Becoming A Japanese Citizen

That's really not the best way to deal with it.

- You want to talk here but you feel that you can't because of him.
- (In your mind) He doesn't want you to talk here and he has succeeded in silencing you.
- We want you to talk here and miss out on your contributions to our community.

Lose, lose, lose all around. You would do much better to just keep on posting while ignoring what he's said. Though I don't encourage you to do that (because if you do you'll miss out on a lot of genuinely thought-provoking and sharp, witty criticisms of people's assumptions about Japan), but I would prefer you to do that rather than not post here at all.

So I say now. Watch me totally throw this policy out the door when somebody I can't tolerate comes along. XD Such is the (self-centered) nature of each person's life, I suppose. :)

Edit: I haven't brought it up, but part of why I love aqua's posts so much is he tells it like it is. Like Akiba-Online's own Richard Pryor or George Carlin, I can count on aqua to cut through the bullshit which sugarcoats people's lives and to call things for what they really are, to call people out for who they really are. Sure, he may do it in a way that you find disagreeable ("he's so mean! he's so rude! he's so hateful!"), but (a) I find it entertainingly, partially, and (b) that's neither here nor there. You still haven't refuted the most important part: the crux of his argument. Whereas time and time again aqua refutes the cruxes of so many others' arguments. Crying over the manner in which he does it is like being a sore loser. He still "won," if there can be any victory in e-arguments. He still provided the most logical and supported-by-the-facts argument of anybody. To hell with how he does it, the point is he does it, time and time again.

In other words, I value truth before pretty much all else. Including civility, politeness, or sympathy. I would rather be told "You've got cancer and you deserve it, you asshole son of a bitch" than not be told at all. Presentation matters, yes, but truth matters more. And aqua provides a healthy helping of truth to an entire generation of "GLORIOUS NIPPON! ^-^" weeaboos. That he provides it so callously makes him that much more Carlin to me, I suppose. And in case he or others misconstrue that, I mean it as a compliment. George Carlin fuckin' rocked (by and large).

"I'll tell you what you're gonna do: you're gonna get sick, you're gonna die, and you're gonna deserve it -- 'cause you're fuckin' weak and you got a fuckin' weak immune system!" <-- Case in point. lol
 
Not my problem, really. I'm happy to contribute, but I recognize that my thoughts are merely my own opinions anyway, so I feel no impetus to impose my viewpoints on others, and I feel no loss if the opportunity to share them is taken away.

But if I am to try to make a contribution, I will say this. While what aquamarine says may be right from a purely realistic perspective (nevermind how he said it), there are countless people in all walks of life who have lived in Japan for 10, 20, 30+ years who would readily encourage OP et al, even if his interested is currently only limited to niche things like anime. Not that anime alone can sustain a life in Japan, but we all start from somewhere, and the important thing to them is to nurture one's interest in Japan and its culture and not just inundate someone with logistics. So yeah, everything in this thread should be taken with a large grain of salt.
 
(not arguing, just debating friendly-like, I hope you see it that way too!)

If somebody said, "I love Moulin Rouge, Spamalot, and Mamma Mia. I am thinking of moving to New York City," we would all tell him he's nuts. The anime situation is no different but everybody acts like it is. In all honesty, I agree that it is foolish and short-sighted to move to Japan just because you like anime. Someone's interest in Japanese culture should by all means be cultivated, yes!, but from the safety of home! In the motherland!

You don't have to live in the United States to enjoy American movies. By the same logic, you don't have to live in Japan to enjoy anime or hentai. They don't become all that much easier to procure, obviously: seeing as most people who move to Japan are short on cash, they're not going to be legally purchasing anything; and the Internet could give a hoot less about where they live as far as getting digital scans is concerned!

Who moves to America for Broadway? The person who hopes to be on Broadway. And while that's still a lofty goal that has a 99% chance of failure, I agree that that's the sort of goal which possibly justifies moving to New York. People should work hard to make their dreams realities. So, who is the guy who should move to Japan? The person who hopes to work in Japan at a job that can't be worked at elsewhere. If karate is his passion, then it's the guy who wants to learn real karate and not the watered-down commercialized bullshit they sell in the West. If anime is his passion, then it's the guy who wants to become the real-deal mangaka working for Kodansha or anime team member working for Gainax, or something similar. If mastery of Japanese cuisine is his goal, then it's becoming a sous-chef at a Japanese restaurant that he'll want to pursue. On and on it goes. NOT the anime enthusiast. NOT the Japanophile. Those people have a commitment to a hobby, not to a living, and their commitment can easily be met from the comfort of their own homes.
 
Well sure, but I never said OP or anyone else should move to Japan just for anime, as if they would spend their entire time, 24/7/365 completely fixated on anime. And afaik no one else ever implied that. But yes, there are a lot of realistic challanges that make moving to Japan exclusively for anime an unviable option.

however, the real question is: do you nurture that introductory interest in anime in a way that allows someone to broaden their interests, such that they may develop a passion to pursue some kind of job/career in Japan capable of sustaining their livelihood and hobby? Or do you simply tell them to give up their dreams right here and now simply because "they don't know anything", despite asking in earnest precisely for the reason of getting more information?



You also have to consider the environment surrounding one's hobbies. Sure you can get anime and manga in America, but the availability is actually very low, and without knowing how to read Japanese, the amount of content they can actually consume is incredibly little. A person could take Japanese classes (or even coach themselves), but by comparison, spending some time in Japan would greatly accelerate their Japanese ability (as long as the motivation is there), while having immediate access to greater amounts of anime/manga.

Or in terms of your analogy: Someone can love Moulin Rouge, Spamalot, Mamma Mia, etc, and they could just rent or buy the DVD recordings to watch in the comfort of their own homes. But many people go through the trouble of making the trip to NYC in order to see the real thing. Some people even find standard jobs in NYC, and instead of spending their money on nice meals or movies, they save it up to buy Broadway tickets.

And I'm not sure where the idea came from, that in order for a person who enjoys anime to live in Japan, he must want to become a manga-ka. In fact, the reality is that manga-ka is quite probably the single most difficult job to pursue in Japan (absolutely no name recognition and incredibly low pay, even for extremely talented artists). But I digress: If you go to Japan and look around the manga shops, you will see that half of the customers are guys who just got off of work, still wearing their business suits with their "SoftBank" or "Mizuho" (etc) nametag pins still attached to their collars. These are guys who work mundane retail jobs -- just enough to sustain their daily livelihoods, but with a little extra left over for their anime/manga hobbies. There's no reason a foreigner can't also work in one area and have a hobby in a completely separate area.

Of course, the ideal situation would be when one's passion is aligned with one's career. But for most people that's extremely unlikely, no matter where you live. Still, that doesn't mean the alternative (of having separate career and passion) is impossible. It's just a different set of challenges.
 
You've misconstrued what I was saying. I didn't say that somebody who likes Moulin Rouge and who moves to America has to go into a career in theater. What I did say was that somebody who says they are moving to America for Moulin Rouge had damn well better be doing it for a career in theater and not because they want to live in "glorious America, the land of Broadway." You don't need to live in America to be a fan of Broadway musicals. You do need to visit America to see them in person, sure, and you might consider moving here if you want to see them in person every single week.

The anime equivalent is NOT purchasing manga. I hotly reject that. A fan of manga can easily import. It's much cheaper and safer and more convenient (in the long run) for most people to import and stay put than to pack up, move to Japan, look for a new job, etc. all for the sake of manga purchasing power. The anime equivalent would to attending Broadway would probably be Comiket. Just like seeing Broadway live, Comiket is something which you could fly to Japan for once, twice, three times. But if you find yourself flying to every single Comiket, and even the Spring convention and the fall get-togethers, and you wake up one day and realize that nothing's holding you back, then yeah, you ought to move to Japan, maybe, "just for Comiket," because you'd be better off that way. And then you could go to Akiba every weekend. You could really immerse yourself in anime nerd culture.

But I think that somebody who moves to NYC because he is obsessed with Broadway is unreasonably obsessed with Broadway. Ditto for our hypothetical otaku who wants to move to Japan to become Akihabara's newest gaijin regular.

I (unfortunately) deleted a draft post I had been saving up for a reply an hour ago, but the gist of it was what you'll see in the next post.
 
  1. You should not treat moving away as a substitute for attempting to solve your problems in life. Unemployment. Divorce. Debt. These sorts of things will follow you no matter where you are -- or even if they don't, the factors that brought you to them in the first place certainly will. You should only view moving as a solution to problems when (a) you have tried everything in your power to solve them without moving away and (b) you have good reason to believe that moving away will solve them for you. As an example, you are miserable in cold weather but live in Saskatchewan. That is grounds for moving away! :)
  2. You should select a country of permanent residence which best suits your lifestyle, your profession (or professional goals), and your philosophy. If you want to live a life of casual sex, recreational drug use, and have the option to end your life with the help of a physician, you may want to consider the Netherlands over Saudi Arabia.
  3. Reasons for selecting a country (and not just Japan) include:
    - climate (hot, warm, cool, cold)
    - politics (a whole spectrum of possibilities)
    - economics (1st world, 3rd world, or in between?)
    - cuisine
    - sex
    - education
    - job opportunities
And that's not even close to listing all of them. Just a few examples of things people consider in selecting a country of permanent residence. But now let's look at some of them in greater detail. For instance, what about job opportunities?
  • A bad reason to move to a foreign country would be, "I want to get a job as a gourmet chef. Everybody says my cooking sucks. I am going to go to Japan where they don't know any better and open up my own Western-themed restaurant."

    A good reason to move to Japan would be, "I have a Ph.D in Japanese language & literature and would like to work on a research project." Or "I am a U.S.-trained medical doctor researching Kawasaki's disease [or other diseases with unusually high incidence in Japan compared with the rest of the world]."
  • How about sex? A good reason to move to Japan might be, "Hey, I love Japanese girls. [Insert his reasons why.] So yeah. It's either Japanese girls or none at all as far as I'm concerned." Whether or not you think that's good, we will agree that a much worse reason, a HORRIBLE reason for moving to Japan is, "I want to get laid. I think a white guy in Japan could get laid pretty easy every week for the rest of his life." You could do that at home the same as in Japan. It's called hookers and venereal diseases. Japan's not much different. If you're fat, bald, and ugly (let's say) and that's why no American girls like you, guess what? Same damn thing's gonna hold true in Japan. Or do you honestly think that you're the only one who can tell the difference between good-looking people and ugly people from different races?
I mentioned the job and the sex examples because those are two of the commonest dream-reasons I see people list for wanting to move to Japan.
 
Well it's funny because nobody was arguing this when Aquamarine was posting. Aquamarine pulled an argument out of thin air with all of his assumptions about the OP.

All the OP did was ask a question, and provide some vague background info about himself and his reasons. Aqua assumed he was a complete idiot who wanted to go to Japan because he likes anime, wants to bang Japanese girls, and thinks he'll be a supserstar. None of which are correct.

I'll say it one more time, Aquamarine is right about a lot of things, you can't dispute first hand experience. I've got respect for his knowledge and experience. But it was completely out of place in this thread, and combined with his attitude and manner, it's just too much for me to let be.
 
Vegeta897 said:
Aquamarine pulled an argument out of thin air with all of his assumptions about the OP.
Click to expand...
I think his assumptions are two things:
1) admittedly assumptions, yes, but
2) good assumptions given the stated evidence and given past precedent

What stated evidence? Well, if you look back at the original post, here is what we know (or very nearly know) about the OP:
  • he does not speak Japanese fluently (if he did, he would not be consulting Wikipedia for information on Japanese citizenship. He would be consulting the Japanese government webpages on citizenship.)
  • he has no family in Japan ("I'm white", Japan's demographics, the fact that if he had family in Japan he would ask them instead of asking us)
  • he is 18 years old or younger (inferred from Paragraph 3)
  • he has not yet attended college (inferred from Paragraph 3)
  • he is not financially independent (stated in Paragraph 3)
From all of these facts or near-facts, we can deduce that the OP is not currently living in Japan. We can further deduce that he is almost certainly ineligible for Japanese citizenship. Vide:
aquamarine said:
Were you born in Japan to one or more Japanese citizen parents?
Click to expand...
As stated, you must be Japanese-born to to one or more Japanese citizen parents in order for the Japanese government to consider granting you Japanese citizenship. Since the OP has told us that he is white and since we have concluded that he does not live in Japan at the present time and since we have also concluded that he is still far too young to live on his own and most likely still lives with his parents, we all but KNOW FOR A FACT, with nothing more to go off of than his very first post in the thread, that the OP was not born in Japan and that even if he were (e.g. born outside a U.S. naval base on Japanese soil) he was probably born to two American citizen parents (because had he been the lovechild of a U.S. jet pilot and a Japanese city girl, he'd have been raised in Japan by his mom). Is it possible that he is white, has at least one Japanese parent, was born on Japanese soil, and was raised in America? Yes. Is it probable? No.

Assumptions though they are, most people would agree with aquamarine's very first post. He was right to tell the OP, "You are ineligible."

And upon re-reading his first reply to the thread in its entirety, I have to say that aqua was far less rude than I had remember-imagined him to be and he was pretty much spot on the money. Yes, he makes several assumptions here or there (about the OP's race, age, financial dependency on his parents, lack of college degree, etc) but all of them are solid assumptions given the evidence.

(And in case you doubted it, here's the OP's reply. Confirming the assumptions of age, race, and education. Refuting the assumption of financial dependency on parents ... despite, of all the assumptions aqua made,this being the only one the OP stated in his original post. ¬_¬)

(And for a much, MUCH more hateful reply as I remember it from aquamarine, check out this one.)
 
Ugh, you're not reading my posts closely enough. Please do so before you type up a huge reply again. Why would I be disputing Aquamarine telling OP he's ineligible based on those assumptions? Those aren't even assumptions, like you said yourself, and they are perfectly good reasons to tell the OP he's not eligible.

But that's not what I was talking about. Because that isn't all of what Aqua did.

Aqua assumed he was a complete idiot who wanted to go to Japan because he likes anime, wants to bang Japanese girls, and thinks he'll be a supserstar. None of which are correct.
Click to expand...

This is the kind of stuff I was referring to. The assumptions he was using to insult the OP.
 
tl;dr? Then just check the bold and skip to the end.

Sakunyuusha said:
What I did say was that somebody who says they are moving to America for Moulin Rouge had damn well better be doing it for a career in theater and not because they want to live in "glorious America, the land of Broadway."
Click to expand...
And what I was saying is that you don't need to have a career in theater in order to sustain a fandom of Broadway.

Though you may not have intended it this way, by saying that someone who moves to America for Broadway "had damn well better be doing it for a career in theater", you imply that conversely, someone who does not have a career in theater should not move to America for Broadway. All I'm doing is marking a very nuanced difference in the choice of words:

You don't need to live in America to be a fan of Broadway musicals (your words, verbatim), but you can still live in America if only as a fan of Broadway musicals, even if theater is not your career. However if that's the case, you should recognize that there are additional challanges that you will have to meet, and it is up to an educated person to decide whether having a front row seat is worth the price of admission.

Sakunyuusha said:
A fan of manga can easily import. It's much cheaper and safer [...] to import and stay put than to pack up, move to Japan, look for a new job, etc. all for the sake of manga purchasing power. The anime equivalent would to attending Broadway would probably be Comiket. [...] if you find yourself flying to every single Comiket [...] and you wake up one day and realize that nothing's holding you back, then yeah, you ought to move to Japan [...] And then you could go to Akiba every weekend. You could really immerse yourself in anime nerd culture.

But I think that somebody who moves to NYC because he is obsessed with Broadway is unreasonably obsessed with Broadway. Ditto for our hypothetical otaku who wants to move to Japan to become Akihabara's newest gaijin regular.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to argue about how easy you think it is to obtain manga overseas (that really requires all sorts of tedious qualifications). What I will say is that there's a wide lattitude to what is considered "fandom" (from a casual fan to a diehard fan). All fans can get access to a large variety of manga wherever they may be in the world.

But fans in Japan have access to special/limited/signed editions, rare prints, first copies; they are able to attend large and small scale events; they can join circles and clubs, have a greater chance of meeting people who share similar tastes; and so on. "Packing up, moving to Japan, looking for a new job, etc" is indeed a big challange, but to some those are just minor/temporary problems compared to having direct access to all things anime/manga. Of course if it's only for Comiket, it's hard to justify anything more than a week-long vacation. But Comiket is just one part of a much larger subculture, so just how much it's worth will depend on one's level of fandom.

You raise an additional suggestion that there is a limit of fandom that is considered acceptible, beyond which you consider "unreasonable obsession". All I can say is that if you choose to pass that kind of judgment, that's your business, and yours alone (not fact).




My overarching point is that for anyone who wants to consider moving to Japan (or anywhere, really), it is important to be realistic about that kind of commitment. But being realistic does not mean you have to be negative or pessimistic about your goals.

What I sense in this discussion with regard to the anime assumption is a gut "negative" reaction based on the stigma of otaku subculture, that of a stereotypical Japanese nerd who whittles away time reading manga, has poor hygeine, low work-ethic, social problems, and so on. My gut reaction is to argue against that, because those traits describe NEET and hikikomori classifications -- both of which are smaller groups of people, and not exclusive to otaku (some otaku are NEET/hiki, but most are not).

The reality is that anime/manga fans come from all walks of life, and there is nothing about the lifestyle of an otaku that is inherently unsustainable (at least beyond individual circumstantial differences).

For your other points, they're mostly on-target; the only corrections I would make are these:
- Wanting to do extensive research in a Japan-related field is not a good reason to want to move to Japan -- it's a great reason.
- Wanting to move to Japan for anime/manga is not a bad reason (per se), nor is it a necessarily good reason; what's important for most people is that it isn't the only reason.
- Wanting to move to Japan because you want to have sex with Japanese women is similarly neither good nor bad; it's technically true your odds are improved (than, say, if you live in Nebraska where there probably are no Japanese), but again it shouldn't be your only reason.
- However, wanting to move to Japan because you can't get laid at home and you believe Japanese women worship foreigners (and therefore would guarantee you sex) is a bad reason.






To put it together: wanting to move to Japan for its anime/manga/otaku culture is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. But if in doing so a person completely neglects all the other things they have to worry about (climate, money, food, shelter, social, job, etc), then it becomes a terrible decision. However you can say that about anything! -- even moving to Japan to do academic research can be a bad decision if you completely neglect all other factors. It's not something exclusive to anime/manga.

There are a lot of foreign otaku who would foolishly move to Japan for anime/manga without considering the challanges they would face, but anime/manga itself is not the reason why it would be a bad idea. So my purpose with regard to OP was to note that distinction: provide information about the challanges that OP wanted to know more about, but not in the way that insults his interests and suggests that he should just give up.
 
I pretty much agree with you, guy. If that didn't come across in my post, then I was not clear. If what I wrote contradicted you, then I made a logical error. The only contention I have with your entire post is a technical one at best (explored below), but beyond that, I very much agree with you.

I think that you mistook my post for saying, "Importing goods ought to suffice in all or nearly all cases." What I was in fact claiming was, "The benefit of moving to Japan is no more need to import otaku goods, but the downsides are numerous: 2nd-class citizenship on the basis of race, country of origin, and other factors which separate you from the 98% Japanese 1.9% Korean and Chinese living in Japan; the need to not only learn a new language but an entirely new way of life, from finances and housing to dining and accepted recreational activities; importantly, trading your need to import a few Japanese goods for a novel need to import numerous goods from home (e.g. my mother has to import gravy because they don't sell hers here; for myself, if I moved to Japan I would need to import lamb, which is many times more expensive and more legal trouble than doing the reverse -- staying put in America and importing hentai); on and on it goes."

I am saying that in 99% of cases a person cannot justify moving to a new country for a hobby, even one he passionately loves, because the newly-acquired gains are outweighed by the newly-acquired costs. It is like saying, "I really want to see, so I will trade away 30 years of my life for 5 minutes of vision." All people may wish to see once again, but there are very, very few for whom that trade can ever be justified. And so it is with otakudom: it is only the 1% of people for whom the hobby is more than a hobby, for whom it is a way of life, that moving to a new country can be predicated on the passion alone.

You are right to claim that for some people otakudom can be a way of life and can be a justifiable reason for moving to Japan. You are also right to point that I feel such a view crosses the line into the territory of "unhealthy obsession," as there is nothing particularly healthy or good about being so obsessed with otaku culture that you would sacrifice everything you enjoy at home and would endure countless sufferings in Japan just for otakudom. Don't get me wrong: there is much to celebrate for the person who moves to Japan for anime who also loves Japanese food, Japanese women, Japanese television, Japanese professional sports, the Japanese language, etc. But for the person who hates Japanese food, who hates Japanese women, who hates Japanese this and Japanese that, for whom Japan is a veritable "hell on Earth" and for whom his only reason for continuing to live in such a god-awful country is otakudom? For him, I feel that there is nothing to celebrate at all. His otakudom has transformed into a genuine (psychiatric) obsession which would at that point be destroying him. We would be immoral creatures were we to talk to him on a message board and to say to him, "Dude, awesome! :D You are a hero to otaku everywhere!" The humane thing to do would be to plug him into reality and say, "Look, utpou862hu, we're only saying this because we care about your well-being, but ... you need to leave otakudom behind, dude. You're obsessed."

Anyway, that's quite a ways off-topic I've taken us, so my apologies. I'll wrap up with what I alluded to before: that one point of contention I had with your reply.

My only point of contention is where you claimed that most otakus are not NEETs or hikikomoris. My response would be, "No, you're right, but it's completely the other way around as well: not all NEETs are otakus." The NEET phenomenon, as you are perhaps already aware (and so I will not insult your intelligence by diving into too much), has more to do with the 甘え culture in Japan and less to do with being a nerd, much less an anime nerd ("otaku", for our purposes). I am happy that the manga (and later anime) N.H.K. ni Youkoso introduced Western audiences to the NEET concept, but regrettably many of them have now got it in their heads that NEET are a smaller population than otaku. And that's just plain wrong. There are way more NEETs in Japan than there are otakus, non-NEET otakus as well as NEET otakus combined. But ... you never said there weren't. ^_^; You never said anything about this. You simply showed the one side of the coin. So that's why, like I said, this is a small point of contention at best. lol
 
Please remember guys we do have a no flamiing rule.

Just deleted a handful of the inevitable 'You're an _______" posts

These really don't help the discussion (which imo is very informative)
 
"Thoust usage of the anonymity of the world wide web thus makest thyne balls groweth bigger"
- Shakespeare
 
calsonic said:
"Thoust usage of the anonymity of the world wide web thus makest thyne balls groweth bigger"
- Shakespeare
Click to expand...
First, "thoust"? Is there even such a word? I thought it was "thy" and "thine" for the second person singular possessives. "Thy usage" seems to flow off the tongue better than "Thine usage," so I think I'd go for "thy."

Second, true.

Third, but in aqua's case, he posts his own goddamn self-picture all over the board, so I don't think the man's afraid to be identified and/or confronted in real life. And judging from his pictures and hobbies, I dare say he can take care of himself. lol
 
Sakunyuusha said:
...but in aqua's case, he posts his own goddamn self-picture all over the board, so I don't think the man's afraid to be identified and/or confronted in real life. And judging from his pictures and hobbies, I dare say he can take care of himself. lol
Click to expand...

No no, you have it all wrong. I'm just a little eleven year old kid who comes here to beat off to cartoon porn. I live in my mommy's basement and just entered into grade 7. Please don't pick on me guys. Insulting me is like kicking a puppy in a sack. :(

Plus, since I'm so young, I'm also incredibly smart at everything I do and say, because I watch so much anime that I MUST know exactly how Japan works. I've never been there, but I really think it would be so swell to become a samurai and ninja and I'm going to be one as soon as I graduate from my Kung Fu class cuz Kung Fu is Japanese!!!
 
And the cursed springs of Jusenkyo from Ranma 1/2 are real right? So I can then diddle myself as both genders!
 
......
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

bad_character
Moving to Japan
Replies
32
Views
7K
Japan Discussion
WillEater
WillEater
heartles2
Study Abroad Japan... Help!
Replies
10
Views
3K
Japan Discussion
Sofer
S
F
Need Japanese translation or Have questions about Japan?
Replies
6
Views
4K
Japan Discussion
aquamarine
aquamarine
CodeGeek
Live / life and work in Japan
Replies
24
Views
33K
Japan Discussion
tylersailer
tylersailer
S
Casual Sex with a Japanese Woman
Replies
4
Views
3K
Japan Discussion
suzukij
S
Top Bottom