and this year I bought candy I don't like so I'm less likely to eat it.

Why would you buy stuff that you don't like? Isn't that kind of nasty?

In contrast, the panicked evacuation after the disaster (because ZOMG NUCLEAR DISASTER) cost the lives of roughly 600 people (and the evacuation was estimated to save ~28 people from getting cancer).

What? That doesn't sound right to me...

Why are you responding to a blatant troll post anyway?

i found mirai nikki to be quite enjoyable. and compared to the one of hyouka, i was quite okay with its ending.

I hate to think how bad Hyouka's ending must be to be worse than Yuno breaking the walls of space-time with a hammer after a 10000 year timeskip.

Intentionally not hiding that spoiler so you can safely read the Mirai Nikki manga and be able to stop at the second last chapter now that you know what you'll be missing (i.e. the single most stupid thing I have read in any piece of fiction ever). Yes, still mad.

Mirai Nikki is a complete trainwreck. I never finished the anime, but holy shit the manga. That fucking manga. That fucking ending.

Racism in Japan is fairly different from racism elsewhere though. Japanese people can have some pretty strange stereotypes about Westerners, but by and large they have no problem with us and don't have that 'fuck off to wherever you came from' attitude that, say, a lot of Australians have. They really aren't exposed to enough westerners to have a particularly strong opinion. The average person on the street doesn't care about your race or where you come from except as a curiousity, but might be a bit cold/distant towards you because they'll assume you don't speak Japanese (and they're probably right). Japanese people by and large like Western culture and have no real problem with Western foreigners.

That changes if you're Asian, of course. There's plenty of anti-Chinese, Korean, and Filipino sentiment. But I doubt it's half as strong as racism in Australia is. Korea is in-vogue, even.

And of course there are the guys in the black vans that drive around playing nationalist music and denouncing foreigners on the loudspeaker, but they're hardly mainstream. The general attitude regarding foreigners is relaxed.

I think it's interesting that when I was living in Takasaki (small city) no one at least initially treated me any differently than they would anyone else, while in Tokyo a lot of people will get that 'oh shit gaijin' face or try and use horrible mangled English. I assume Tokyo people just have more/worse experiences with foreigners.

Because travel is awesome and this is the best thread so far to discuss it.

I spent a week in Queensland, mostly in Brisbane but also two days at a cottage on Mt. Tamborine which I think was the absolute highlight of my trip. It was so peaceful and natural there, and yet they had a little cafe for iced chocolates and a pizza place that did a fantastic seafood pizza with little squid tentacles. If I was ever back in Australia, I'd make it a point to go right back there. I could hike in the rainforest during the day, then go right back to town and enjoy some civilized comforts.

I am not big on city living, which I think might put me in a different crowd than most people. I like places that aren't very far from some open wilderness.

Maybe we should start a better thread for travel, or something?

Did you go to Springbrook? Mt. Tambourine is nice, but as far as lovely hiking goes I think Springbrook wins.

One of the nice things about Japan is that you're never very far from some kind of natural beauty. At the moment I'm living in Tokyo, but if I want to go climb a mountain or something it's a pretty trivial train ride away. It was easier when I was living in Gunma, of course, but still - the majority of Japan is made up of uninhabited mountains and there are some really nice places out there.

I was expecting the entire anime to take place in the game, so it was a nice refreshment to see the shift to the real world. Going back to the game world does seem a bit silly, but we haven't really had a comformation on that yet.

SAO is based on a series of novels, so it's pretty easy to know exactly what's going on next. The show has just started on the second novel, which was an unplanned sequel to the first one.

Such a wasted concept. Bleh.

So am I correct in counting that only two of the people posting in this thread (and not the OP) have actually been to Japan before? This thread is sort of depressing me.

You can import Japanese games, you can get sushi at restaurants and ramen in available cheaply and plentifully in nearly all grocery stores. I'm at a loss for reasons why anyone would want to move to Japan, unless you're trying to get more hits on your streetpass on your 3DS. I don't think completing all the puzzles in Puzzle Swap is worth the move.

Maybe it would be a good idea to first take a vacation to Japan, and survey the landscape.

Australia would be a nice place to live, though. The countryside is so beautiful, the weather in Queensland is just about perfect, and the natives already speak English so it's easy to acclimate. I wouldn't go out of my way to move there, but if I found a job that wanted me to relocate I'd go for it in an instant.

I'm actually from Queensland. It's nice, but it depends on your priorities. At this point in my life Japan is definitely more interesting than Brisbane/Gold Coast (and the rest of Queensland isn't worth talking about living in unless you're some kind of Bob Katter-voting bogan).

I assume you're being facetious with those reasons for living/not living in Japan, right?

EDIT#2: I believe the AJATT method would only work if you already know at least some Japanese. Tongue

Enjoy not learning Japanese, I guess. If you're a procrastinator and intend to rely on a textbook, you're 100% definitely not going to get anywhere. I hope you're at least using Anki or something. If you're reading translated manga (rather than, yes, plodding through with a dictionary) you're going to kick yourself for being retarded later on. Like I am now.

Getting citizenship in Japan is extremely difficult, but to move here all you need is a degree and a company to sponsor you (or be a student, I guess). If you stay for long enough/set down enough roots you can get a permanent residency visa which protects you from a lot of problems (and of course, there are spousal visas). You don't really need citizenship, although it's possible (you need to renounce your current citizenship though).

I'm not sure why I'm posting seriously in this thread.

It is a stupid and pointless thread, but the stupidity of some of the replies (that aren't just shitposting) is worse. Do people really think that Japan is racist like America was in the 1900s and such?

I don't mind helping OP if he actually wants to know stuff about moving to Japan, but he hasn't asked any worthwhile questions.

Well, before the clusterfuck can get underway again.

Thanks for your advice.

I want to learn Japanese.

In fact, I've actually got a textbooK!

Now I'd need to get around my bad habit of procrastination.

That's not going to get you anywhere. I know all about owning textbooks and procrastination. You will never learn Japanese that way.

Take the stuff on this site with several grains of salt (especially the stuff involving giving him money), but AJATT at least gives a plausible method of learning for procrastinators such as ourselves, and at the very least it's nice for a pep-talk.

You're aware that you need visa sponsorship and stuff to move here, right?

This season is awesome. There's a little bit of everything and it's all fairly delicious. Even shows that should be absolute shit are good (like Busou Shinki, or the two shoujo romances - or hell, Girls und Panzer). Shin Sekai Yori has huge potential, and I like where Zetsuen no Tempest is going. And we also have Chuunibyou, Psycho-Pass, Robotics;Notes, and Ixion Saga DT (perfect antidote to the overblownness of SAO).

The only thing I'm really disappointed in is K. Excellent art and animation, but full of vacuous posing and stupid. Maybe good as the trainwreck of the season?
Oh, and Code:Breaker looks terrible too, but I had lower expectations.

Also tried watching Hagure Yuusha no Estetica which my friend recommended but I dropped it after the first episode. Not sure if worth watching.

You made the right choice. Shit was terrible. I dropped it after the pissing episode.

Do I have some kind of horribly warped values if I think that rape in porn is not a terrible thing? It's porn! Stop holding it to standards that aren't applicable to it.

And no, it's not some men-are-horrible thing either, given otome game rape fantasy thing (not that I have any first-hand knowledge on that one...).

For what it's worth, Sengoku Rance is a genuinely good game. Perhaps you should go and play it before writing diatribes against how horribly it portrays rape and whatnot. I think the reality of it is less disturbing than the idea of it - it's pretty tame, really.

Why is Tankwondo not a real sport? And why is there an anime series about it?

I've lived in Japan for a year and a half now - ask me anything, I guess. You should probably ignore everyone else in this thread besides InfiniteStateMachine because people on the internet who have never been here have absolutely bizarre ideas about what happens in Japan.

But straight up: if you don't speak Japanese you shouldn't move to Japan, because living in Japan without knowing Japanese is kind of lame.

I think it's hard for most people to understand just how many visual novels are porn until they've wandered around Akihabara. The scale of it is kind of astounding. The West gets visual novels filtered through the language barrier and while you know that there's porn out there and run into it a bit, you at least have some grounds to defend the medium's merit. One trip through the rows and rows of porn games (and the two shelves of non-porn VNs) in an average store will shatter your illusions.

It makes no more sense if you've read the book. They're basically entirely different stories.

For a shorter series I would suggest Fractale or Eden of the East if you haven't seen those.

Huh - Fractale, eh? I've heard only bad things.
Not that I really need to add things to my backlog. It grows much faster than I'm able to watch stuff.

I need to watch shorter series, so that if I get the urge to marathon the shit out of them, at least it won't eat up four entire days. Mujin Wakusei Survive and The Twelve Kingdoms are ruining my life.

whoa seriously that exists? You just blew my mind. Thanks!

edit : Is it possible to use it with MKV files?

Works fine with MKV. If you're stuck, maybe check this guy's video tutorials called 'Using Dramas to Improve your Japanese'. It shows you how to import into Anki and such.

Also, www.kitsunekko.org for finding Japanese subtitles.

I expected a lot from SAO given the concept and the gushing novel fanbase. I got fanfiction.net-tier writing and characters. So yeah, it's disappointing. It's usually entertaining though.
The last episode was just stupid and awful.

Welp. I'm taking the plunge and trying out Anime. Mainly as a way to learn Japanese. Starting with Death Note. It's pretty damn cool so far.

For studying from anime, have a look at a program called 'subs2srs'. It converts shows with Japanese subtitle tracks into flashcards with images and sound. It's pretty great.

Well, season is almost over. Going to call it like this:

Show of the Season: Binbougami ga
Runner up: Oda Nobuna no Yabou
Third: Kokoro Connect
Most Disappointing: Sword Art Online
Biggest Surprise: Kokoro Connect/Oda Nobuna no Yabou
Worst Show: Hagure Yuusha no Estetica

Kokoro Connect deserves a special mention for generating drama and alienating the fanbase, but there's no award for that.

All in all, fairly bad season. I think everything airing is pretty forgettable, even if it's entertaining now.