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>> we don't view being poor as a personal failure

Thank you for pointing that out. I was very surprised when I moved to Japan from Europe that being poor is highly frowned upon and soelely seen as a personal failure. Obviously, that is mostly not the case and people in Japan work therefore sometimes multiple jobs, just to not look poor through their spending habits/clothing/gadgets w/e. Resulting in being more accepted by the society.

More surprising actually is, that really poor people (read: homeless) seem to view themselves as having failed in some regard and actually dont ask other people for empathy/remorse (they wont beg, mostly).



In my opinion, caring so much about the opinions of others is reactive, submissive and weak. I could never like like that. Personal integrity is far more important than keeping up with Joneses.

Japanese society seems batshit crazy, what with all the obsession on never losing face, committing suicide after making a mistake, working until you collapse, always bowing to "superiors" and kissing ass, even changing your grammar to please other people according to some byzantine rank system, etc. How can they live like that?

Hell, Sweden has those tendencies too but we are pretty much libertine anarchists compared to Japan.




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