I want to live in Japan so bad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everything about the US is in decline. Everything just seems so much more ghetto and run down compared to the 90s and 2000s. There is just no more national identity anymore. For example, in the DMV you now regularly encounter hawkers trying to sell flowers, to drinks, to other trinkets at intersections. You now have unlicensed mopeds and scooters all over the roads in PG, MoCo, and DC. Drive all over the beltway and you'll see all sorts of trash people dump from used mattresses to bag bags and bags of contractor waste on the side of the road. You know where you see all of these kinds of things? In second and 3rd world countries. That is what the US has become. People just stop caring about the law and take great liberties with it. You know why 2nd and 3rd world countries are the way they are? BECAUSE people in those countries have a toxic mindset of ignoring the law and have low standards for themselves. It results in things like dumping trash on the side of the road. Now the US is importing tons of this same kind of mindset by the fistful. You never see hawkers and mass quantities of mopeds and scooters driving how ever they want in civilized countries like Japan, South Korea, or Denmark. It's just death by 1000 cuts in the US. Everything is in decline and I honestly can barely tell the difference anymore between a country like Vietnam or Thailand vs the US. I still think the US has further to go down and will be more of a central American country soon in terms of development, quality of education, and crime. Just lawlessness, no semblance of identity, and trashy ingrained attitude.

[phone]
Not only could we be friends-we could be BEST friends.

My heart is broken for the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand, OP. I loved how clean and quiet it was even when the streets were busy and the sidewalks were full. Everything was SO clean. No urine smells or smoke stained buildings. No litter or graffiti.

I love America and DC but we do a terrible job of taking care of our nice things. capitol of the free world and we smell of urine and our national parks are full of graffiti have broken water fountains. Tents all over. Embarrassing.

AGREE!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:America is a great country. Do we have problems? Of course all nations do. And while it politically things seem dire right now, the best thing to do is stay and vote and help, not leave. Time takes time and a hundred years is just a blip on the linear course of world history. Our greatest natural resource is our young people, our children. If we can nourish that resource properly we can move to a better society.

Our young people are being desensitized to violence, a la school shootings and the like. #1 killer of children is guns in the US. Statistically, they are safer in Japan, or any other developed world other than the US.

Yes, but let’s be frank. Children being killed by guns is a very specific cohort. You can research what that cohort is pretty easily. You can also just read the major city newspapers every Monday morning to figure it out. If you remove that group the statistic that you cite changes appreciably.

Maybe so if you narrow it down to a cohort, but what about the day-to-day grind of people breaking the law in broad daylight and no one says a thing. Someone keys a row of cars for fun. 3 kids jump out of a car at midday and steal 9 Rolexes from the store window. You wake up and your car's tires are gone, your car is up on milk cartons. More people jump the turnstiles than actually pay. It's a steady drumbeat with the mass murders as the melody. I'm so done.

Where the heck do you live? I’m 52, have lived in the U.S. my whole life and have never seen such things.

I don't know where PP lives but in the city of alexandria this is common place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everything about the US is in decline. Everything just seems so much more ghetto and run down compared to the 90s and 2000s. There is just no more national identity anymore. For example, in the DMV you now regularly encounter hawkers trying to sell flowers, to drinks, to other trinkets at intersections. You now have unlicensed mopeds and scooters all over the roads in PG, MoCo, and DC. Drive all over the beltway and you'll see all sorts of trash people dump from used mattresses to bag bags and bags of contractor waste on the side of the road. You know where you see all of these kinds of things? In second and 3rd world countries. That is what the US has become. People just stop caring about the law and take great liberties with it. You know why 2nd and 3rd world countries are the way they are? BECAUSE people in those countries have a toxic mindset of ignoring the law and have low standards for themselves. It results in things like dumping trash on the side of the road. Now the US is importing tons of this same kind of mindset by the fistful. You never see hawkers and mass quantities of mopeds and scooters driving how ever they want in civilized countries like Japan, South Korea, or Denmark. It's just death by 1000 cuts in the US. Everything is in decline and I honestly can barely tell the difference anymore between a country like Vietnam or Thailand vs the US. I still think the US has further to go down and will be more of a central American country soon in terms of development, quality of education, and crime. Just lawlessness, no semblance of identity, and trashy ingrained attitude.

It may be true that Denmark and South Korea are better places to live but Japan is also in decline. They have an older population and a low birth rate. Their economy has never really recovered from its fall in the 1990s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand, OP. I loved how clean and quiet it was even when the streets were busy and the sidewalks were full. Everything was SO clean. No urine smells or smoke stained buildings. No litter or graffiti.

I love America and DC but we do a terrible job of taking care of our nice things. capitol of the free world and we smell of urine and our national parks are full of graffiti have broken water fountains. Tents all over. Embarrassing.

The reason you enjoy Japan is because the entire society is built in the idea of the group. From a young age they are taught to do what is best for the group not the individual. That includes taking care of others, the town, etc. America is the way it is because it is based on the individual. However, as others have mentioned, it’s not idyllic, you just don’t understand the nuances. It remains an incredibly conservative, patriarchal society. They also will never fully accept you if you are foreign - there is a lot of xenophobia/racism. It is akin to the “bless your heart” superficiality of the Deep South. If you truly admire the Japanese way of life, live it here - it means picking up trash when you are out and paying taxes to support safety nets for everyone.

I remember a book I reas about the Japanese school system. The kids clean up the classroom at the end of the day and clean their lunch areas too. I thought that was a great way to teach respect for society and responsibility for oneself. At the same time, I was turned off by other things about it but we could learn some things from them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everything about the US is in decline. Everything just seems so much more ghetto and run down compared to the 90s and 2000s. There is just no more national identity anymore. For example, in the DMV you now regularly encounter hawkers trying to sell flowers, to drinks, to other trinkets at intersections. You now have unlicensed mopeds and scooters all over the roads in PG, MoCo, and DC. Drive all over the beltway and you'll see all sorts of trash people dump from used mattresses to bag bags and bags of contractor waste on the side of the road. You know where you see all of these kinds of things? In second and 3rd world countries. That is what the US has become. People just stop caring about the law and take great liberties with it. You know why 2nd and 3rd world countries are the way they are? BECAUSE people in those countries have a toxic mindset of ignoring the law and have low standards for themselves. It results in things like dumping trash on the side of the road. Now the US is importing tons of this same kind of mindset by the fistful. You never see hawkers and mass quantities of mopeds and scooters driving how ever they want in civilized countries like Japan, South Korea, or Denmark. It's just death by 1000 cuts in the US. Everything is in decline and I honestly can barely tell the difference anymore between a country like Vietnam or Thailand vs the US. I still think the US has further to go down and will be more of a central American country soon in terms of development, quality of education, and crime. Just lawlessness, no semblance of identity, and trashy ingrained attitude.

It may be true that Denmark and South Korea are better places to live but Japan is also in decline. They have an older population and a low birth rate. Their economy has never really recovered from its fall in the 1990s.

But even with Japanese demographics, everyone still obeys the law. There is not a single spec of trash virtually anywhere. Graffiti? Almost non-existent. Have you been in Tokyo during rush hour? They leave the gates open for the subways to help improve human traffic flow and congestion. And guess what? EVERYONE still pays! They simply can't comprehend stealing fares because of the great harm it'd cause society and the shame it'd being to themselves. Contrast that to the US where fare evasion is a national past time and lawlessness is now acceptable. It's so disgusting what we tolerate in the USA and how far we are declining into a 2nd world country with almost no laws.

[Anonymous]

I would chip in a few dollars to a gofundme for OP,

- as long as she promised to never, ever, return to the USA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everything about the US is in decline. Everything just seems so much more ghetto and run down compared to the 90s and 2000s. There is just no more national identity anymore. For example, in the DMV you now regularly encounter hawkers trying to sell flowers, to drinks, to other trinkets at intersections. You now have unlicensed mopeds and scooters all over the roads in PG, MoCo, and DC. Drive all over the beltway and you'll see all sorts of trash people dump from used mattresses to bag bags and bags of contractor waste on the side of the road. You know where you see all of these kinds of things? In second and 3rd world countries. That is what the US has become. People just stop caring about the law and take great liberties with it. You know why 2nd and 3rd world countries are the way they are? BECAUSE people in those countries have a toxic mindset of ignoring the law and have low standards for themselves. It results in things like dumping trash on the side of the road. Now the US is importing tons of this same kind of mindset by the fistful. You never see hawkers and mass quantities of mopeds and scooters driving how ever they want in civilized countries like Japan, South Korea, or Denmark. It's just death by 1000 cuts in the US. Everything is in decline and I honestly can barely tell the difference anymore between a country like Vietnam or Thailand vs the US. I still think the US has further to go down and will be more of a central American country soon in terms of development, quality of education, and crime. Just lawlessness, no semblance of identity, and trashy ingrained attitude.

It may be true that Denmark and South Korea are better places to live but Japan is also in decline. They have an older population and a low birth rate. Their economy has never really recovered from its fall in the 1990s.

But even with Japanese demographics, everyone still obeys the law. There is not a single spec of trash virtually anywhere. Graffiti? Almost non-existent. Have you been in Tokyo during rush hour? They leave the gates open for the subways to help improve human traffic flow and congestion. And guess what? EVERYONE still pays! They simply can't comprehend stealing fares because of the great harm it'd cause society and the shame it'd being to themselves. Contrast that to the US where fare evasion is a national past time and lawlessness is now acceptable. It's so disgusting what we tolerate in the USA and how far we are declining into a 2nd world country with almost no laws.

DP - to keep pounding away at that nail.. the reason why Japan is crime free, not trashy, orderly, etc etc is because it is VERY oriented in group culture. Note the word group. They are totally 180 from American individualism. I TOTALLY 10000% agree that US in decline and it would be lovely to learn some lessons from the Japanese on how to have a lovely society. However - in life you gotta take the good with the bad. The thing about US is that people are able to be unique. They are supposed to almost, be different. There is a lot of variety and there is a lot of individualism that can be expressed and accepted. I am not saying this is good or bad but if you put a typical American person in Japan they will be unhappy and if you put a Japanese family in the US they will freak. It's 2 DIFFERENT cultures. Now, some people may be happier in Japan living that way but make no mistake, the lifestyle change and societal differences is tangible. It's real folks. I'm not saying you'll hate living in Japan but it's a reality that is totally different than visiting for a couple weeks. I personally LOVE visiting Japan but I don't know if I could live there. I wish very much that US changed its ways but part of it is that those who have money can find a nice niche community that's reasonably safe, clean, friendly and nice. It's less and less but until most people feel what a mess it's become and agree that we are truly in decline and not the great country every politician uses to describe us nowadays, we will never be changing.

[Anonymous]

Japan isn't crime free alot of their crime is undereported or never reported. Same as your other haloed countries in Asia or Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You must be a man.

Japan is still an incredibly misogynist culture. It's also deeply xenophobic. A gaijin will never fully integrate.

- Japanese woman who is happy to not live in Japan. But happy to come back for visits!

Stop your whining and learn to be Japanese again. I lived in Japan as a white man. It was great. Best place ever. Period.

Oh the irony!

Where to start?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You must be a man.

Japan is still an incredibly misogynist culture. It's also deeply xenophobic. A gaijin will never fully integrate.

- Japanese woman who is happy to not live in Japan. But happy to come back for visits!

Yup sexual crime is quite common and seldom reported and if reported rarely taken seriously

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Japan isn't crime free alot of their crime is undereported or never reported. Same as your other haloed countries in Asia or Europe.

How many shooting and school shooting has Japan had per year?

Even with underreporting, US is probably 1-2 orders of magnitude worse.

[Anonymous]

The only problem about Japan is that you will never fit in if you are not pure blood Japanese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The only problem about Japan is that you will never fit in if you are not pure blood Japanese.

Doesn't matter. Still better than being bankrupt due to going to college or breaking your arm. Better to that than living in a country where you can be shot because of road rage, while going to church or while simply going to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Way better quality of food

Infinitely better education

WAY BETTER public transport

virtually zero gun crime

Zero school shootings

Affordable healthcare for all

Murder rate is virtual nonexistent

Obesity rate is below 5% while US is 50%

People obey the law

Virtually zero fare evaders on the Shinkansen

High speed internet and cell phones everywhere.


I do not give a crap about toxic work culture. I’d take that little zit vs school shootings and America’s unaffordable healthcare snd obesity. Do Americans realize how much it sucks to live in america?

Jackie, is that you?