid about Japan. "We won the war, but they won the peace", and other nonsense like that. The country's golden age was 1868-1998, about 130 years, probably peaking in the late 1940s when companies like Sony were getting founded. Today a society that has accepted its own eclipse, like what Thatcher warned against in the Seventies and Eighties. In any case, definitely weird.

Weird alright, but not as weird as that post.

lol