Occhin
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I think you’d be better off moving to the United States, since it’s generally a country that accepts a wider range of different ethnicities than Japan does. Also, since you’re American, you’d naturally be more familiar with your home country’s culture and with the support systems available for single mothers there.
Teachers giving numbers like 20–30 does suggest a bit of a lack of knowledge on their part, but honestly, it feels like there are foreigners everywhere these days, so I can understand why that number might feel intuitively right to them. I’d guess that impression comes from mentally combining resident foreigners with foreign tourists, along with the psychological tendency for out-groups to appear more numerous than they actually are. Personally, though, even 3–4 still feels like more than Japan’s capacity can comfortably handle.
Temples are absolutely a form of business as well. Most Japanese people have Buddhist funerals, and money is exchanged during those ceremonies. Temples also manage graves, so they collect maintenance fees for them. The moment money is exchanged, it can be considered a kind of business, so I honestly don’t understand why inheriting it as a family profession seems so strange to you. Maybe it feels strange from a Christian perspective?
I wouldn’t say this applies to every Japanese person, but as a general tendency, Japanese people basically trust what doctors say and think, so they usually do not request additional tests on their own. If a certain test is not performed, people assume the doctor has judged it unnecessary based on the consultation and symptoms, and Japanese patients generally trust that judgment.
Japan also has a well-developed health insurance system, medical costs are relatively affordable, and access to medical care is fairly quick, so the culture of self-medication is not as strong as it is in many Western countries. I think that is one reason people tend to place more trust in doctors.
I’m honestly getting tired of foreigners who bring up “hard working hours and low salary” every time there’s a problem with jobs in Japan. At first glance, it may seem like a simple and convincing explanation, but the reality is more complex. Yet when it comes to Japan, they tend to settle for oversimplified explanations and assume they understand the situation.
Most Japanese people don’t know what characterizes a Southern accent in English, nor are they particularly interested in it. When translating into Japanese, Kansai dialect is used simply because it represents a way of speaking that differs from so-called “standard” English (if such a standard even exists) and because it’s relatively well known; whether it corresponds any more closely than that isn’t even considered worth debating. In the first place, expecting a one-to-one correspondence between a dialect in one language and a dialect in another is misguided.
I imagine what you’re feeling is similar to the discomfort I feel when gaijins say that kanji should be removed from Japanese because they’re hard to learn. Personally, I don’t think there’s any need to reintroduce Chinese characters into Korean. A language should be used in whatever way is most convenient for the people who speak it, and it’s not something non-native speakers should be criticizing from the outside.
To simplify it quite a bit, it’s probably a cultural difference: in Europe, individualism is seen as a virtue, whereas in Japan, collectivism is considered a virtue.
I may not be able to fully understand the mindset of Europeans, but in Japan there is generally an idea of sharing both hardships and joys within the group one belongs to. Therefore, within that group, people typically do not try to impose burdens on others or monopolize benefits for themselves.
Buddhism has sects such as Shingon, Soto, and Jodo, but just as many foreigners neither know nor care about those distinctions, many Japanese people are unaware that Christianity has different denominations and don’t pay much attention to that either. Even if they know there are groups like Catholics and Protestants, probably 99% of Japanese people don’t know the differences between them and aren’t particularly interested.
Personally, I like characters who are essentially female but have mechanical elements attached, but I don’t like characters that are essentially machines with feminine traits added. This illustration looks like the latter to me. That said, this is just a matter of my personal preference and not a judgment of the work’s quality.
I hope what you’re saying is true, but I don’t have any expectations at all. Personally, I don’t have a very good impression of German tourists, though they might have been Austrian. I believe they were speaking German, but I don’t have the ability to tell Germans and Austrians apart or distinguish their accents.
I think it’s fundamentally impossible to give true realism to fiction set in the future. What really matters is a convincing background that makes a given future world feel plausible. That said, I tend to think that when gaijins depict Japan’s future, they end up portraying something Japanese people wouldn’t want.
Based on the limited information you’ve provided, it’s hard to make a highly reliable inference, but one possible interpretation is that you unknowingly behaved quite rudely at your brother’s friend’s house. The friend may have been upset, but since strongly scolding you would be seen as immature, they might have made a minor gesture of retaliation by pressing down on your head.
No Japanese people decide whether to obey the law based on whether they like it or not. Even if a law seems unreasonable, the usual approach is to follow it while working to have it changed. Breaking the law doesn’t make it change. That said, I think this may be difficult to understand for people from your country who see value in breaking the law.
Many Japanese people don’t vote for the Liberal Democratic Party because they think it’s a good party. Rather, they often end up choosing it by default because the other parties seem far worse. If there were a party in Japan that wasn’t acting against the country’s interests and was genuinely good, I’d like to know about it.
Western people’s sense of ethics consists of justifying criminal acts and even taking pride in committing them. Rather than considering the purpose of rules and laws, they decide for themselves whether to follow or break them based on whether they personally like them. Can that really be called having any sense of ethics?
To be honest, I think this might be a bit dubious, but I’ve heard that East Asians tend to have more collagen in the dermis compared to other ethnic groups, which supposedly makes their skin age more slowly and helps them maintain clearer skin. On top of that, consistent sun protection is said to further slow down skin aging. That said, I don’t even remember where I heard this, so I don’t think it’s very reliable information.
As you said, the name “Inari Ōkami” is also used, but that is essentially a common or informal designation. It is rare for the name of a Japanese shrine to be the same as the name of its enshrined deity; the main deity always has a formal name. However, not all Japanese people are familiar with the names of the gods, so common expressions like “(shrine name) + sama” or “(shrine name) + ōkami” are used as informal ways of referring to them.
It’s just fiction, so you can give it whatever setting you like. If there are parts of Japanese mythology you’re not familiar with, it’s better not to force them in; instead, you could frame it as a local folk tradition passed down in a very limited region and give the character a background entirely based on your own interpretation.
By the way, there is no such goddess as “the goddess Inari” The main enshrined deity of Inari shrines is usually Ukanomitama-no-Kami, so that part is clearly incorrect.
I believe that foreigners who have grown up within Abrahamic religions will never truly be able to understand how Shinto and Buddhism coexist in Japan, or the Japanese view of religion. This is because they tend to approach the concept of religion through the framework of Abrahamic traditions, and starting from that premise becomes the greatest obstacle to understanding.
