This is off-topic, but Dogen (the video creator, not the monk whose name he stole) includes some questionable right-wing views in his video and espouses them on Twitter, so I would consider him not a good source to link even if a video seems topical.
It's been fun.
Like reflections in the glass!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
A contemporary of Carl Benjamin? lovely.
It comes up infrequently in his skits, but there are things like him saying "What's my favorite thing about Japan? The women", as well as a later speech about how one of the great things about Japan is how you can make "edgy jokes and no one will get offended".
He also supports prominent pro-Trump (and pro-Q) Japanese influencers.
It's been fun.
Anyway, I have read that Japanese men used to wear kimonos. Kinda like how male ancient Egyptians used to shave their legs.
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Used to?
What does that have to do with shaving your legs?
Oh really when?
Every one used to wear kimonos, there not like "Japanese dress" there just traditional clothing... there still worn for festivals and things.
Personally I really like them, there cute, deceptively a pain in the ass to put on though.
Oh, bother.
It has about as much to do with that as, say, Germans enjoying beer.
The "pain in the ass" thing is presumably one of the reasons they fell out of favor for casual wear. Because putting one on is very much not a casual task.
Edited by M84 on Feb 16th 2022 at 4:11:29 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
I said kinda, I know that women used to wear 'em too.
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
Yea... still makes me slightly sad though.
Now I am confused as to what the question was?
There was no question. I tried to convey something along the lines that the layman would probably think of those things as feminine things to do, although historicaly, that's not the case.
Edited by Delibirda on Feb 15th 2022 at 11:53:44 AM
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
On the topic of gratuitous foreign language, I wouldn't say it is limited to English. Other common European languages are quite present (especially in manga), just less so.
ABC News (Australia) has a documentary titled "Living Lonely and Loveless in Japan".
I have heard that too in some articles, K-Pop supplanted J-Pop in recent years because they are more willing to incorporate Western styles and content in their output, while J-Pop is more stagnant because it has no interest in getting recognized outside its niche and making something that can appeal to foreigners too. As a personal note, I used to be into Necronomidol some time ago, but I wouldn't ever have heard of such an ultra-niche idol unit were it not for the fact that their producer is an American, who always pushed his brand to be recognized even and especially outside Japan. In fact, besides the very early phase, Necroma's style has always been a blend of Asian and Western influences.
Edit: about C-Pop/Mandopop, it's possible that with how China is reacting to the outside world, it no longer has the interest or even the opportunity to be recognized outside China's borders. The only Chinese popstars that I know of are Jay Chou (who is from Taiwan) and the Chopsticks Brothers, mostly because they're comedians whose most popular song used to be a meme years ago.
Edited by WoodyAlien3rd on Feb 20th 2022 at 3:56:56 PM
"Effective Altruism" is just another bunch of horsesh*t.
In the name of being honest
A lot of K-Pop acts already had entire parallel Japanese-language discographies and marketing presence long before they pivoted to more generic English-language marketing targeting the wider international audience. It's a bigger market than South Korea itself, it's close to home, and Japanese fanclubs are often regarded as better-behaved than their South Korean counterparts. I don't speak Japanese, but my sister does and keeps in touch with a few Japanese K-Pop fansite managers, which she used to get us concert tickets on a couple of visits.
And yeah, the Chinese pop music scene is a lot more insular and doesn't generally make a whole lot of effort to reach out beyond the Sinosphere (which, to be fair, is a huge market in itself). There are some that do try to appeal to non-Sinophone audience (Malaysian Chinese rapper Namewee comes to mind) and the big acts still have a fair number of international fans regardless, but it's a rather more niche genre than K-Pop otherwise.
Edited by eagleoftheninth on Feb 20th 2022 at 7:05:07 AM
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Since I'm not into K-pop at all (I generally can't get into Korean stuff besides Squid Game and a few films), it comes as a surprise to me because, with the bad blood between Japan and Korea, I wouldn't have thought that K-pop managed to have such a big market penetration in Japan, a country that already produces such a huge amount of music. The Hallyu is really becoming global these days!
As for Namewee, didn't he use to cater to the otaku segment too, with a song that listed several Japanese stereotypes? Or am I mistaking him with someone else?
"Effective Altruism" is just another bunch of horsesh*t.
The bad blood for the most part lies with the older generation, and young nationalists.... not the people who the various pop musics generally appeal too, same with the reverse being true of anime being fairly popular in korea.
Remember, populations are not a gigantic unified block, not every Japanese and Korean person are going to come to fighting if you put them in the same room together.
Nods
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
That however still doesn't explain why the whole world from the 2010s on suddenly decided that everything made in Korea is cool. Unless it's a result of social networks that make for a more homogenized popular culture. As for Japan, I don't see why they would like K-Pop so much since they already have a long-standing tradition of manufactured pop singers and idols are absolutely everywhere now. Maybe because K-Pop stars are more "cool" and less "cute"? But there's still plenty of alt-idols to choose from, and if one wants a harder sound, J-Rock went nowhere. Similarly, Japan has plenty of dramas but now everyone seems to watch K-dramas and not the ones produced in their nation, and a big chunk of the West switched to K-dramas too. But what's the difference in the end? I dunno, seems like anime is the only Japanese thing people around the world still care about (not counting video games since they're not perceived as an uniquely Japanese thing of course), unless South Korea decides to invest in the animation industry too.
The vagaries of fashion are inherently arbitrary, which is a fancy way of saying there is no accounting for taste, except that the entire point of fashion, from the perspective of a new generation, is to reject what your parents were watching.
Like reflections in the glass!
I do find it intereating that Games and Music are the only mediums that don't have a separate namespace for Japanese stuff even though every other medium Japan has a hand in does (Anime, Manga, Light Novels)...but then again I don't think we have a namespace for Drama CDs either.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 28th 2022 at 3:01:38 AM
How's the Japanese youth culture?
"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”
Vibrant and varied? You'd need to be a lot more specific.
It's been fun.
I don't really use the Anime News Network site any more, but I stumbled upon this article about maid cafes
(I will put it into a folder if you don't want to give them clicks) and, since maid cafes are a part of Japanese culture, I want to use it as an example of why I dislike that site so much. Sorry for the rant...
Yet unbeknownst to many, maid café culture has been undergoing a sea change in the recent COVID years. Existing establishments have been enforcing social distancing and refurbishing their interiors to comply with safety guidelines. And in these updated, squeaky clean cafés where masks are the norm, new kinds of customers have been flocking to enjoy the food and atmosphere.
These days, I'm told, the number of female customers has surged.
“The ratio is pretty close to equal,” says Chimu, a maid who works for the at-home cafe in Akihabara, which prides itself on providing the “traditional” maid experience. “It's changed a lot in the past few years. Now there are many young ladies (ojо̄-sama) who come to enjoy the atmosphere. We try to serve every master (goshujin-sama) and young lady equally to bring smiles to their faces.”
In certain ways, maid subculture was in a prime position to take advantage of new dining trends in Japan. As social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok soared in popularity, so too have cutesy-themed cafés in general. These novelty food experiences are particularly popular among young women, who often attend in groups and share photos of their outings on social media, providing the crucial word of mouth needed for dining establishments to survive in the COVID era.
The menu at the at-home cafe is dressed up in just the right ways to make the perfect Instagram photo: you can order personalized art for your coffee or omurice, and the desserts are crammed with bright and colorful sweets. With the maids on standby ready to channel their “Moe Moe Kyun” energy into your dish of choice, it's clear from the outset that you're ordering not just food but an experience.
Although not an orthodox maid café, at-home maids also serve as waitresses at Sanrio's Pompompurin Café in Harajuku, which is more conventionally aimed at female consumer tastes. Before visiting the Akihabara branch, I dropped by this café as well to observe the maids in action. The girls were in their element, eager to chat about their favorite Sanrio characters and revel in the cute atmosphere.
Despite the changing face of the at-home cafe business, the maids at the Akiba Cultures Zone store tell me that they have never felt the need to change their approach to service over the years. It has always been their personal policy to be welcoming and inclusive to everyone who visits the store.
“For me, service is about making a person feel at ease,” Chimu explains. “In whatever small way I can, I want the people I serve to be able to look back on their day with a smile.”
The appeal sounds similar to idols, so I ask the maids what they think. After a hum of thought, Chimu says, “They might seem similar on the surface, but it's different when you get into it. Idols are performers, and they bring happiness to others by doing their best from a distance. Although maids can sing and dance too, our work is performed on a face-to-face level. We tailor our service to the individual.”
In other words, a maid's work isn't just about performing ritualistic lines or routines. As long as the conversations are kept within polite and professional boundaries (e.g., no exchanges of personal contact information), the maids are willing to chat with their customers about pretty much anything.
“A lot of our female visitors ask us for love advice,” a maid named Mitsuba tells me. “We talk about all sorts of things, like work or study-related problems. We sometimes get asked for advice on doing makeup and things like that.”
I could understand that. Maid subculture might be niche, but it's not just male otaku who are attracted to the “kawaii” aesthetic, after all. Seeing a professional maid up close is eye-opening from a female perspective as well, and can inspire a powerful realization of “Oh! This girl isn't so different from me! I can become cute like this too!”
For the traditional maid café clientele, the appeal of maids hasn't changed since the initial boom over a decade ago. For instance, you can still pay money to get a polaroid of yourself posing next to a maid. Considering how far camera phones and selfie culture have progressed, this feels like a quaint throwback. But the at-home cafe is also transitioning into the modern livestreaming age; two years ago, it launched a virtual café counterpart. The idea is for customers to experience the traditional maid services even from home.
Mitsuba, who handles a chunk of the virtual café duties, tells me it's a lot of fun but also a lot of work. “I really have to think about my voice to make sure the atmosphere can come across even through the virtual avatar.” She also tells me that the appeal is different from virtual idols and streamers like the hololive performers. Customers can order one-on-one face time with the maids in half-hour blocks; it's a system that can be enjoyed at leisure, without striving for mass exposure in the increasingly crowded streaming ecosystem.
Like many establishments that sell a social experience, maid cafés initially struggled with social distancing. at-home was one among several chains to report COVID infections in mid-2020, sparking worries that the maid café phenomenon might have finally run its course. Akihabara's landscape is completely changed these days, with many iconic electronic stores and arcades closing their shutters for good in the midst of dwindling business. When the tourists finally return to Akihabara after the pandemic, they'll be surprised at how different everything is.
Yet when I visited the physical at-home café in February, I was surprised by just how popular and lively it was. Maid cafés aren't down and out yet; they continue to deliver the old-school fun in a rapidly changing world. And the experience is more refined and inclusive now than ever before—the maids even take English classes to better serve their foreign clientele. Maid cafés aren't just for male otaku anymore. They're for everyone.
I think that this article shows everything that's wrong with the site nowadays. It is presented as a piece that goes in detail about how the maid cafe experience changed during the years, how they managed to survive COVID-19 and what will the future hold for them. But it does precisely none of these things.
Maid cafes are presented in generic terms, it doesn't really explain anything about what they did to survive social distancing besides a vague "they started using webcams and tiktok like everyone else" (maids now wear face masks! Wow! Who cares!), they contradict themselves by saying that the maids' attitudes and behavior never really changed and, on top of everything else, they never say WHY the cafes are not for male otaku anymore and WHY that piece of information should be so important as to put it in the title, besides "both guys and girls like cute stuff" (geez, ya think?) and "they're more inclusive" without ever really explaining the reason.
The whole article is generic garbage and feels like a paid promotion for the Sanrio cafe in Harajuku which is the only one that gets named. Even more absurd when you think that foreign tourists are still off limits in Japan, and they will be for who knows how long, so who is this article directed to? All the talks about "inclusivity" feel tacked on and they seem to equate the cafes being less "filthy" with a lesser presence of "gross" male otaku.
I don't get why ANN is still regarded as a highly authoritative source when most of the reporting they do is bland rubbish like this one, and when they're informed by their politics more than anything else, for example I remember them bashing Darling in the Franxx for being hetero-normative instead of bashing it for being an idiotic sub-par Evangelion rip-off. I also briefly went on their forum and felt that most of the older users there were either condescending or outright elitist. The fact that their site is more that 20 years old does not mean that everything they say is, you know, good or true.
"Effective Altruism" is just another bunch of horsesh*t.
That feels more like a post for you to complain about a website you don't like than a post asking about Japanese culture.
It's been fun.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]")
In the case of K-pop, one hypothesis is that Korea's market formmisic is quite small, so they are shooting for an international appeal. Another is that they borrowed a lot of elements from American music. I don't know if this is the case for Japanese/Taiwanese/Hong Kong music.
"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow