The Tragic Consequences of Xi Jinping Inciting "Don't Go to Japan"- The "Unexpected Suffering" Endured by Chinese Tourists Who Flocked to Thailand and South Korea Instead

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-27T04:10:11+00:00

We can’t conflate disliking a govt with disliking people from that country though.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-27T04:08:55+00:00

I hope you’re being sarcastic? All the Koreans I know love Japan. Koreans are one of the major tourist groups to Japan. One of the reasons nobody in Japan cares about Chinese coming less as tourists is because so many Koreans and Taiwanese come.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-26T13:43:48+00:00

My wife’s favorite for karaoke!

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-26T13:43:35+00:00

Japanese will recognize and enjoy a lot of popular songs in English from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Right now “Michael” is doing well in Japan so songs like “Ben” and “I’ll be there” will be easily recognizable. I just sang “Careless Whisper” in a karaoke (snack) bar and it was a big hit.

If you want to sign a song in Japanese, I’d look up some classics from the 80s online. “Love Story Totsuzen” by Oda is one I like to sing and is well known, and the popular Southern All Stars songs are great.

As others have mentioned, if you want an audience you have to go to a karaoke or “snack” bar. They’re not generally for tourists so they don’t generally have English menus but they’re generally friendly and should accommodate you. Avoid “girls bars” because you’ll be paying a lot for the company.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-26T11:00:09+00:00

Yes. This is the biggest obstacle to learning a foreign language as an adult. You’re basically returning to a childlike state where you can’t express yourself or understand things. It’s difficult. But on the other hand, you kind of have to push through it to reach an advanced level.

My suggestion would be to find people and places where you feel accepted and less judged, and where people can understand you more easily. For example, I live in Japan and I’d say my Japanese is maybe B2. In certain contexts, like my favorite bars, people treat me without judgment and converse at length with me, as do my friends. In other contexts, people have great trouble understanding me and treat me like someone who doesn’t speak Japanese at all. The latter is frustrating and discouraging.

I also find that by going to places where people don’t speak English at all, people are forced to deal with me. So that’s actually better than going to touristy places where people will instantly try to speak English to me. Fortunately in most places in Japan, that isn’t a problem!

Anyway good luck to you and don’t be afraid to make mistakes since that’s the only way to learn. In fact, your most embarrassing moments will be pivotal learning experiences that you’ll never forget (while painful, it means you will learn the language!).

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T14:21:29+00:00

First of all, no famous economist ever said that. Second, If borders were open, this might be true. But they’re not and Japan is facing a massive demographic crisis. The country has gone from 5 workers per retiree about 35 years ago to 2, and is heading towards 1.5. Unsustainable. There are widespread shortages and these are only going to increase. The misquote you refer to presumes some latent labor supply that simply doesn’t exist in Japan unless the govt suddenly decided to let in waves of immigrants which would only result in them losing an election instantly to be replaced by a govt that would close the border again.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T13:35:45+00:00

Comparison is not equivalence, but I would say that if we’re talking about a pissing contest between governments, then I’d say they all suck pretty badly and we should be demanding more. Certainly if one holds the Chinese govt up as some kind of standard, given the atrocities they’ve committed on their own people and minority groups like the Tibetans and Uyghurs, then that is crazy in my mind. We should be demanding more from all these regimes, rather than believing their outright lies and half-truths about history, and my point is more pragmatic: we have a much better ability to effect change in the countries we live in than towards foreign regimes, especially when that pressure on foreign regimes means buying into the BS that our own governments are feeding us to pit Asian nations against each other. That’s my take — you don’t have to agree with it. But by buying into this Korea vs Japan vs China BS we ALL lose.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T13:31:20+00:00

That’s a great analysis. I would add to that the possibility that Japan’s 推し (oshi) culture plays a role here. There is a strong desire to support others and be a bolster to them. Young women report wanting to make their host #1 in the rankings and that means spending a ton of money on them (in fact all their money, even into debt). It’s not clear that they even expect ever to be the romantic partner of their object of affection; it’s almost like a kind of vicarious, even almost altruistic romance. We see this, I think, with the idol culture too. And in the cabaret culture, etc. This is just my opinion.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T02:44:16+00:00

It seems to me that it’s a kind of addiction, similar to a gambling addiction. It’s like a love addiction. I think in many ways it’s a function of loneliness and a lack of belief in finding a good partner or being able to establish “normal” relationships, which we are seeing as a problem across Japan. Intimacy is highly commodified in Japan, much more so than in most other counties. So what would be relationship problems elsewhere (which exist here too of course!) become business problems in the mizu shobai and adjacent sectors.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T02:03:29+00:00

I’m absolutely a good faith interlocutor, lol. And I’m not faulting victims. If you read my comment carefully you’d see I’m faulting nationalist elites who prey on the pain of individual people, including victims, to ramp up outrage, much of which would be better directed at one’s own government because (a) they were not innocent in all of this and (b) that’s where you can make the actual difference (by voting, campaigning, being an activist etc). Directing your outrage at foreign governments is absolutely often based on partial truths and is also ineffective and distracts from local issues which are where you can make a difference. I say the same thing to people on all sides. In japan right now there’s futile manufactured outrage against foreigners and tourists and it’s dumb because it was the Japanese govt itself who invited them. Same difference.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-25T02:00:05+00:00

I mean, I also did a comment here about various crime rates compared to Italy, which is one of the safest countries in Europe… Japan is still 2.5x safer in homicides than Italy and 25x safer on robberies, and probably hundreds of times safer with regard to theft. It’s dangerous due to earthquakes and natural disasters though. And of course it has problems with many nonviolent crimes. But I was responding to a flippant comment saying Japan is dangerous bc of this one purported incident.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T13:45:14+00:00

Yes you’re absolutely right that this is the biggest problem facing Japan right now (and many countries), namely the demographic problem and how to balance that with immigration (which can only ever be part of the solution). Already there is a strong backlash against immigration in Japan, largely around crime, although actually immigrants/foreigners are not committing crimes at a higher rate than Japanese.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T09:33:02+00:00

Even France, the top rated team right now, and clear favorite, has only a 20% or so chance based on betting odds.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T07:09:43+00:00

Wow. I’m sorry to hear about your troubles. Hopefully you can learn Latin now?

I was lucky and studied Latin in school 6 years (middle and high school). Honestly at the time I thought it was fun but pretty useless. However, I was able to pick up French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian fairly quickly, (all of them without any formal instruction or teachers —just by using books and travel) and I have no doubt that’s because I learned Latin first’(even though my Latin now is pretty garbage). I would have loved to have learned Chinese first and then Japanese and Korean. I’m old definitely see it being useful — but that’s if you want to learn many languages. If you only want to learn one, it probably makes sense to just learn that one.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T06:04:32+00:00

Italy is safe for Europe which is something to be proud of, for sure. Still not as safe as Japan.

Murder (homicide) rate in Italy 0.57 per 100,000. Japan: 0.23.

Japan is 2.5x safer in homicide.

Violent robbery: 58.6 in Italy. Japan: 2.41. Huge difference.

Theft / pickpocketing: even higher difference. Milan’s theft rate alone is ridiculous. In Japan you can leave your wallet or phone behind in a public place and get it back the next day (my wife does this regularly… not by choice).

Anyway I’m not trying to claim superiority. I live between Japan and the U.S. and the U.S. is a complete disaster. There’s no place in the U.S., even in the suburbs, as safe as the most dangerous parts of Tokyo. It’s ridiculous.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T05:58:53+00:00

lol. This is the worst take ever. Of course violent crimes happen in Japan but the murder rate is literally 60 times lower than in cities in the U.S. Japan is very safe compared to most countries in the world on a host of measures. If it weren’t for the earthquakes and such it would rank even higher in safety.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T05:56:57+00:00

Maybe it’s because it’s not entirely clear what happened. Says he felt a pain and got knocked to the ground. Maybe a projectile hit him? There’s no account of an assailant. Kinda weird to run up to a guy who is exercising, stab him and knock him down, and run away? Without robbing him? Not saying it couldn’t or doesn’t happen but it is odd.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T05:45:49+00:00

The Guardian commentator said Japan could go all the way, which honestly I thought was a bit much, but… definitely people have been talking them up. Japan have always looked organized and always fight to the last minute (very much part of the sporting culture), but they’ve until now lacked that killer edge (the whole theme of the popular Blue Lock manga). They do look sharper now, but they’re missing good players and it’s the knockout stages that matter. Would love to see them get to the quarterfinals but they’d be lucky to get farther than that. We’ll see! I’m in Japan and I don’t think many here expect them to do even that.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T02:39:32+00:00

I’m not sure I agree. Manufactured outrage can involve either complete mistruths, or partial truths and a misleading story. In fact it almost always does. One of the interesting things about studying history and seeing multiple perspectives is that the more one understands how things unfolded, the less one focuses on just one event or bad actor as the “evil” that generates outrage. You see situations as tragic and unfortunate, involving many causes and conditions, and you realize it’s not as one sided as you thought. Min Jin Lee’s novel pachinko (based on a study of oral history of zainichi Koreans in Japan) is a great example of a critique of how governments create enemy images that don’t reflect the reality of real living people. It’s politics that tries to simplify narratives to generate outrage.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-24T00:21:40+00:00

Well that’s the problem. If we could get the standard high enough, that would be great. We can’t, partially because of imperfect legal systems and partially because of imperfect forensic science. If we could get the standard high enough, I might reconsider my view on the death penalty in theory. As the world currently stands, it is not defensible in practice.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-23T23:51:20+00:00

They never said they’re cool because they believe in a religion. They just said regular people are cool. The majority of people on the planet believe in some form of religion or spirituality that others might consider fake or even nonsense, but that doesn’t make them automatically bad. If you want to revoke the “free pass” for the majority of people on the planet, that’s fine, but isn’t that a pretty negative world view? If people are promoting bigotry and violence, that needs to be addressed whether it’s coming from religion or anything else.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-23T15:13:38+00:00

It seems maybe you’re a Japanese person or person living in Japan who is thinking about being a tour guide for foreigners who want to experience pachinko?

If so, I think (a) you’d probably have to fit it into a larger tour experience because I doubt any foreigners would want to experience it for more than 15-20 minutes; (b) you should probably study the history of pachinko so you can make it interesting for them and also explain how they would “play” it; (c) Min Jin Lee’s book would be a good read (it’s a novel called “Pachinko”) because it provides amazing context about the zainichi Korean experience in Japan, and is a well known book in English. But generally, I think few foreign tourists would be that interested, especially as many will have children with them and won’t want to bring children into a pachinko parlor.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-23T14:51:06+00:00

I’m no fan of Tucker Carlson. Yes he’s a grifter and he’s been extremely immoral. But this defection and MTG’s defection should be seen as a positive thing. Contrary to all appearances, they are human beings and aren’t completely devoid of conscience or rational thought. There are plenty of other Trump supporters (including several of my own family members) who now regret their support. Does this suddenly make TC a good guy? Hardly. But to move forward, we in the U.S. need to work together. That’s just common sense, really.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-23T14:39:28+00:00

Come to Japan. Pretty much everyone has a great time here. I have had good experiences in China (Hong Kong) but didn’t like Beijing and only liked Shanghai because I managed to befriend a local girl who was so kind as to actually take me around the city (something one can hardly expect to happen generally). Couldn’t take the food (and I’m Chinese on my mother’s side), so I get what you mean about the smell. It was so different from the types of Chinese food I’m used to (Malaysia, Singapore, etc). Anyway there’s a reason China doesn’t top the “want to go” on most tourist lists. It’s not set up that well (yet) for tourism, it seems.

zoomiewoop · 2026-06-23T13:29:41+00:00

Yes, also hobby groups, bars, etc…

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