Welcome to Gaia! :: Why is Japan so prosperous? | Forum

Not really, when you understand the culture.

The Japanese have no problem buying something that's "cool", but totally without added useful function. Most people in Japan want to be the first adopters, while being a first adopter is cool in the US, it is not the majority of the market.

An HD TV watch would that was uncomfortable to wear, hard to see, have poor battery life and be extremely expensive would sell quite well in Japan. Price is an after thought, because being on the cutting edge is more important than price or even comfort and usability.

This is directly related to, "It doesn't have enough stuff in it" in the article.
You make a big assumption here.

You assume they're staying to work BECAUSE they actually have something to do. Many times people will take a 4 hour work day and stretch it into a 10~16 hour work day. Even if they're only required and paid to work 8 hours.

It's kind of like office space, where being at your desk is more important than what you actually do. Except the whole culture is in on it, so it's expected and required of you.

Recently there economy has been decreasing but if you compare them to countries will similar natural resources (none) or more natural resources they are doing quite well for themselves. They rely purely on imports for their resource needs. Hell they don't even have any natural gases or coal to mine. They don't even have COAL! EVERYONE has coal the can mine.
@anarcho Yes the iBrain its perfect! Then we can really call mac users mac heads. Though I have always harbored a secret desire to have a robot servant. Besides I could then commit robot genocide when they rise up against their human masters.

Not so much that you would notice. Certainly more accepted than in America but not so much that you can't walk without getting smoke blown in your face.



They do have a little trouble understanding that some people have food allergies or that they just don't want to eat certain things such as vegetarians or people with peanut allergies.

Of course these are people who still eat Fugu a extremely expensive dish that may kill you because the toxins make the lips tingle so it's not too surprising.

Doesn't effect Prosperity though.



My god that was the most surprising thing about Japan. I assumed that they would have affordable games and electronics in fact I expected them to be cheap. That was really wierd.



Does that really hurt their posperity though? I would think a good work ethic would be good.

And if you honeslty believe this you've obviously never been out to their clubs or anywhere during golden week.



My favorite part of the country actually. Of course I absolutely adore the fist pump.

But yeah OP 5% drop in GDP is not a sign of prosperity. It is a sign of an economy withering and dieing.

I'd prefer a more Ghost in the Shell-ish future biggrin

Oh, the plan will work...in Dermezel's imagination.

which is harder than it sounds since Japan has effectively bred a generation of asexual metromen who aren't all that interested in fucking.

I think the meat thing is to help lower their populations. As for the work thing the way I understand Japanese culture they are very community oriented. They need to be part of the community to be outside of the community is a fate worse then death. As for the smoking thing is anyone really that surprised? Numbers are dropping like a stone and Japan is just a new market to make it look really really cool to people who don't believe they cause cancer.

Not entirely true. I mean yes, in them iddle of the cities.

Out in the country towns of Japan where services are considerably less land is actually amazingly cheap. Also, the rapid modernisation of Japanese housing means that land depreciates extremely fast. The net value of a property can be zero or below twenty years on, if you factor in the amount a purchaser paid for it beforehand. This means there is extremely low mobility in Japan, it's hard to move around. Meaning country towns in Japan, contrary to much of the rest of the West, are not in a process of urbanisation*. Not that that would be easy anyway with the density that already exists.

*I should qualify that by saying that students still flock to the cities. Settling families however are generally more than happy to live in the countryside once they secure work. Lifelong employment attitudes completely fit in with the culture that exists with property values there.