From: jcliu@four-lab4.Berkeley.EDU (James C. Liu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Forgive me for asking, but...
Date: 24 Jan 1993 00:30:26 GMT
Organization: UC Berkeley Dept. of Nuclear Engineering
NNTP-Posting-Host: four-lab4.berkeley.edu

In article <5290@gos.ukc.ac.uk> eph@ukc.ac.uk (Genki) Edwin Hayward
writes:

  >I've been reading soc.culture.japan for about a year and a half...
  ....
  >Why, with a name like soc.culture.japan, does this newsgroup have
  >to be a forum for all manner of racist and prejudiced attacks 
  >against one group or another. As far as I can see, it should be
  >devoted to discussing Japanese culture, not slanging matches or
  >Japan bashing.

The Japanese culture is quite xenophobic in many aspects.  I'm not
sure as to the point you or other posters/readers are making in terms
of _not_ discussing these issues in s.c.j.  Some points are good, and
some points are bad.  S.c.j is a great forum for everyone to participate
and either defend some points about Japan or gripe about some points.
In the near chaos of the discussion...the reader should finally come
to the conclusion that everyone has their own experiences, and if one
is really interested in Japanese culture...pinch you pennies and plan
for the requisite trip to the actual place.  There's no substitute for
actually going and experiencing Japan...LIVE.

  >I don't pretend to believe that Japan is perfect - no country can
  >be...and all countries have their own problems. However all I'm 
  >interested in is *culture* - and I can't see how even 50% of the
  >posts could be categorized as "culturally relevant".

Okay, so comparisons of fusion research and fuel injectors on Toyotas
vs. Fords ain't culture.  What specifically are you looking for?  My
experience with _males_ who want to know more about Asian "culture"
usually boils down to, to put things bluntly, 'how do I score on the
babes..' ;-).  Really, this sounds funny, but in all seriousness,
IMHO, for the guys on this net, that's the most interesting topic of
culture.  Examples abound, like the topics about 'Ankles', 'Rie-GIFs'
'Pheromones', etc.  When I ran my series of 'Pheromone' articles, my
mailbox was bursting from all 'dear Abby' questions I got from some
totemo sabishii dudes...It kinda reinforces my opinions about guys on
this group...not that it's a bad thing...Don't worry guys, your names
will remain confidential (as long as within 2 weeks, I get $20 in the
mail from each one of you :-).  No..really. Mum's the word.

The ladies in this group are more ...'well bred,' and therefore more
interested in stuff like language, okonimiyaki, etc.  but inevitably,
sex sells to the men, and I can't help but get the impression that 
anytime anyone starts to complain that this group is going off base...
it's a call to get back to the basics of 'How do I score on these 
-different-culture- babes...'

  >[It's a] shame that genuinely interesting and informative articles
  >get swamped by the masses of noise that have no real place on this
  >newsgroup.

Agreed.  But people post for a variety of reasons.  They post because
they don't know how the email function works in the Readnews program,
or they like to see their own article on the net, or they like to flame
others, or they like to throw flame bait articles out on the net, or
they genuinely have something of informational value to post, or they
like to show how smart and knowledgeable they are about Japan, etc.
Heck, I'll admit, a lot of those reason apply to yours truly.

As for the noise...there's been calls to break the group up before
into different sub.groups, but honestly, with half the folks already
cross-posting a lot of stuff to other groups like alt.sex and
soc.cult.asian.amer, what do you think is going to stop this from
getting worse.  Hey, the noise on s.c.j. is nowhere as bad as in
sci.physics.  

  >That's all I have to say - thanks for reading this far.

Well, it's not ALL I have to say.  I have some gripes too.  One thing
is the way people indent and highlight text and cut and paste.  I've
seen some good styles, but some of you make it so damn hard to read
I just hit 'n' and skip it.  Instead of responding to a flame-baited
post line-by-line, how about editing out everything except what is
significant, then respond paragraph-by-paragraph?

The other thing is the contributors.  There are only a few people who
contribute interesting stuff while everyone just sits back and reads
and makes a few lousy follow-up comments which has no informational
content as all (cultural, technical, or otherwise).  The Yaohan thing
was one of them.  The number of posts with actual addresses, directions,
and phone numbers of Yaohans was limited to perhaps 3 or 4.  The rest
were stuff like, 'yeah..we got one in NJ, 4 in CA ...'  Look, how hard
can in be to check the phone book? 

Finally, I don't mind bogus information posts if they're at least funny
or well written.  IMHO, there's a lot of entertainment value in reading
s.c.j.  I'd have to be a very sorry dude, or at least very sabishii if
I were reading s.c.j for the only reason of trying to learn more about
Japanese culture.  If I ever get to that state, I'll know it's time to
call up Shogun Travel in S.F. and book the next $618 JAL rt flight to
Tokyo/Narita.

Jaa, James
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan