No problem.

One of our family friends has a son who is going into high school this year. His mother is from Taiwan, and she was actually uncomfortable with how very negative the presentation of Japan was. She actually said to me that they should have at least balanced it out with information about Japan building schools and railways, and introducing better agricultural methods to the countryside. I guess they cover that in depth in Taiwan, so it sort of upset her to see only negatives about Japan and barely if any mention of other stuff done during that period.

ETA;
I agree with this. In the past few years, I think the general attitude of Japanese toward China and the Chinese people has been warming (can`t comment on the other side as I`m not familiar with attitudes in China). Before, it seemed that a lot of people held the attitude of "China? I wouldn`t even want to visit!", but these days I hear a lot of "China is really looking up. I have high hopes for their future." This attitude has also been made really clear through the amount of sympathy expressed toward economic issues in China - in the past, I don`t think that the regular person would have really cared all that much... But now, you will hear people actually worried about whether people are suffering in China with the closing of factories, etc. And not just in an economic sense, but caring about the real people.

On the contrary... America has been criticized for out-staying its welcome many times.
Although, I guess it depends on who you mean by "they".

General attitude still negative, i.e. if you ask a person do you like Japan, chances are, it's not going to be resounding yes.

However, in practice, once they actually MEET a Japanese person, all the bad sentiments seems to go out the window and everyone gets along pretty well. I have met expat Japanese in China and the feedback I got is they get treated really well by their Chinese colleagues and everyone have a facination with their phones... anyway.

Here are a few fun facts:
- There was a large number of Japanese expats in China since the early 1900s
- Due to the war, many of them had to abandon business and go back to Japan
- Peace times come again, the Japanese are slowly coming back again to trade
- Largest expat Japanese population in the world: Shanghai (good opportunities, cheap, none of the pressures of Tokyo)
- China is Japan's largest trading partner, China needs technology, Japan wants cheap goods. Done deal.

No need to be snide. Americans aren't leaving East Asia, just as Japanese aren't leaving America. There is no slow-down to the influence the West has on the East and vice-versa. Unless you have some privy information, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Very privy indeed, lucky for me, my bomb shelter is rated for 40 megaton nuke with radiation resistance.

America as in American hegemony. Metonymy. You know, American political influences around the world and the American military overseas.

Komitsuki, if you want to talk about military occupation, talk about military occupation. When you use the words "American influence" I don't immediately think of America's military in Japan, because they "influence" they have on the cultural situation is debatable (not a central topic in most Japanese conversations).

And if you are talking politics, you picked a poor time to thing America's new president is not going to be an influential force all over the world, including Japan and East Asia.

I was under the impression that Obama was improving people's view of America, not degrading it even more.

He is. Go to Japan and you can see racks of books in Japanese about Obama. "Change" and "Yes, we can!" are the hip phrases right now. It's hard to get excited about Japanese politics, so Obama gave people something to get excited about.

I'm talking about hegemony.

In South Korea, they immediately think about American military.

Not really, sorry to say. The influential popular media in the West, left or right, is all obsessed to portray Obama very positive thanks to Bush's bigger-than-world utter failure.

Remember the early months of the Clinton era? Same old thing happening again right now.