Tim Rogers Falls Out of Love With Japan

[Mulboyne]

Kuang Grade just sent me a link to a piece on Kotaku by Tim Rogers called "Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore". KG rightly thought that it is far too long to post in its entirety, and it's difficult to pick out just a few highlights. Nevertheless, it's perfect material for us so I thought I'd share it.

[BO-SENSEI]

Holy shit, its like he has been reading my mind.

[Tsuru]

"THIS FRIDAY AT SIX PM, EVERY EMPLOYEE IS REQUIRED TO REPORT TO THE CONFERENCE ROOM TO EAT PIZZA"

This had me in pieces

[Christoff]

it was funny until he corssed the line and started bagging on pachiko...

[Adhesive]

Japanese games, thanks to Chokokuro-like thinking, are now like ramen with more noodles and less soup, because people like the noodles more, and lots of jerks manage to finish the noodles without finishing the soup.

People who finish their broth are gluttons!

I think, in general, the Japanese seem to be comfortable stereotyping and being stereotyped. High school students wear uniforms. Everyone knows who they are and what they are up to. In college, people are confused, because they don't have uniforms. They graduate and immediately find an excuse to wear a suit, even to companies with no dress code, so that everyone on the train might know where they stand in their life. They hit eighty, join my gym, and start screaming.

I never thought about the college gap...this explains why Japanese get so heavily into sports clubs and other hobbies around this time. Got to identify yourself some way or the other.

[nottu]

[Catoneinutica]

Seeing as this guy is a total LOSER, its something you shouldn't admit to.

"Here's to the winners, you know who you are, and to the losers: hey, fuck you, you fuckin' losers." - a drunk Frank Sinatra, mid-1980s

The guy may be a loser, but he writes entertainingly, and that counts for a lot. It's an iconic screed, really, because it distills all the bitching and kvetching about Japan you read on various dubious internet fora into one handy monograph.

[gkanai]

If he's not happy here, he should go elsewhere? It's fine to have issues with Japan- there's lots to bitch about. But if you're not Japanese, then a part of me is like, "quit your bitching and go somewhere else where you'll be happier."

[Mulboyne]

I replied to KG that the first thing Rogers should consider doing is to stop working for a Japanese company since it seems like many of his gripes are tied to the workplace.

[hakosukajd]

I'm not a vegetarian so his railing against what most of us eat and stores catering to the fact was irrelevant.....


....but he called out TV to a "T". Save for NHK's taiga dorama, most of its crap (to be fair, I think most of American TV is crap too...so call me biased)

Absolutely worst is having to go to my in-laws for New Year's where every TV, in every room, is tuned to the NHKs Kouhaku. Only about 5% of them can actually hold a decent note...the rest are lucky if they manage to hit the right register. I wanna choke Kobayashi Sachiko with some part of her ridiculous outfit....

[SpikeX]

He lost credibility when he alluded to being vegetarian

[Mike Oxlong]

I think he more than alluded to being a vegetarian, he championed the lifestyle by saying he doesn't want to eat dirty food (i.e. food with blobs of grease in it - more tonkotsu broth for me). If reported accurately, the ramen shop chain's management did respond in an odd way to the perceived danger of the magazine's symbol, but his preamble to his point reduced any sympathy I had for his situation.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I didn't find the article that interesting in the first place but once I got to the vegetarian part I stopped reading.

[SpikeX]

I think he more than alluded to being a vegetarian, he championed the lifestyle by saying he doesn't want to eat dirty food (i.e. food with blobs of grease in it - more tonkotsu broth for me). If reported accurately, the ramen shop chain's management did respond in an odd way to the perceived danger of the magazine's symbol, but his preamble to his point reduced any sympathy I had for his situation.

and for the non-drinking point he had... looks like it's time to move to wherever happens to be a safe harbor for non-drinking vegetarians who hate teamwork...

California

[Bucky]

I found this response to his posting on a LinkedIn page:

Pathetic. I ran into more than a few like him or her on my first stay in Japan in the 1980s and quickly learned to avoid them like the plague. There may be good points in the article but there is a lot to shovel to find it.

[Christoff]

[img]http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2010/03/340x_custom_1267635655925_badweather.jpg"[/img]

AUTHOR: Tim Rogers at Kotaku
FINDER OF THIS BLESSED GEM: Tyler Cowen
SUJBECT: Japan, the author's current country of residence
LENGTH OF SCREED: 15,921 words
THINGS AUTHOR LIKES ABOUT JAPAN: 4
THINGS AUTHOR DOES NOT LIKE ABOUT JAPAN: Much more numerous
TIME SPENT IN JAPAN: "Many years"
'FACT': "I have never seen anyone playing Tekken 6 without also smoking a cigarette."
WHAT AUTHOR SAYS TO IMAGINARY READERS SHOUTING 'MMM! DELICIOUS GREASE BUBBLES!' AS HE EXPLAINS FRUSTRATION WITH OMNIPRESENT MEAT IN NONMEAT PRODUCTS: "Save it, asshole! Let me finish: I don't eat meat because I don't like things like grease bubbles."
WHAT HE DOES LIKE DOING: "making up the weirdest fake reasons for not eating meat"
SUCH AS: "I wouldn't want to ingest an animal weak or dumb enough to enter a life of slavery under another species, that the only meat I would eat would be that of an animal which a human cannot actually kill"

The article

[james]

The article

the original thread

[osopolar]

There's already a Tim Rogers thread going.
http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24666

[Pixe]

http://twitter.com/number108/statuses/10200958011

next month's kotaku column will be the things i love about japan!

[Christoff]

my bad

[Mulboyne]

In which Tim Rogers explains why he is still living in Japan...

[Kuang_Grade]

Well, that one flowed a bit better...nice to see he's open to monetizing the hate by selling an arty poster of himself for dartboards at the end.

[McTojo]

The OP had some legitimate gripes, but why devote so much about the negative side. This guy comes off as bi-polar, and the type who is not comfortable in his own skin. True nutter.

[BigInJapan]

Too busy to read the latest diatribe so I'll wait for the Christoff digest version.
One thing though, this guy says he's been here for "years", how long is that - 3, 5? If that's him with the mop-top hair in the video, he looks like a generation X-er.