In another thread I was somewhat amused to note that at least one poster on here believes I hate Japan. Amused because nothing could be further from the truth. I love living here.
It seems to me that for some on here you have to love every little aspect of everything in this country or you get labelled a hater and your reasons for living here are brought into question. It also seems for some that any criticism by a foreigner living here is only because of a lack of understanding of the culture or language and if you totally understood both of these then of course there could not be any valid criticisms whatsoever. Which is utterly ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. It's not like every Japanese person out there is it totally happy with every aspect of their lives here so why should foreigners be expected to be totally happy with every aspect?
Personally I find the idea that anyone could live anywhere and be absolutely and totally happy with every single aspect of the society they live in to be also ridiculous. I mean this forum is littered with somewhat desperate people who strongly dislike where they currently live and look to Japan as some sort of utopian land in which all their dreams will come true. None of us live in utopia, there's no such place!
So anyone somewhat reasonable has to admit that Japan is not a perfect society, not everything here is amazingly great. So why is it then if some of us wish to discuss some of those not so good (in our opinion) aspects we immediately get labelled as haters? Is there some requirement for living in Japan I didn't know about it? We have to love everything about it or we shouldn't live here?
