Again as for the japan bashing and defending going on, please refer back to my longer post.
I've been all there and everywhere when it comes to Japan. I'm a near fluent speaker, I went there on study abroad for 7 weeks last summer, I've done the Japanese Speech Contest here in Atlanta (and gotten owned...), I've watched an inordinate amount of Japanese TV (it mostly sucks), watched some anime and played a few games from over there, listened to a whole lot of Japanese music (most of my favorite bands are Japanese...), read blogs about Americans living in Japan (again I'd like to refer you to
www.gaijinsmash.net ), I've talked to a whole bunch of Japanese people here in America and abroad about what it's like to be Japanese, and I always try to stay in contact with Japanese people so that I can practice it whenever possible.
And yet, I find myself extremely happy that I am not Japanese. There is a secret to understanding this and it is a long and exciting process of realization. One day it will hit you like a ton of bricks.
