Will my bad luck ever end!
Today I K.od my bicycle. It would cost 7000 yen to fix so i bought a better second hand one for 5000 yen.
I have had several anxious emails from people asking if im alright. Im quite ok, this isnt like other bad situations in the past and my world hasnt come tumbling down or anything like that. I have been badly hurt by someone but i am dealing it in my own way. I have learnt a lot about japanese culture and particularly relationships in a short period of time. I have found some of the ideas about realtionships over hear very hard to accept and to be honest I am still completely shocked about the way things have unravelled for me over the last week or so. All I can say is that i have thrown the idea of cultural/moral relativism in the dustbin. In the past such as in France I really tried to accomodate and accept ideas which I found foreign or strange, particularly with regards to my algerian neighours and their attitudes. Having lived in Japan I now realise that some things about cultures are just a load of bulshit. Period. Japan is extreme in that sense because there is so much to applaud the society for having done and achieved and yet their is so much crap underneath.
If the events that had happened over here in the last month occurred in the west things would be very different!
posted by Wolffie @ 5:36 am
3 comments
3 Comments:
I couldn't agree more. Cultural/moral relativism /is/ complete bullshit. It's also tautological in nature ("it is true that there is no truth"), and I believe it to be a just a particularly insiduous form of glorified selfishness. This is not to say that we have to become intolerant fucks, as tolerance is perhaps one of the nicest things about Japan. But your freedom ends where someone else's freedom starts, and so on.
Welcome to the post-wonderment phase of living in Japan: the realisation about all the waste sunk underneath the calm waters of the rippling zen pool. Stay on the surface and you'll be fine - dive and you'll soon be covered in faeces. At the risk of this sounding like some sort of condescending curse, from now on you'll develop a schizophrenic love/hate relationship with the place and your life will become a sort of rollecoaster alternating between the two stages. If generalisations were ever true, there will never be a truer one about foreigners in Japan. Books have been written about this. Not all of them are necessarily true, or any good for that matter, but it shows you how extended your situation is.
I'll see you in Jeff's for a whiny pint someday!
P.S.: My email is posted in my page.
I couldn't agree more. Cultural/moral relativism /is/ complete bullshit. It's also tautological in nature ("it is true that there is no truth"), and I believe it to be a just a particularly insiduous form of glorified selfishness. This is not to say that we have to become intolerant fucks, as tolerance is perhaps one of the nicest things about Japan. But your freedom ends where someone else's freedom starts, and so on.
Welcome to the post-wonderment phase of living in Japan: the realisation about all the waste sunk underneath the calm waters of the rippling zen pool. Stay on the surface and you'll be fine - dive and you'll soon be covered in faeces. At the risk of this sounding like some sort of condescending curse, from now on you'll develop a schizophrenic love/hate relationship with the place and your life will become a sort of rollecoaster alternating between the two stages. If generalisations were ever true, there will never be a truer one about foreigners in Japan. Books have been written about this. Not all of them are necessarily true, or any good for that matter, but it shows you how extended your situation is.
I'll see you in Jeff's for a whiny pint someday!
P.S.: My email is posted in my page.
hmm i dont really think cultural relativsm IS bullshit necessarily, insofar as it covers the recognition that it boils down to "all cultures/societies have shortcomings ands strengths, and if you think yours has less or more of either then you are probably missing a whole load of truckloads of shit that is inherent in the way thaat you and your peers think and act back home". This isnt to say that its a failing to not be "self aware", but having raged in a similar way to you andy about Slavonic mindsets during 2001/2, it took a bit of talking to Russians who were pissed off with "Western" (ie Anglo/American) atitudes, mores, traditions etc, to realise that we were just as fucked up or other wise as anyone else. I'm sorry to hear about what evers happened andy, Ive been out of the loop for a while having moved north, but just wanted to prod the discussion in a drippy "love everybody" kinda way.
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