
While teaching in Japan, it took an enemy to make me feel at home - fern12
https://catapult.co/stories/on-campus-yuka-my-enemy-friendship-and-teaching-abroad
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LV-426
Ugh. You know, I don't expect the Motherfucking Website framework, but here
are some of the external domains (excluding numerous subdomains) accessed when
viewing this _text article with a few images_ :

    
    
        cloudfront.net
        stripe.com
        googleadservices.com
        optimizely.com
        webtype.com
        bootstrapcdn.com
        ads-twitter.com
        disqus.com
        facebook.net
        optinmonster.com
        google-analytics.com
        twimg.com
        optnmstr.com
        mstrlytcs.com
        facebook.com
        newrelic.com
        disquscdn.com
        stripe.network
        fastly.net

~~~
b4lancesh33t
This is never going to change and in fact will only get worse, since there is
no incentive for website owners (besides quixotic comments on hacker news,
which let's face it have approximately zero motivational value). Client side
solutions are your only real option.

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tomxor
This is my kind of humour too, it's silly, creative, and in spite of it's
surface crudeness can oddly be a strong way of communicating your true
feelings.

It's probably best left unspoken but my interpretation is that it's likely the
little girl was initially being sincerely spiteful, but then being intimately
spiteful can sometimes backfire with empathy, gradually transforming her
attacks into this loving joke. I actually prefer that interpretation because
it shows the capacity for change, but I might be seeing things that aren't
there... His interpretation of her being so insightful from the start is also
a nice interpretation, consciously or not.

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sand500
The language barrier might be a big reason that prevents people from making
friends very easily

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13651981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13651981)

~~~
andy_ppp
The culture too... Japan is at times the most capitalist and alienating
culture possible.

~~~
thinkingemote
A Japanese friend tells me that on the contrary Japan culture can be more like
Socialism. not much individualism, strong social security network, high tax,
strong government controls, low social mobility, lots of barriers to
entrepreneurs. It's just that technology and blinken lights make it seem
modern and capitalist to westerners.

~~~
danharaj
None of those things are socialism. Socialism is the direct control of
industry by the workers communally.

~~~
zdkl
Well if you want to nitpick, isn't what you describe communism instead?

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danharaj
Some people use socialism interchangeably with communism, e.g. libertarian
socialists are the same as anarchist communists. Others, like Marx use
socialism to mean a society where both capitalist and communist modes of
production coexist in a transitory condition.

In any case, the element I described is necessary for it to be called
socialism, and it doesn't exist in Japan at any significant scale. The welfare
state is _not_ socialism and this is not a nitpick.

~~~
zdkl
> The welfare state is not socialism

You keep using that word, yet I do not think it means what you think it means.

> Some people use socialism interchangeably with communism

Well some people also believe credit and debit cards have no fundamental
difference. That they believe it doesn't make it true.

You said yourself something about "the direct control of industry by the
worker". That is unequivocally a communist concept. Reforming a capitalist
society to those ideals through democratic process _is_ socialism, but the end
goal is a communist equilibrium.

Post transition "socialism" has no meaning and no identifying properties: it
is a transformative process by opposition to "true believer"
anarchist/communist's grand revolution schemes.

So tell me again how Japan is reforming itself into communism?

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danharaj
> So tell me again how Japan is reforming itself into communism?

You know for someone acting so smug and combative you've completely missed the
point of my remarks. It wasn't me who was claiming that Japan is socialist in
any way. Whatever floats your boat tho.

~~~
zdkl
I must confess I realised that a couple hours after writing it. I apologise
for coming across as smug and missing the point entirely.

This whole "socialism==communism" thing upsets me.

~~~
danharaj
It's cool. To be quite honest all of these words are so charged and poisoned
that it's hard to use them and successfully communicate with someone whomst
doesn't share the same frame of reference.

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m_mueller
Is it weird that I think this blog post invokes the same sentiments as the
anime "Your name"? Sometimes human life is like being alone, swimming in the
sea, only for brief periods finding other swimmers that share your fate.

~~~
hkmurakami
Sounds like it's time to read some Haruki Murakami.

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rhn_mk1
This is a cute and heartwarming story.

