-BrokenSpiral- posted... It's funny because a lot of us Japanese don't even put our country that highly any more. Especially the younger ones. even more if they visited other countries. So many younger Japanese are prone to moving to another country and never coming back because of it except for visits.
And that's not even getting into the declining interest in our own products and culture beyond a surface level by our own youth. More interested in foreign stuff nowadays. because most of our stuff sucks now. Way more interested in foreign stuff and stories and media.
I remember when I was in Japan, and it blew my mind how much more eager they were to talk about foreign stuff than native stuff.
I remember my penpal even saying I should use my love of Disney to my advantage. She said,
"Only some Japanese love Japanese stuff. but EVERY Japanese loves Disney."
And it kind of snowballed from there. The amount of friends I made talking about foreign cities and cultures was interesting, and the same thing happened with them: they appreciated that I didn't talk about Japanese stuff, because a lot of Japanese, realistically, aren't into it outside of REALLY popular stuff.
They were even impressed that I could tell that Japanese were only "nice" because of the culture, not because they themselves are nice. I remember one friend telling me, "You're probably the only socially aware foreigner I've ever met." because of it, and how that's why they usually describe Japan as safe, but not as nice.
Then when you spend enough time there, you realize their buildings don't really look much different from, say, America. They just have Japanese letters on it and maybe some pop culture characters in the bigger cities.
Now Singapore, Switzerland, Greece or some Chinese cities on the other hand? I loooooved showing them photos of that, because their eyes would light up and immediately start talking about planning trips because of how cool the cities looked xD
They still send me messages like crazy, too, even small updates like some new food they learned to cook or, for example, when they started watching The Boys or finish a season.
But yeah, it was pretty enlightening to see all the holes in the culture. I can see why raising a kid in it, especially with all this global exposure to other cultures and media, doesn't seem appealing nowadays. When some of them explained the reasonings, it was...actually pretty sad ._.
I had no idea their systems up to and including adulthood were THAT rigid and stressful.