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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hey guys, in a recent video talking about the education system in Japan, I compared
00:06it to some countries that perhaps do education in a better way, or a more intelligent way,
00:12or a more efficient way, and also mentioned that of course Japan doesn't study those countries
00:19and say, hmm, they do it well, maybe we should do it that way too.
00:25And there are some interesting comments, as always under the video, quite often the comments
00:29under the video are more enlightened than the comments made in the video, so this was
00:35no exception.
00:36There were some quite interesting comments underneath, including one person who illustrated
00:43a few examples of how Japanese people react to what people outside Japan do, and it was
00:50very interesting because it was very true that you often see, particularly on Japanese
00:55television, you see them, they'll do stories on how things are done in another country,
01:00you know, in America they do things this way, or in Europe some people do this thing, and
01:05in Australia some people do this thing, and they'll sit there and they'll often be very
01:09interested, oh, so desu ka, omoshiroi desu ne, you know, they'll be very interested in
01:16what the foreigners are doing in their own countries, and sometimes they'll be a little
01:21bit amused, and the reason we're looking at this long grass of my neighbor here is
01:28because that was often his reaction to what I was doing with the old farmhouse.
01:35So when we started renovating the old farmhouse and cleaning up the garden and doing things
01:38like that, he'd often come and stand quite close sometimes and just stand there and just
01:43look, and those days he was reasonably friendly and he'd sort of greet me and just stand there
01:49and watch, usually with his arms folded and sort of a bemused look on his face, he always
01:54seemed sort of amused at what we were doing with the old house.
01:59And it hasn't changed, right?
02:02And basically what it is, is that's what our friend pointed out, and this is the way Japanese
02:06people often react to what foreigners do, that's what the foreigner is doing, right?
02:11Ah, that's what the foreigners do, and because they lump us all together usually, it doesn't
02:16matter what country we come from, if we're a foreigner, we're a foreigner, that's what
02:19the non-Japanese person is doing, or that's what the non-Japanese people do, the gaijin,
02:26that's what the gaijin do.
02:28But they don't consider for a moment, usually, that that might be a good way to do it.
02:35That's not the way they think about it.
02:36And our friend mentioned, or somebody in those comments mentioned about nationalism and sense
02:42of Japanese pride and things like that, and there is an element of that to it as well.
02:47Sort of nationalism and pride to a point of almost arrogance, well, maybe some people
02:54would say arrogance, where the Japanese way is the best.
02:59Japanese society is the best, and the Japanese way is the best, and of course, Japanese people
03:03wouldn't be the only people that think like that, there are a lot of people who think
03:07that their society and their country is the best, don't they, you know?
03:10And Japanese people often have that sort of attitude that, oh, that's the way the foreigners
03:16do it, is that, oh, that's very amusing, but that's not what we do.
03:21Which in often cases is actually great, and that's often why Japanese, living in Japan
03:27and Japanese society is so good in so many ways, is because they haven't copied the negative
03:33things from other countries.
03:35But unfortunately, it also explains why things don't improve, things that need to improve,
03:41like the education system, and a few things like that, the criminal justice system, and
03:46a few things like that, that really should be improved, and they're not.
03:51Because Japanese people and Japanese government in general just don't look at other countries
03:56and go, oh, that's quite clever, we should do that.
03:58Unless, there are exceptions, of course, we made a video recently talking about the immigration
04:04system, the justice system, occasionally they get this sort of a, if they feel challenged
04:10to step up in some way.
04:13So when America talked about stopping money laundering and terrorism, that's sort of like
04:18a guardman, you know, a guardman telling a Japanese person to do something.
04:23So if a guardman tells a Japanese person to do something, they'll usually do it, and it's
04:28a little bit the same with countries like the USA.
04:31If Japan, Japanese government feels that to be a good world citizen, they should do
04:37a particular thing, they'll sometimes do it.
04:40But generally, with societal things, they're not interested in doing it.
04:44We get the same thing with our English-friendly directory, you know, we contact a company
04:48and say, you're English-friendly, we'd like to have you on our directory.
04:51If it's a foreign-owned business, quite often the business owner will say, oh, that sounds
04:55like a good idea, I haven't heard about that before, I haven't heard of that before, I
04:59might give that a try.
05:01Whereas if we contact a business and it's a Japanese person that owns the business,
05:06usually they'll go, oh, we haven't done that before.
05:09So the foreigner says, the non-Japanese person says, oh, we haven't done that before, that
05:13might be worth a try, haven't heard about that.
05:16Whereas the Japanese reaction is, oh, haven't heard about that, haven't tried that before,
05:21hmm, and that's the end of it.
05:23So that's why on the English-friendly directory, 99.9% of the businesses on there are foreign-owned.
05:28And it's the same with our neighbor, you know, he stood there with a bemused look on
05:33his face while we renovated the old farmhouse and made it nice, and he stands there bemused
05:40and watches what we do with the garden, and you know, our garden is basically a bunch
05:45of weeds that are all cut to the same length, but the advantage of that is that if any snakes
05:53or mukare, centipedes are about, that the birds will be able to spot them and eat them,
06:00or we'll be able to spot them and get rid of them, and that they won't hurt our kids.
06:04Also there's no big puddles of water lying around so that there aren't the big swarms
06:09of mosquitoes that are over there in the jungle.
06:14The other advantage is that it takes about 20 minutes pushing a mower to do our place,
06:21and then it's finished and the mower gets put away.
06:24Once every few months he comes out and he'll spend a couple of hours a day for about five
06:30or six days.
06:31So that was a day there, took him a couple of hours just to do what he's done there.
06:36And he'll do that for five or six days, come out for a couple of hours a day, and then
06:40he takes all that long grass that he's cut down and puts it into paper bags and takes
06:46it to the city recycling center.
06:50So the snakes and the centipedes and the mosquitoes that come from that place is absolutely amazing.
06:57And it's such a shame.
06:58I mean someone said it does look nice.
06:59It does sort of look nice, doesn't it?
07:01It sort of does.
07:02But he's got grandkids.
07:04If they made that grass like ours and renovated that house the same as what we did to the
07:09old farmhouse, it'd be a really nice place to live and be an awesome backyard for the
07:14kids to play in.
07:15That gets shade in the afternoon too, so in the middle of summer when it's hot, kids could
07:19play out there.
07:20They could have barbecues out there.
07:21They could do all sorts of stuff.
07:23But see, again, he watches what I do and goes, ah, look what the guy's doing now.
07:29And he doesn't think that, hey, I could do that too, or that just getting a mower, just
07:37buying a mower.
07:38And they actually do sell mowers at Cain's, at the local garden center.
07:42They didn't used to sell gasoline engine lawn mowers.
07:46They just sold little electric ones.
07:48But recently they've actually had some gasoline ones there for about $400.
07:54So he could, if he wanted to, spend 20 minutes pushing it around every week or two, and it
08:00would be nice and short and the kids could play out there.
08:02But as it is now, we've never seen their grandkids in that backyard because it's just not safe.
08:08There's snakes in there.
08:09There's mookata in there.
08:10That little building to the right you can see there, that would be an awesome outbuilding.
08:16It's really cool.
08:18If they just did a little bit of work to it to make it nice, that'd be a great outbuilding.
08:22You could either sit in there if you wanted to, if it was sunny, or just use it to store
08:27garden furniture or whatever.
08:28It'd be an awesome place.
08:30And the house itself is the same as our old farmhouse.
08:33The structure's good.
08:34You can see the roof's straight.
08:36All it needs is just a little bit of work like the old farmhouse got, and it would be
08:40an awesome place.
08:42But that's not what Japanese people do, right?
08:46So he doesn't do it either.
08:47The other neighbors around the place all use brush cutters as well.
08:51They usually do it more often, so their garden doesn't look like that.
08:55And they usually pay tradesmen to come and do maintenance on their houses, so their houses
09:00don't look like that either.
09:02But the point is, this is just another illustration of what our friend was saying on that other
09:07video, is Japanese people don't look at what foreigners do and say, hey, well, that's an
09:13interesting idea.
09:14We should think about doing that too.
09:16They don't think like that.
09:18You know, they just, oh, that's what the foreigners are doing.
09:21Oh, that's very amusing.
09:23You see it on TV all the time.
09:24They'll have these little panels of people sitting around, and they'll show a video of
09:28something that's happening in another country.
09:31Oh, this is what they do in this country.
09:32Oh, yeah, yeah, and they make all the same noises as each other, and they all agree that
09:39it's very interesting and very amusing.
09:43And then that's it.
09:44They move on.
09:45And again, when it comes to the positive things in Japanese culture, that they're not copying
09:50the other country's negative behaviors is a fantastic thing, but this explains why things
09:55like the education system don't improve, is that, no, that's not how we do it.
10:00This is how we do it.
10:01We have juku.
10:02We have 40 hours a week at school.
10:04We have another 10, 20 hours a week of club, and that's the Japanese system, and that's
10:11what we do, and we're not interested in improving on it, so it's sad.
10:16The other one is mental health.
10:18It's been a bit of an issue lately.
10:19We know a couple of people at the moment who are struggling.
10:21We already had an extended family member, an old one, who suicided after he retired
10:27from work, and they just all agreed that, yes, he was sick, but it was quite clear that
10:33he was a bit lost.
10:34He retired at 65.
10:35He didn't have his job anymore, so he felt a little bit lost.
10:38If some people had talked to him about it and got him involved in doing something else,
10:43playing golf or something, he probably would have been all right, but that's not the Japanese
10:47way.
10:48Mental health isn't something they talk about or think about, and so, oh, they just say,
10:54gambare, gambare, try hard, and, of course, that results in 30,000 suicides a year, including
10:59a scarily high number of teenagers that can't handle that school system and kill themselves,
11:06throw themselves in front of a train.
11:08Every now and again, the train system in Japan is very rarely late.
11:12It's always on time.
11:13But now and again, there'll be an announcement that there's been an accident and the train's
11:17being delayed.
11:18Now, there's a pretty good chance, 99% chance, if you hear that announcement, it's because
11:23someone's thrown themselves in front of a train.
11:26And there's a thing, there's a thing that they could learn from the rest of the world
11:30about mental health, and they just don't, because that's not what Japanese do.
11:34Japanese say, gambare, gambare, and that's what they say, try harder, try harder.
11:39And they say that to people, which, quite often, gambare is a good strategy.
11:43Quite often, that's what's required.
11:45But the problem is, when someone's at the end of their tether and everybody just keeps
11:49saying gambare, gambare, they got nowhere to go.
11:54So stuff like that, the education system, mental health, things that they do need to
11:59improve on, this is why they don't.
12:01Because as our friends said, they just say, this is what we do, and they just accept the
12:07suicide thing, they just accept it.
12:08Now and again, the government talk about doing things to improve it, but generally, they
12:12just accept that that's just what happens, that now and again, people can't handle it.
12:17We made a whole video about this once before, it's really sad.
12:21And not just people that kill themselves, but the people that are living unhappy lives
12:24because mental health isn't something that they talk about or think about.
12:28They don't want to think about it, they don't want to talk about it because it's a negative
12:31topic that they think, it's a negative topic and it'll make them feel bad.
12:34So they don't want to know about it.
12:37So this is what they're like.
12:40And again, this is why a lot of the good things in Japan haven't changed, but this is why
12:44the bad stuff in Japan doesn't change.
12:46And when we've made videos about stuff here that's not good before, as we always say,
12:51it won't be changing, it's not going to change.
12:54And any changes that happen, happen really, really slowly.
12:57So it's not going to change.
12:58Old mate next door is not going to suddenly buy a lawnmower.
13:01It's not going to happen.
13:02He's just going to keep doing his current system because that's what he always does.
13:06And the education system is going to stay the same, the mental health care system is
13:11going to change the same, nothing's going to change.
13:13And if you live here, it can be frustrating, but you just got to accept it.
13:17That's just what it is.
13:18The foreigners might do it another way, but that's not the way it's done here, they'll
13:22tell you.
13:24Anyway, we're in Japan, they'll sometimes say when you're talking about stuff like that.
13:30We're in Japan.
13:31Yes, we are.
13:32Anyway, that's enough of looking at that grass grow, more videos coming soon.