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doggyji
Joined: 21 Feb 2006
Location: Toronto - Hamilton - Vineland - St. Catherines
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 Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:50 am Post subject: Re: Japanese jealous Mount Yushan's taller than Fuji?! |
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| Troll_Bait wrote: |
One of my Korean friends recently came back from a trip to Taiwan. She's nice, intelligent, and reasonable, but like all Koreans, has been fed a diet of propaganda since she came out the birth canal.
She told me that Japanese people are jealous of Taiwan because their highest mountain, Mount Yushan, is taller than Mount Fuji. Has anyone else heard about this? |
It's quite interesting why you had to put the word propaganda there. Let me try to guess although I generally try to avoid these little Japan this Korea this topics. (No disrespect here. It's just that they are usually forever-occuring tiring topics for me.)
She goes to Taiwan. She meets some Japanese tourists there visiting Mt. Yu (Yu Shan). The Japanese are all saying "sugoi, sugoi" and Mt. Yu is great and better than Mt. Fuji. They say Mt. Yu is magnificent and they wish they could have such a great mountain in Japan. She comes back to Korea and meets Troll_Bait. She delivers the message poorly, especially using "to be jealousy of" to mean "to want to have something the other has out of admiration (envious?)", not "to be insecure, upset and jealous". Troll_Bait posts about it here. Some expat posters can't miss the chance and go on about Korea-bashing, not even bothering to examine the circumstances further.
The world is full of possibilities, isn't it?  |
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Donghae
Joined: 24 Dec 2003
Location: Fukuoka, Japan
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:15 am Post subject: Re: Japanese jealous Mount Yushan's taller than Fuji?! |
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| uberscheisse wrote: |
| Donghae wrote: |
BUT....what this lady has mentioned is not totally inconsistent with feelings I have heard some Japanese, particularly older people, express. I have come across Japanese people who have remarked that the highest mountain in Taiwan used to be the highest mountain of Japan (i.e. when Taiwan was colonised by the Japanese) and expressed nostalgia/regret that it (and Taiwan as a whole) was no longer a part of Japan with it being "one of the greatest mountains in Asia" (sic).
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i'm calling bullshit on that too.
firstly, it'd have to be someone well over the age of 70. japanese occupation ended in 1945. anyone who had anything more than a dabbling interest in geography would have had to be at least in 4th grade at that point to even know that mountain existed.
maybe you are fluent in japanese and are hearing a side of older japanese that the rest of us don't.
why would japanese be jealous of a higher mountain? nobody has ever heard of yushan. the whole world knows mount fuji. whether you like it or not, it's an iconic symbol that everyone associates with japan.
very few japanese people have any actual experience with the colonial period. those that do are either senile or they don't want to remember what happened right at the end (the part where they got their asses fully kicked in a war).
seriously. like them or not, no japanese person is whining about whether or not their rock-dick is bigger. leave that to koreans and their cartography. |
When I said older people, I didn't mean only those old enough to have experienced the colonial period in Taiwan. Some who I heard voice these kind of opinions have been clearly not old enough for that and have probably formed those opinions based on what they've read or heard about Japan and Taiwan in the early part of this century. Remember also that I did NOT describe what I had heard as jealousy (I used nostalgia/regret), but merely as being not totally dissimilar to this woman's description.
Yes, your speculation that I've heard what I've related here spoken in Japanese is correct, in all but a couple of cases.
As I thought I'd made quite clear, but seemingly not sufficiently so, I do not think that the overwhelming majority of Japanese have any strong feelings about Taiwan at all. I merely pointed out the possibilty of what this woman had said being not totally unreasonable (although, I stress again, not exactly how I'd put it myself) if she'd encountered Japanese people expressing the same kind of things that I've heard.
You seem pretty damn confident that you know what everyone in Japan is thinking. Is there a reason for this, as you clearly imply in your above post that you're not at all fluent in their language? |
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Donghae
Joined: 24 Dec 2003
Location: Fukuoka, Japan
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: Re: Japanese jealous Mount Yushan's taller than Fuji?! |
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| doggyji wrote: |
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
One of my Korean friends recently came back from a trip to Taiwan. She's nice, intelligent, and reasonable, but like all Koreans, has been fed a diet of propaganda since she came out the birth canal.
She told me that Japanese people are jealous of Taiwan because their highest mountain, Mount Yushan, is taller than Mount Fuji. Has anyone else heard about this? |
It's quite interesting why you had to put the word propaganda there. Let me try to guess although I generally try to avoid these little Japan this Korea this topics. (No disrespect here. It's just that they are usually forever-occuring tiring topics for me.)
She goes to Taiwan. She meets some Japanese tourists there visiting Mt. Yu (Yu Shan). The Japanese are all saying "sugoi, sugoi" and Mt. Yu is great and better than Mt. Fuji. They say Mt. Yu is magnificent and they wish they could have such a great mountain in Japan. She comes back to Korea and meets Troll_Bait. She delivers the message poorly, especially using "to be jealousy of" to mean "to want to have something the other has out of admiration (envious?)", not "to be insecure, upset and jealous". Troll_Bait posts about it here. Some expat posters can't miss the chance and go on about Korea-bashing, not even bothering to examine the circumstances further.
The world is full of possibilities, isn't it? |
That's a good point too. In my experience in both Japan and Korea, "jealousy" is a word that even relatively able English students of both nationalities have a tendency to use when it isn't the most appropriate choice for what they want to express. As well as possibly 'admiration' and 'envy', if you also include the 'regret' and 'nostalgia' that I mentioned a few Japanese feel when they factor in that it used to be "a Japanese mountain", then that produces quite a few feasible angles that her English ability might have mistakenly try to cover with the word 'jealousy'. |
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uberscheisse
Joined: 02 Dec 2003
Location: japan is better than korea.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:44 am Post subject: Re: Japanese jealous Mount Yushan's taller than Fuji?! |
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| Donghae wrote: |
You seem pretty damn confident that you know what everyone in Japan is thinking. Is there a reason for this, as you clearly imply in your above post that you're not at all fluent in their language? |
no i'm not. i'm studying. and i'm not confident, i'm just pointing out the age range of the people who would have strong emotions about the colonial period.
if they are anywhere under the age of 70, they're nationalist fruitcakes that nobody takes seriously.
i've been here a few months. within days of being in korea i felt their little-brother complex articulated regularly. i haven't heard it once in japan, in the mass media or in what my friends say.
except of course from the black van nationalist people - the people who are written off as rude fruitcakes by the majority.
but do that in korea and it'll get you a blowjob. |
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oskinny1
Joined: 10 Nov 2006
Location: Right behind you!
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:02 am Post subject: |
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| BS.Dos. wrote: |
Just out of interest, anyone on dave's ever climbed Mt. Fuji?
I've been enjoying the Everest thing on the Discovery channel and just wandered how experienced you'd need to be to be able to climb it (Mt. Fuji) and get back down in one piece. |
I was thinking about heading over for a climb in a couple weeks until one of my "princess" students told me she did it last weekend. Seems like you drive up most of it, then hike for a few hours (8 maximum) along with a few thousand other people. It is open for hiking for two months and gets about 200,000 climbers in the time. |
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Donghae
Joined: 24 Dec 2003
Location: Fukuoka, Japan
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:20 am Post subject: Re: Japanese jealous Mount Yushan's taller than Fuji?! |
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| uberscheisse wrote: |
| Donghae wrote: |
You seem pretty damn confident that you know what everyone in Japan is thinking. Is there a reason for this, as you clearly imply in your above post that you're not at all fluent in their language? |
no i'm not. i'm studying. and i'm not confident, i'm just pointing out the age range of the people who would have strong emotions about the colonial period.
if they are anywhere under the age of 70, they're nationalist fruitcakes that nobody takes seriously.
i've been here a few months. within days of being in korea i felt their little-brother complex articulated regularly. i haven't heard it once in japan, in the mass media or in what my friends say.
except of course from the black van nationalist people - the people who are written off as rude fruitcakes by the majority.
but do that in korea and it'll get you a blowjob. |
Plenty of people of any age have strong feelings about parts of their country's history that happened long before they were born - not just in Japan, but in any country. The age range you pointed out would indeed be the one that has experience of that period, but it'd be quite bizarre to suggest that no-one gives a damn about anything happening before they were born.
I note and welcome your admission that you're not confident you know what everyone in Japan is thinking. I've been here over 10 years and speak the language fairly fluently and I wouldn't claim to know that either, but I can manage a bit of a chuckle over someone who sees fit to "call bullshit" on something I said about Japan, but who's only been here a few months.
No worries though & best to leave it there before this thread gets taken way off topic and I'll wish you all the best in Japan. |
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milspecs
Joined: 19 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:40 am Post subject: |
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| uberscheisse wrote: |
| jiyull wrote: |
| I'm sure that the Japanese will write in their history books that Fuji is two times taller than Mount Yushan. |
no they won't, they're not korean. |
I guess you've never seen a Japanese History book, they like to make up there own history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies
And no im not saying Korea wouldnt or hasnt done the same. |
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Bigfeet
Joined: 29 May 2008
Location: Grrrrr.....
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| That's right, they lost WWII so they have no right to white-wash their history. It's ok for the countries that won to do it though. |
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uberscheisse
Joined: 02 Dec 2003
Location: japan is better than korea.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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| milspecs wrote: |
| uberscheisse wrote: |
| jiyull wrote: |
| I'm sure that the Japanese will write in their history books that Fuji is two times taller than Mount Yushan. |
no they won't, they're not korean. |
I guess you've never seen a Japanese History book, they like to make up there own history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies
And no im not saying Korea wouldnt or hasnt done the same. |
why would mount yushan be examined in a history book? it'd be in some geography text. the only people i've seen messing with facts to make themselves look good geography-wise are koreans. i never said that japanese people don't rewrite their history to make their past wrongs seem not so wrong - this has been well-documented, and kinda supports what i have to say.
perhaps my argument should have been that only people who have direct experience with the colonial period would even know about mt. yushan. i'd argue that many japanese nowadays don't even know taiwan was once part of the empire. if you're going to write rape and torture out of your textbooks, you're also going to write out the national shame of losing your empire, aren't you?
if you're going to write out the rape of nanjing and 3.1.1919, wouldn't you also write out the fact that you lost your precious little mountain, and instead focus on that other one on your own soil?
getting little-dick syndrome over something as insignificant as a mountain is more the realm of korean cartographers, especially when talking about what's the most (insert adjective) thing in asia. look at how they make dokdo bigger on a map. look at how they make korea look bigger on a map.
maybe a good idea would be to go to work today and ask my coworkers whether or not there is a country called taiwan. that should conjure up some interesting answers. |
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