demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 03:44

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Japan.

Uh, I had to do something and for everything here (in my field) I'm hypercompetitive in an environment that's hypocompetitve so am pretty always the biggest fish in the pond and can set my own terms. My choice.

The US... as its major allies/sympaticos are now countries like Russia, Philippines, North Korea, etc, and its enemies with West Europe, Canada, etc, it's pretty much an enemy state to democratic liberalism & free market capitalism, etc, and deserves to be invaded, occupied, and reconstructed by WWII-era America with a generous Marshall Plan and re-made into a healthy liberal democratic free-market state. More generally, I like everything about the US, Americans (that aren't going through a dudebro stage), the cities, the countryside, the music. My not being in the US has nothing to do with me not being happy living there. I don't think there's anything talismatic about nationality and don't think there's anything special about borders, but I'm a proud American and Texan, culturally speaking, the kind of ground-level authentic culture that you see in Linklater movies. I relate to that very deeply. I don't recognize this caricatured version being bandied about as anything much to do with what I grew up with.

Differences & similarities. Well there's a whole cottage industry about West/Japan differences. To summarize, Japan's principal value is "taking care of each other" and the US's principal value is "self-reliance & individual development". Apply that to every facet of social reality. At this point I can see the world from both perspectives more or less naturally. Self-reliance and individual development is what I care most deeply about too, close to my identity and who I am, etc, but I can appreciate taking care of each other in most of the contexts it comes up here, the gratuitous compassion, kindness & generosity to people just because you can be, version of it (not the version that's a pretext to walking over people & hammering them down into intentional mediocrity).

There's an old joke "Japan is not better or worse, just different." But seriously, Japan's culture is 20+ years behind the West and in no rush to keep up on things like treatment of women, innovation and flexibility in business, open mindedness, etc. It's better if you keep yourself in a bubble, don't seriously deal with the culture, and live your own life perhaps.

Life is comfortable here so there's no strong incentive to go back or anywhere else, unless the proverbial dream job or love magically (improbably) appears. Without that, going back I only look forward to an awful credit score, being set back professionally, and having less time and freedom to do anything interesting I imagine. And my main ambitions these days turn on creating things (publishing, etc.), it doesn't really matter where I live to do that, and here I have the time and freedom to do it. (Cf. the guy that could only write Cloud Atlas because he lived in Japan.)

There are other westerners here, but they don't stay long. They come & go in an unending cycle.

No family nearby. Easy to make friends, but often they're either superficial and stay or deep and go.

I can hold a conversation in Japanese but it's a difficult language to make progress with, to say the least.

I see something utterly bizarre in Japan practically every day. It's an endless well of ridiculous stories. Nobody makes a deep connection with others or the culture in the way we think about it in the West, not even Japanese, and there's always a level of enforced superficiality. It can really beat people down that haven't learned to shield themselves from it, but once you know how to live in a bubble around yourself, with protective shields to guard the walls like good music, books, film, art, discussions, etc, then it's an empty page you have the ability to make anything out of it you like. I don't bother trying to point out US or Texan culture because nobody will care or appreciate the significance. On the other hand, I have learned to deeply appreciate certain Japanese mainstays, like the Zen style of arts (calligraphy, tea ceremony, etc) steeped in patience, ritual, mindfulness, etc, which seem to have been made exactly for my way of looking at the things and living life. So I've learned how to take in Japan (the good parts) in healthy, controlled doses.

How's that?

demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 05:49

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Or in ZB's case, who else lives on another planet?

Gray on 30/6/2018 at 08:36

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My mistake, but it highlights one of my points of this thread. I've been speaking English for nearly 40 years, but only as a second language and I still get things wrong. I was just trying to avoid the abbreviated "expat", but I extrapolated in the wrong direction. Sorry about that. I changed the title, based solely upon your coughing, so I hope you're not messing with me here.

[Edit]

Demagogue, I studied Japanese for a bit, and it's the most fun I ever had at university. One thing I did learn was how very different Japanese culture was to ours (Swedish, casual, impolite, egalitarian), and how it can take decades of hard study just to manage the correct level of politeness and strict protocols for social interaction. I only studied for a few months, and could basically speak like a four-year-old with a learning disability, but I found it deeply fascinating. Also, back in the 80s I had a Japanese penpal (yes, actual letters on paper!), and it was only a decade and a half later I started to slowly understand some of the things she wrote.

Nickie, I've tried a few but all appear quite samey, in the sense they're extremely different from the more German/Italian/Polish-style sausages we're familiar with in Sweden. The "meat" is so coarsely ground so you can almost see the eyeballs, ears and testicles we all know are in there anyway, and there's something weird with the spices and flavouring. And why are they all grey and so violently unappealing? It looks like roadkill stuffed into a condom. If these are the only sausages available, no wonder veganism is getting increasingly popular.

But on the upside, whisky is everywhere and it's awesome.

demagogue on 30/6/2018 at 11:16

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I guess that's appropriate. I read somewhere the word "Welsh" itself means "foreigner" in old Anglo-Saxon, as if the Germanic Tribes making themselves welcome to the place thought the population already living there were the foreign ones.

Ryan Smith on 30/6/2018 at 17:46

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Englishman living in America (although I'm technically a dual-citizen)