| I lived and worked in Japan and I was shocked how outdated the country was in many areas. Opening bank accounts felt like I would imagine opening bank accounts was in the 1980s here in Germany. FAXes are still a huge thing. People buy CDs and DVDs. The architecture looks like it stopped developing somewhere in the 70s or 80s. Work culture is archaic, from absurd hierachies, to protocols (who sits where, who speaks first, who is allowed to speak louder, who must speak quite), to outdated offices (even for the most modern companies that i visited), tower computers, black suits with ties... puh, it was a nightmare. I dont want to start on the society and its outdated values (compared to where we are in the West): how they understand democracy, how they treat minorities, how they deal with their nazi-past. I wonder every single time when media is reporting on the war against China and that Japan and Korea are our friends because we have the same values. Neither Korea nor Japan share most of values with us, in my opinion. Japanese and Korean friends agree. There were other things that felt modern, but those were mainly driven by those state-sponsored and protected engineering companies that were founded during the post WW2 times. Overall I would say: I did enjoy my time there, but I hated the racism, the work-culture and the bureaucracy. Who to blame? I blame Raegan (Trump's big hero) who became president prior being a TV star and Raegan's slogan "Let's make America great again" and his campaign against Japan as he believed that he must destroy the Japanese threat by launching a trade war against them and by fighting the currency. Basically 1:1 what Trump copied 1:1 - just against China. |
In this context, it just says that Japan and Korea are both in western democracy camp.