A year has passed already since the big controversy on YouTube regarding that idiot Logan Paul and how he ended up making himself the enemy of an entire country when he went into the so-called "suicide forest" in Japan and videoed a dead body with his friends. I had never heard of this clown before this incident.
There have been so many videos of people voicing their opinions about this guy (and don't worry, I am not going to show a picture of his dumb face). My motivation to chime in is because I have done a couple of videos of hiking in this forest. It is a beautiful place. However, I stayed on the trails and my purpose of taking videos of the forest was to shine a positive light on the forest while too many others, such as Logan Paul, intentionally focus on its gloomy aspects. I've only gone to Aokigahara forest to find beauty, not bodies. Yes, people go there to commit suicide, but the same can be said about the Golden Gate Bridge. I do know that people do not just hang themselves on a tree next to the hiking trails, so Logan Paul intentionally went off the trails to purposely look for a dead body.
Everybody knows of this incident, but this was only the tip of the iceberg with this loathsome cretin. On the morning news here in Japan, they showed the antics of Logan Paul in Japan that were even worse. He had uploaded other videos of his trip to Japan in which he behaved like a complete chimpanzee. Logan Paul videoed himself breaking the law, walking in the streets next to cars because he's too cool for sidewalks, jumping onto the backs of trucks, and he was dressed up as Pikachu and throwing a Poke-Ball at people and everyone was like, "WTF do you think you're doing?" He visited the famous Tsukiji fish market where he bought a fish and an octopus tentacle, then went around Tokyo shoving them in people's faces at department stores, pressing them against windows, and then finally when he was done with them, he just placed them on the trunk of a taxi cab and walks off. Holy crap.
He was also causing problems for being disrespectful at shrines and such, being very rude to the patrons there. I showed these videos to my wife and she was like, "Why didn't they arrest him?" And all the while he was talking to the camera as though it was Japanese people who had the problem and they were the ones who had to deal with his disgusting behavior.
But it didn't stop there. On the same morning TV show I watched here in Japan, they showed video footage from two other guys (whom I assume are Americans) who videoed themselves walking around Japan, mocking the Japanese language in such a way that rather sounded like Vietnamese (which just shows how stupid they are), bothering store clerks, and they even hoaxed a child kidnapping along a shopping alley. Their infantile behavior was just abysmal.
I have over 20 years experience with Japan between either living here or making annual visits and I am always sick of seeing foreigners---mostly Americans--- behaving in ways that would get them punched in the face in their home country. I get so many people telling me like, "Oh Greg, you are so lucky to live in Japan. Ohmygosh I'd love to live there and just lose myself in the culture, yeah." If you feel that way, you would be so angry to see how so many foreign people living here will crap all over Japan. In the previous city I taught English in, there was another English teacher from America who constantly complained about Japan. He completely refused to learn the language or adapt to the culture, so he committed one faux pas after another, which only infuriated the Japanese faculty and staff at his schools who had to deal with him, which only made things harder for himself. This, of course, caused more problems for him to bitch about. For example, there was this one time when we were getting a formal tour of the city to various businesses and such. I kept tell him to take his sunglasses off indoors and take his hands out of his pockets because these are considered extremely rude here, and he just didn't care. Like being an American gave him a free pass to have the demeanor of a total jackass. Another time, our Japanese supervisor got upset with him about something and said that whatever he was doing was completely not how Japanese people behave. So he got right up in her face and condescendingly said, "Do you see my face? I am NOT Japanese!" Such an asshole. I wasn't the only one who was glad when he quit. Then after a year or so I visited an international church with my family and THAT GUY was there with his family. He was a regular there. So, I never went back. Judging by his Twitter account, he seems to have finally moved back to America a couple of years ago. Good riddance.
His attitude is that since he was an American, he expected everyone to accommodate him instead of spending an effort on assimilating. The guy was married a Japanese woman and he could never muster the effort to appreciate and respect his wife's country. My wife is Japanese and I think she would have left me if I behaved as he did.
So, I'm married to a Japanese woman and we have a child. I am an American living in Japan and I'm going to now say something VERY controversial. DIVERSITY, by itself as a qualitative goal, SUCKS. Diversity is not something that can be prioritized; it must be natural and it must be genuine. Either it happens or it doesn't. And if you have to try to MAKE it natural, it's still artificial. You can't make it happen. Diversity will always lead to adversity unless there is HARMONY. Diversity just for the sake of diversity with a disregard to social cohesion will inevitably lead to strife. You can't just force diversity on people and expect it to be beneficial.
Here in Japan, I once had some neighbors from China. That made my neighborhood diverse, just as me living there made my neighborhood diverse. But they accumulated trash in the back of their place. They would put trash out there until it was trash day. They knew when the trash day was. They were just lacking social etiquette because they didn't care. They weren't necessarily intolerable neighbors, but there you have your diversity, right? Different cultures have different priorities. Should I have complained to the landlord? The point I am making is that diversity can neither be good nor bad on its own. But prioritizing diversity is.
And by diversity, I am NOT talking about skin color. In this case, Chinese people have pretty much the same skin tone as Japanese people do. Liberal politicians the world over get so hung up on skin tone and always throw terms around like "brown people" or "people of color" around and it sounds so derogatory and degrading. I mean, what word should I use to describe my wife's skin color? My mind isn't preoccupied with thinking about it. I need a liberal to tell me if I can call it brown or not, because apparently nobody says "yellow" anymore. This is where those who can't ever shut the hell up about DIVERSITY really need to learn how to relax and to stop compartmentalizing everyone by their skin tone and genetics and learn to appreciate people for who they are and how they contribute positively to society.
And here's something else: MULTICULTURALISM SUCKS. Japan isn't popular because it is "multicultural." Japan is popular for Japanese culture. I do not want Japan to change its culture to conform to foreign cultures. While I do believe several aspects of Japanese culture have room for improvement, Japan should not be coerced into being more accepting of the more impudent aspects of American behaviors that make me sick, and it certainly should not be forced to accept even more volatile cultures in the name of multiculturalism, such as the way Europe is being forced to accept Islamic culture that attacks women for not wearing a dehumanizing hijab and attacks anyone enjoying some alcohol or taking their pet dog for a walk.
True multiculturalism is allowing countries to have their own unique culture to share with others. But multiculturalism that is forced upon different societies is doomed to bring strife. Multiculturalism is forcing people to accept cultures that they are not comfortable with. This is different from interculturalism, which I do support. Interculturalism is basically sharing one's culture with others.
I legally immigrated to Japan nearly 7 years ago and have permanent residence. I'm not interested in "multiculturalism" because I want Japan to have its own unique identity. I'm not here to change Japan or to make it more "American." A country without its own culture will fall apart. I choose not to surround myself with only English-speakers. I don't live in an English-speaking neighborhood and I feel better off for it. It's called ASSIMILATION, the dreaded word that liberalsa think is so "racist." Well, if I'm a xenophobic white supremacist, I'm not doing a good job at it.?
I don't live here in Japan for the sake of making Japan more "diverse." I am not here to bring America to Japan to change Japanese culture. I'm here because I love Japanese culture for what it is. For my line of work, I can introduce positive aspects of my culture for educational purposes. This is interculturalism. I've long since established a healthy love/hate relationship with this country, just as I have a love/hate relationship with my home country. I am here to ADAPT to Japanese culture as best I can in the interest of harmony. I've lived in apartments in America where people are too stupid to know how to recycle, they throw loud parties late at night as they stand around shouting, "I'm so F'ing drunk!", ...fights in the parking lot, and all that sort of crap. I never see that sort of thing here.
I actually rather prefer living in less-populated areas of Japan. Whenever I visit Tokyo, store clerks and such just assume I can't speak Japanese and they treat me differently. But where I live, there aren't so many foreigners and people just treat me like anybody else. Nobody feels like they have to attempt to speak English to me. The clerks at the convenience store ask me if I have my point card, just as they would anyone else. In Tokyo, however, they don't remind me about my point card because they just assume I can't understand them.Plus they will coldly point to signs in English instead of just talking to me in Japanese. I really hate it.
There is one prevailing attitude here in Japan about diversity that does not sit well with me. There is such a focus on biracial Japanese children (called "half" or HAFU which unintentionally sounds bad)---this focus is such that biracial children are lauded about as becoming almost like some sort of ultimate standard of beauty. Like there was this children's clothing catalog here in Japan in which EVERY SINGLE CHILD model in the catalog was mixed race. While I was flipping through it, I was like, "Oh, that kid is cute. So is that one." But flipping page after page it became very apparent that whoever was making the decisions for that catalog had an AGENDA. Of course it was probably with good intentions, but it just made me think, "So, what, kids who are pure Japanese aren't welcome to be in this stupid catalog? What's wrong with being racially pure?" I do not want to see preferential treatment given to people like my daughter, nor do I want Japanese kids to feel inferior to her. That would only breed contempt and adversity.
Similarly, I see this unhealthy preoccupation among Japanese women to use cosmetic augmentations which are called "eye puchi," which are these adhesives that give their eyes an extra fold to make their eyes look wider. These women have become brainwashed into thinking that having narrow eyes isn't beautiful. I hate seeing people be made to feel inferior. I also find it unfortunate that so many black women think that they must straighten their hair out, as though they cannot be beautiful the way they are.
So yeah, my daughter is cute, but focusing on the aspect of her biracial heritage as though it's something so desirable really isn't doing her or anybody any favors. A kid just wants to fit in and not stand out, and this sort of unspoken favoritism breeds resentment. When Japanese girls are made to believe that Caucasian features are preferable, some might resent my daughter for that. It's not her fault that people make it seem like mixed race people are somehow superior!
Let's take a classroom full of Japanese school children. There may be some kids who are half Chinese or half Korean, or maybe half Filipino. They aren't going to stand out like my daughter will. Her skin color isn't quite the same as mine, but Japanese people will likely focus on her Caucasian features while Americans would likely spot her Asian features. This is normal and there's nothing wrong with that. So let's say the classroom next to hers has only pure Japanese kids. So that would mean that my daughter's class is "diverse" while the other class isn't. But now I hope you will see the danger in considering diversity as a qualitative assessment, and not just quantitative. Would you say that the class that has no diversity is somehow lacking and thereby inferior? That is absurd and unfair. What's important is that the kids get along with each other, and respect others. But let's say that there is a kid or two in my daughter's class that make comments about her being different. (And yes, this does happen.) Would putting more foreign or mixed-race kids in her classroom solve the problem? I don't think so. This might lead to tribalism, in other words the "us vs them" mentality. This is very destructive. In a conservative/libertarian point of view, you just play the cards as they lay. From a liberal progressive point of view, they would see the classroom of kids of only one ethnic background and think, "Oh, this isn't good. This will have to change." They seem to be so hung up on ethnicity and can't seem to get beyond that.
I have never heard my daughter tell me, "Oh, I just wish I had a friend who is also mixed-race like me." As long as she feels accepted, that is fine. I do not want anybody here in Japan to parade my daughter around and proclaim that she represents the face of this country's future. No, Japan should remain for Japanese people. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being biracial or multiracial, and there's nothing wrong with racial purity. Why is it that this has that become such a taboo thing to say?
People just need to appreciate themselves for who they are, and not compare themselves to that which they are not and not try to be that which they are not and cannot be. Does that sound like common sense? Of course it does, and it's why people are getting so sick of these batshit insane leftists. All of this trans-racial, trans-gender, trans-disabiled, trans-age, or trans-species crap is getting out of hand. Like that guy who had himself physically altered to look Korean. Or the hypocrisy of listening to some shitlib who exalts the idea of being trans-gender who then will trash weaboos in another conversation. You know, weaboos are those Japanese wannabes who only know of the country as filtered through anime and manga, and they develop their own vernacular of poorly-pronounced Japanese words. If someone realizes how disingenuous it is when weaboos pretend to be Japanese when they in fact don't know crap about what it really means to be Japanese, then they really shouldn't be embracing some cross-dressing weirdo guy who calls himself some disgusting name like "Pussy Fishbasket" and acts like an imbecile because that's how he thinks women are like. And competing in womens' sports and beating them all because they are more able-bodied It's insulting and degrading to actual women, not to mention completely disingenuous. It's phony. If I put on women's clothing and claim to "identify" as a woman, when I've never once experienced the pains of birth, let alone a menstrual cramp, that'd be such an insult to actual women. X and Y chormosomes aren't fascism; they're science. Wearing a dress doesn't make a man a woman anymore than spending all day in a garage makes him a car.
So the thing about diversity is that if people feel the need to call attention to it, then it is not genuine diversity but artificial diversity. And multiculturalism is great on a personal level. It's good to be interested in foreign cultures. If that's not your thing, then that's fine too. Like, lately in Japan I've seen a lot of Navajo designs on clothing and home decor. I'm not a Native American, but I am from Arizona, and when I see this stuff I feel not only nostalgia but a sense of pride and ownership. In a way, it's a bit of my own culture. And this speaks volumes about how incredibly deranged leftists are in this social justice movment in America. They demand diversity, yet they scream "CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!" when they see a white kid wearing dreadlocks or a white person running a Mexican food joint. They can't have it both ways, and this is why they ought to be disregarded and mocked.
I don't like political correctness because it's essentially an authoritarian destruction of liberty. That's a separate issue. But asshats like Logan Paul need to learn that you can't just visit a country and crap all over it with their superiority complex. He came to Japan and acted in an extremely abrasive way to wards Japanese people. Technically, that's diversity, right? Diversity should not be considered a "strength." Because when people assign value to diversity, they therefore make judgments of superiority and inferiority and that is just wrong.
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