A Brave New World

Time flies. More than two years of my life have gone by quickly, with little of note occurring. Holidays were short and often skipped entirely as my job consumed all. The pay wasn't bad, unless you consider the hours worked and the stress of being on call 24/7/365.

I guess that's why I quit. Friday was my last day, and now I am enjoying the freedom that has escaped me the past few years. Despite my best efforts, I could never find the time, energy, or inspiration to work on any of my hobbies while employed at this last job.

I was feeling pretty trapped since I was working too hard to do a proper job hunt, but I decided to reach out to my old employers in Japan... things moved pretty fast, and now I'm waiting for my visa to be processed. I'll be back in Osaka by early 2013, and I couldn't be happier.

I have never been more motivated to embrace the many hobbies and projects I've always wanted to do "when I have the time". For the next year or two, I aim to ensure that I have plenty of time!

For now, though, I'm just gonna enjoy soaking up that sweet, sweet freedom.

RPGs - Part 2

Where did the weekend go? Time flies when you're house-sitting, I suppose. A long time ago, I posted my first entry talking about RPGs. Now the time has come to finish up my analysis of the differences between Western RPGs and JRPGs. In general, there are two major design concepts that set them apart: class definitions and how linear they are.

I find this a fascinating subject, because it really speaks volumes about the cultural values and expectations within our respect societies. The Japanese have a very rigid social hierarchy and everyone generally knows their role. Theirs is a highly defined society, with specific phrases that are to be used in specific situations.

Western countries, on the other hand, tend to value freedom of choice and individuality. We don't have specific roles rigidly assigned in any given situation. We tend to be more adaptable, and able to think outside the box a bit more easily.

Now of course, I'm speaking in gross generalizations and there will be countless examples that break the rules I'm portraying, but I still maintain that generally speaking these are hallmark traits of our respective cultures. And I equally think that our approach to designing role-playing games demonstrates this.

JRPGs tend to have classes, each with their strengths and weaknesses, which work together in their niche roles to defeat the Big Bad Evil Guy. Western RPGs tend to veer away from set classes and adopt a more skill-based approach, allowing the player to customize their own unique "class" that fits their preferred play-style.

As far as the continuation of plot, Western RPGs again value more of an individualistic approach which affords the player as much freedom as possible. The world is often open-ended and ready to be explored, with the only limiting factor being how fierce a region's opponents are. Japanese games are more like Final Fantasy XIII, which is very much set on railroad tracks with almost no open-ended exploration opportunities given to the player.

Western RPGs are like ordering a lunch at a restaurant, where you get your main item and two side items, plus a dessert, all individual choices to be made. Japanese RPGs are like choosing which bento lunch-box to buy, all prepackaged with a main item, two side items, and a dessert. The only choice to make is which prepackaged bento do you want?

Do you think my opinion is bullshit? I welcome you to tell me so. Poke holes in my argument, mention DA:O, rip on my lack of proof-reading. All comments are welcome :)

Shogun 2: Total War

So E3 revealed that the next title in the Total War series will be a remake of the first TW game. Shogun: Total War was originally released a decade ago, in June 2000. I didn't really notice it until two years later, when I was at the beach and had just been introduced to James Clavell's epic novel Shogun. Seeing a game called Shogun: Total War in a bargain bin at the Colonial Mall, I immediately picked it up. I hadn't heard of it previously, but the setting was the same thing as Clavell's story, so I figured it was worth checking out.

It quickly became one of my favorite games ever, in spite of how horribly buggy and unstable it was. (Even fully patched, the game was notorious for requiring constant saves to guard against the inevitable crashes.) In fact, I never once got to see a siege fight, because for some reason trying to render a castle would always cause a crash on my PC. Regardless, I adored the game and I'm super pumped that they're re-releasing it.

And if you haven't read Shogun, buy and read it. It is such a cool story of political intrigue and cultural differences. In fact, it is directly responsible for my living in Japan for three years. Now, I know some people just don't enjoy reading, and if that is how you feel then I would strongly recommend the miniseries as an alternative.

In the meantime, let's just say that this is the most excited I've been about a Total War release since Rome!

The Eikaiwa Industry

When I was in Japan, I worked for NOVA, which was the largest English conversation school (eikaiwa) up until it went bankrupt. Their bankruptcy was a huge shock to the industry, which was quite the juggernaut throughout Japan's bubble economy and still sizable up until NOVA's late 2007 bust. Many students lost thousands of dollars already spent on prepaid tuition, which is the industry's standard system of payment. Naturally, people lost trust in the industry and the remaining companies struggled to keep what they could of a declining customer-base.

Eventually a large conglomeration which specializes in taking over failed companies and making them profitable again purchased NOVA and took over operations. I stayed on with them (off and on, long story) until I came back home.

A few days ago, Geos (another one of the "big four" names in the industry) went bankrupt. Back before I came home in late 2009, we had been hearing rumors that they were having cash-flow problems... so I can't say that I'm all that surprised. It is interesting, however, to hear that the same company which purchased NOVA is taking over Geos in a similar fashion. Sounds like they were ready to move this time around.

For students, this is a good thing. For the young people who see teaching as a convenient means to support themselves while spending a year or two in Japan, however...

In the eikaiwa industry, pay & working conditions are inevitably on the decline. I think that makes sense given the economy and all, and don't begrudge the companies for making hard decisions. But at the same time, I can't help but feel like the industry is changing irreversibly, and that makes me sad. My time in Japan, made possible by the eikaiwa schools, really helped me to grow as a person and simultaneously have some amazing adventures.

To all my friends still in Japan, good luck in an uncertain future! (Drink some Super Dry for me, will ya?)

**Update 4/28**
The Japan Times has a new article explaining how this is gonna work out. Sounds like the Geos teachers will get a much better deal than the NOVA folks did.

Thoughts on Japan

Recently, Tim at Kotaku posted a (very) lengthy rant about his chosen country of residence, Japan.

In it, he lists many problems he has with the Japanese culture.

As I said, it is a massive read. I was interested since I spent three years living in Japan, myself. In many ways, I can agree with him and totally understand where he's coming from.

In order to save you some effort, I'll list some of his main points here:

• Anime sucks
• Smoking in public is excessive and not really frowned upon
• Japan isn't vegetarian-friendly
• Mandatory drinking with co-workers
• Passive-aggressiveness is rampant in Japanese culture
• Cost of living is expensive
• The weather
• Cultural differences piss Tim off

All-in-all, I think it was a fairly good read for someone who has delusions of Japan as a magical place where you can geek out and be happy and everything's just like in some Japanese cartoon. And I also recognize that a large part of his rant is just that; a rant. It is a way to blow some steam, a cathartic way to complain and get it out of his system. However, I still have a problem with a lot of his points because basically half of his rant is just that cultural differences piss him off. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First of all, anime does suck. I hate it. Since I tend to be interested in geeky stuff, people generally assume I love anime. The fact that I went to Japan does nothing to help this image. I enjoy the occasional animated series, so long as it isn't unreasonably difficult to suspend my disbelief. I like something grounded in reailty, especially sci-fi. Ghost in the Shell is perhaps my favorite, and I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop as well. But most of the anime genre is innane and boring, and I simply cannot fathom how people can enjoy watching it. Stuff like Inuyasha, seriously? (Protip: All Japanese consider that show to be a children's show. Nobody else watches it, even the hardcore anime otaku types.)

Secondly, I'm not a smoker so I can fully empathize with the lack of regard for non-smokers in Japan. Cigarette smoke will permeate your clothes within an hour of leaving your apartment; it is disgusting.

Now, I'm no vegetarian, but I can still be on board with that complaint as well. I've dated a vegetarian or two in my time, and it has given me some awareness for the merits of such a lifestyle. I try to occasionally enjoy a vegetarian meal of my own. This is nearly impossible in Japan. Even the stores don't really help you out in such an endeavor, especially if you don't happen to read the three Japanese alphabets. (Technically speaking, I suppose only two are really "Japanese" while the third is simply Chinese characters with different pronunciation.)

Mandatory drinking with co-workers... that's a tough call. I love to drink. Partying is fun! So I didn't mind the occasional office party, especially since they were pretty rare; my company mostly segregated the foreign staff and didn't hold us to Japanese cultural expectations.

Once in a while I was obliged to join a party for team-building reasons, even though I didn't feel like doing so. But the thing is, as a rule this is a free party. Either your boss or the company itself will be picking up the tab. And it isn't at all hard to not drink at the party. This sort of gets into a cultural difference, which is why I'm not fully on board with his complaint. If you just order a drink, then that's enough. You don't have to actually drink it. As long as you maintain appearances of group conformity, then you won't be unduly pressured. Maybe a coworker or two will pester you to get sloshed, but no more so than in our own culture.

This sense of entitlement that Japan has to change to fit my culture is rather common among foreigners living there, and it kind of pisses me off. I think that if immigrants come to America, they ought to learn enough English to participate in everyday society and respect our customs. It is total bullshit that Walmart employees can no longer say "Merry Christmas" because they might offend someone's sensibilities. And yes, I'm aware that plenty of long-time American citizens practice many forms of religion, but the fact that our primary culture is being warped in order to not offend a minority's sensibilities really fires me up.

Tolerance means we put up with something. It doesn't mean we bend over backwards to change our whole way of life just in case someone is offended by a simple customary Holiday greeting. I myself am not a Christian, yet I enjoy giving and receiving Merry Christmases during the appropriate season. By this same token, I'm vehemently against going to a foreign culture such as Japan and trying to impose my own cultural values on the country and its people. Blame my undergrad in cultural studies, but that's just the way I see things.

Passive-aggressiveness is indeed rampant in Japan. Again, a cultural difference. Japanese are very indirect. They simply do not conceive of the world as we do, and it isn't a virtue or a vice, it is just their conceptualization of the world and how we interact with it and each other. Now of course I'm using gross generalizations, but for our purposes they are true enough.

Having lived in the worst neighborhood of the second largest city of Japan, I can happily say I much prefer their passive aggressive culture to America's aggressive aggressive culture. Violent crime, especially against strangers, is practically nonexistent in Japan. Theft is rampant, but at no point did I have to worry about getting mugged. Even assholes on trains or other public places are generally passive, and this makes for a much more pleasant every day experience, in my opinion.

Cost of living? That's a totally legit complaint, the cost of living in Japan is a bitch. That's due to circumstances, though, and not something you can really pin on the Japanese culture or people. But if you plan on going there, be aware that it is really freakin' expensive!

Ah, yes, the weather. I've long maintained that the East Asian climate is by far the worst in the world. Bitterly cold winters due to strong wind chill factors, soupy summers of sweat-drenching heat and humidity, and just a very brief "in between" season twice a year where you think my God, what pleasant weather for a month or two. No doubt about it, the weather in Japan sucks.

Everything else he mentioned was just cultural differences that annoyed him. Fair enough, I say. A good rant is therapeutic. It helps him to deal with his annoyance without taking it out on random Japanese people. But I think there's a few hints hidden within his rant that shed some light on where he's starting from. The translation he offers to "otsukaresama desu" is "you're tired". I would say it means "I recognize that you worked hard", and have had Japanese people corroborate me on this. Quite a difference as far as feeling goes, and I think it says a lot about the type of person who translates an affirmative and uplifting phrase into something so negative.

A large part of adapting to Japanese culture was to remove myself from my own cultural prejudices, so far as I was able. I understand that theirs is a communal-based society that doesn't value individuality in the way that my own culture does. This is reflected in their language and social norms, including speech patterns and even entertainment.

And that is the crux of my problem with his overall rant. I think it is fine, healthy even, to get up on a soapbox and let off some steam. I don't even mind when foreigners bitch about their host culture. I certainly understand many of the negatives people see about America, and can often agree. Hell, I've bitched about some Japanese cultural things that were particularly nonsensical to my Western individualistic worldview.

But the thing is, doing so in small groups with your fellow expatriates is one thing... doing so to a large audience with absolutely no familiarity or awareness of the culture being attacked is something completely different.

Doing so breeds ignorance, and doesn't really an accurate representation of life in a foreign culture. Most Kotaku readers have never been to Japan, which leaves them with an exceedingly unfair impression. This type of thing can give way to a particularly hateful type of ignorance, and that scares me. By demonizing a foreign culture, it creates the idea of the "other". This easily lends itself to dehumanizing foreign peoples.

I'm certainly overreacting, but rest assured I'm aware of that. His post just struck a chord with me, and I'd been mulling over specifically why that was for a while. So now I've had my own rant and we all feel better, don't we?