George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107

I think that's true but far less so in a family, and if the family is tight and remains so. That helps a lot. I see a lot of fractured families and disaffected youth, who become rudderless adults (unless they bind themselves to some group or club or other activity). Jobs can fill this role Another thing people often don't get about work culture here.
It's the 5th here but enjoy the 4th.
We usually do barbecue or mashed potatoes or black-eyed peas or something close to my roots, and hang the US flag out. This year the boys were going to be at sports clubs and wifey was going to be late, so I detoured through Osaka and headed in instead of out, and went alone and caught the Mission Impossible film before it leaves theaters.
It's always odd going to a movie alone. For me at least. Sitting through previews I am reminded of the banality of Japanese films. I think some Japanese actors and actresses are actually capable of amazing range, but most Japanese directors are hamfisted hacks.
Cruise had recorded a message for the Japanese audience in preview. He has a massively loyal following here, though obviously he's not as young and current as he used to be (I can relate).I came up watching his movies (he is only a few years older than I) and he's always reminded me of my best friend back home.
Watching the film I was, as usual, floored by his stunt skills. I've enjoyed the whole franchise (except MI:2, which remains for me unwatchable) and felt this ended it well. The plot itself took what had been caricature-like of AI in the immediate prequel and dialed the absurdity up to 11. But I didn't mind turning off my brain for that. It was a welcome relief to not have to ask myself how realistic the plot might be (answer: not) in our current AI-ubiquitous age.
I finished and walked out into the crowds in Shinsaibashi, mostly Chinese or Korean or other Asians, a few European couples or families, maybe some Americans with tattoos and blue hair. No one seemed to take any notice of me whatsoever. I took the elevator down with a dozen Chinese and on 1F wended my way through short shorts and miniskirts out into a warm wave of humid air and trees done up in purple LED lights lining Midosiji boulevard. I walked. Stayed on the surface and street briefly, then descended again into the underground, walked past more Chinese pulling roller bags, past Starbucks where inside the lonely hearts read at individual tables their little paperback books with plain paper slip covers to keep the title anonymous. Walked the walking escalator through to the Yotsubashi line. So many people staring at phones, or holding out their phones to selfie themselves, or live stream--I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Walk more, walk through the subway turnstile that doesn't turn, down another escalator, wait, wait, the slightly overweight American girls in very tight clothing drag their luggage past. Soon I'm on a subway. There's a pretty blonde Japanese girl showing her midriff wearing these striped socks pulled to her knees She taps the pads of her fingers on her phone, long green fingernails on her index, middle and ring fingers. On her bag is a plastic tab with the black and white face of what's probably a boyfriend --he looks like he belongs on a wanted poster. Across from her through the thick of other riders is a beautiful young woman stepped out of a different movie, wearing a very nice dress you'd expect Audrey Hepburn would have approved of. But then we're near Kitashinchi.
An hour later and the surface train has thinned of people and it's just me and an old man who seems quite asleep. I disembark, take the up then down escalator, passing a high school couple who appear to be breaking up--he's looking at her, she's looking straight ahead. They're both very pretty.
The night is still warm and I forego the bus, which will not arrive for another ten minutes anyway, and walk the 20 minutes and 2225 steps home, where my family is finished eating and watching a music show where they all know this music that I've never heard sung by these groups I don't know. I eat some leftovers of steak rice I made the day before--no barbecue or peas, and I had forgotten to hang the flag in the morning -- and it's not nearly as good as I had felt it was when making it.
I'm asleep by 11. And now it's tomorrow. Hope your 4th there in your timeline and other dimension is more festive, but as equally peaceful as mine.
Edit: A fortuneteller predicted a massive earthquake today. So, hope that doesn't happen.
Toxic empathy
That's a good one.
Perhaps add "and legs" to your username. Do let us know how you fare.
Depends on the quality of the take-out. In any case my illustration was an example of the usual man's lack of gumption when it comes to certain aspects of life. With a wife, certain aspects change, and I'd argue mostly for the better. Of course YMMV.
I as well am master of the culinary arts. Still my wife is better, hands down.
I'm not suggesting men have to be this way. I'm suggesting often they simply don't care enough to bother.
Men will bitch about their wives, but these same men would be eating a take-out sandwich over the sink without them.
I don't know, sure, some wives certainly make some men miserable. Any man with children (except in very rare circumstances) will say it's easier to have a wife.
I would like to meet these women, for research purposes. I know well some guys who would have sex with probably any woman who paid them even the slightest bit of attention. I also know guys who have absurdly finicky standards (or claim to.) I don't doubt your claim here but I've personally sailed through many siren-populated (if not infested) waters without earmuffs and been able to get through without diving overboard or crashing the vessel. Reflection suggests you're probably right, though. Maybe I've just been fortunate or the Matas Hari I've met have been either insufficiently charming or insufficiently motivated.
This is an interesting take. I've no idea how accurate, but certainly interesting.
: men don't care if you're smart and fun (though that's nice), they care if you have the requisite sexy figure
Pushing back on this slightly. Yes you're probably very correct if we're just talking about sex and sexual attraction. A pretty face also helps. Smart doesn't come into it too terribly much except perhaps at that level of kink. But past just sex and at the relationship level, smart and fun are absolute requirements, at least for most every man I know who would stick around. (And of those two, "fun" is considerably harder to gauge and maintain).
A woman whose sole offering is a sexy figure will find herself ignored, or at least not really attended to, post-coitally. But sure, she'll get laid as much as she cares to, no doubt about it.
there was nothing stopping past students from having a big brother or a stranger from Craigslist do the actual writing,
Well, nothing besides integrity.
I once had a professor who knew psychometrics so well, including its history but many ways as well that statistics could be used within methodology, and why, and when, and which types were preferable and which types to avoid and which types revealed nothing, that he seemed eerily erudite. He taught us the ins and outs of SPSS and Winsteps (R was just coming in) and we were eventually doing structural equation modeling. The last of his classes I took was my introduction to Bayesian reasoning. He really was brilliant and made me want to rise to his expectations.
But as a teacher pedagogically he was pretty bad. I didn't really understand his grading. He'd answer questions in such a way that I would become even more lost. But I was probably a better student in his doctoral class than I had been in the entirety of my (years earlier) time as an undergraduate.
I don't envy those whose job it is to evaluate teachers. I suppose a pre post assessment of student ability (at whatever), averaged across a large enough population, might be one way. Just looking at post scores or student evaluations wouldn't be enough.
Of course a school's PR team might likely be more concerned with shiny markers such as popularity with students. That certainly doesn't threaten the school's funding.
For any school in Japan, if a kid can pass the entrance exam (these can begin as early as junior high) he or she can get in. There is a 推薦 / suisen or recommendation-based or so-called "escalator" system as well for kids who begin school in, say, Takagi Goodschool elementary--they will probably then go to Takagi Goodschool JHS, HS, and even university if there is a TG University (sometimes the Takagi Goodschool is associated with a different university and is a feeder school for that one.)
If I am understanding your question correctly, yes, some children who are legacy entrants (whose parents or whatever went to Takagi Goodschool) will go there as well. But as I say, any kid can go there if they pass the entrance test. Still, you will find that some suisen students are exempted from what are sometimes considerably difficult tests (because they are athletes or demonstrate some other skill, or have a very good recommendation from someone at their high school who is a known and respected quantity.) This results in a lot of students who got in via social standing/parental influence/hereditary reasons and then some who are just really smart and/or know how to study for tests.
Not to get too much into it, but Japan has a system where low level students are filtered very early in a way that doesn't seem to happen in the US, at least not how I understood it as a kid. Here, a kid who has no real academic skill will be counseled, channeled into a JH school or then HS where none of the kids are really so academic, and they will focus on sports or trades or whatever, or be pushed to universities or junior colleges or 専門学校 senmon gakko (vocational schools). Of course some do fall through the cracks and become delinquents or just move into something else. Students can opt out as young as 15 (and some do, if they have no parent pushing them to continue.)
I don't know much about specifically Catholic schools, though, so there very well may be something going on there that I am not aware of.
You are not wildly off, but this is an exaggeration. There are many private schools at the secondary level in Japan. They cost more and in general may have a higher academic standard. Their accreditation is only relevant in terms of what they may prepare students to expect in the college entrance exam. In some cases these private high schools have International Baccalaureate programs, etc. As for university, the highest ranked schools are public (Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, etc.) But any kid from any high school, public or private, who can pass the entrance exam can get in. This, as you say, is the purpose of cram schools at the high school level.
I could answer that question with an epithet but it would be bad form to do so. I assume he's a sock puppet of someone banned several times before.
Interesting. It certainly seemed to be something like this, but it was in Arabic and right there on Twitter so I assumed it had to be less tawdry somehow.
As far as I know, yes. Certainly culturally.
This is not at all unbelievable to me, though it mounts, frames, and hangs the idea that the modern era is as corrupt and depraved as any that has come before it, just in different ways. I wonder how common it is.
Anecdotally I know at least one extremely (to me at least) physically attractive girl (a dancer) who has had similar offers (though not from Arabs, or not to my knowledge) but has refused them (so far.) Once her currency as a burlesque "star" begins to go down as her age goes up, I wonder how it will all play out. She's a lovely person, actually, in her way. At one point in my life I would have been quite taken with her. I suspect large swaths of girls in Japan at least would be reluctant to be flown to wherever simply because of the language barrier. Very wealthy men in Japan aren't as desperate for sex as someone in a more sexually repressed culture such as those in the mid-East, but I suppose they could be training their kept-women up to Tokyo.
Tangentially related, but have you or anyone else heard the term "misyar marriage"? I hit the trending button and possibly because I am in Asia I was bombarded by a lot of tweets in Arabic. Because why not I had them translated by my phone, and they were mostly masked women advertising themselves for these arrangements.
Wanting attention and desiring to be seen but also feeling revulsion at the disgusting old men seems to be the go-to outward facing stance for any girl in Japan who's asked off the clock. Any cursory browsing of reddit will reveal people who hate their jobs and everyone at their jobs and all their customers, but they still want that paycheck.
There's a twisted logic to it. Or per @Sloot 's thesis, substitute imaginary for twisted.
That said, I am not sure there's more logic in imagining a call girl who just loves men to pieces.
It should be noted that wife sales were often the idea of the wife, and an escape plan that provided her an out she wouldn't otherwise have had.
dubai portapotty slattern
(adds to motteword list)
I'm only conversant in aikido, which is more like action yoga or something. In that, I've been thrown (usually into a subsequent roll) by guys who were very skilled, and also brutally slammed into the mat by guys who seemed to be channeling a different martial art. At my size (about 177cm, 73 kg) there are women who are both taller and heavier (fewer in Japan) of course. The very skilled akiidoka can move you (me) even if I resist, male or female. The regular rando is like an unbalanced sack of oranges. Reading your updates makes me want to try BJJ though the prospect of abject humiliation is always mildly daunting.
Two points
I tried not to be overly aggressive
and
I probably let her get it in a little deeper before we started than I would have let a man.
seem to be illustrative here. Now I know nothing about BJJ and I expect I'd be out squatted by Mrs. 5hr. But in my experience, at least in cases where there is clearly a size difference (as you describe), the woman gets the advantage from the tenderheartedness (for lack of a better term) on the part of the man. There's no way around that I think unless you just turn that off (which I don't know how to do short of rage, which is unhelpful). Closing your eyes is probably instructive in a sort of Obi Wan way, but I suspect hobbles you as you lose an important sense. Interesting though.
No, don't let me put you off. Anyone who is halfway self-aware and tries to do as the locals seem to be doing will be welcomed with open arms. It's everyone else that is tedious. There are also many places to go besides the usual tourist areas--and even they are not so bad if you go during off hours.
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The second person (narrative voice) in a story is very interesting. I tried it once many years ago after reading Bright Lights, Big City. Thanks for sharing, I like reading things like this. I have no answer to your question. Probably I'd be intransigent and not cooperate just because, but that could be mental bravado.
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