Re: [tlug] [OT] Interesting info for foreigners living in JP

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

Curt Sampson wrote:

> Actually, my impression is that he just has fairly American expectations
> for how life should work, and is spreading the gospel here. 

As an American, this is something I detest in Americans.

Debit writes like someone who signed the sales contract and is just now 
finding out that even though Ford owns a piece of Lamborghini, he's 
still stuck with a Ford Escort that can't pull the skin off rice pudding 
no matter how long he gets his payments in on time.

At some point he suddenly realized that his expectations and reality 
didn't meet at all and he's been crying about it ever since.

> And it doesn't appear to be just Americans, for that matter, that feel
> that, for example, the way the Japanese police and justice system deal
> with alleged criminals leaves much to be desired.

I think the police and prosecutors discriminate against all criminals 
pretty much fairly and equally within the bounds of what they're given 
to work with (outdated as it is).  The thing is that, according to local 
thinking, nice people don't get arrested in the first place and it is 
the job of the police to arrest criminals for crimes and the prosecutors 
to put them in prison.  It is not a matter of treatment, it is a matter 
of training people to understand what they see, to think about it 
differently, and to interpret facts differently than they do now.

Oh, yeah, and there's that thing about getting fired if you don't have a 
99% conviction rate they've got to address.  But, that isn't a foreigner 
problem, it is very much a Japan one that a few of the US educated gi-in 
keep trying to get Kokkai to address sensibly instead of just sticking 
band-aids on a rotting carcass.

Debit's influence = 0.

> It seems to me, from reading a fair amount of his site, that he does show
> some respect for Japanese culture, though perhaps not as much as you'd like.

Nah.  I don't see any respect at all.

> For example, he's gone a lot further than many of us when it comes to
> learning Japanese. Though perhaps I'm looking at this from a biased
> point of view, simply because I've been here for a long time and my
> Japanese is still quite lame.

Ummm ... I am perhaps different in that I read, wrote, and spoke 
Japanese before I ever came here.  Marrying a Japanese woman who was US 
educated has done much to make me lazy about maintaining my fluency.

--
CL