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Comment by eksith | Hacker News Reader

Let's look at it from another perspective.

Why are 20 somethings without jobs, with minimal face-to-face social skills, average to poor grades and therefore minimal career prospects, confined to their homes when a hyper-competitive, youth loving, cute/adorable/flashy/shiny-thing loving society awaits them outside?

When the alternative is to be involved in the antithesis of your own persona, I can imagine why the slightly less horrifying self-imposed withdrawal is still more attractive than the slightly more horrifying "outside". Despite the blatantly obvious effect it may have on your life.

Source: 2 Close pals in Shiogama living together (one who had to deal with the other's hikikomori ways).

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Indeed, the whole flashy/noisy outside world in Japan can become very alienating sometimes. Sometimes in weekends in Japan the only thing I want to do is to stay away from other people.

Yes that sounds about right, it's horrible to not have space.

There's a whole other side to Japan than the flashy/noisy side of Tokyo.

One of the start ups who frequents HN lives in Japan's country side and he's written some interesting blogs and comments on here about how he can go days without seeing another human aside his wife.

But sadly the side of Japan that seems to be exported the most is the futuristic, over-populated scenes from Tokyo and thus many foreigners assume that the whole of the nation is like it.

Who talked about Tokyo ? I dont even live there. There are many places outside of Tokyo where it's full of people too.

I appreciate that, but I referenced Tokyo as that's often the first place people outside of Japan think of (like how people think of London when they think of Britain, or Paris when they think of France)

  >Japan that seems to be exported the most is the futuristic, over-populated scenes from Tokyo...

Flashy loving != Flashy itself.

Shiogama, for example, is primarily centered around the fishing industry. You can imagine what my friend was compelled to get into when he had his heart set elsewhere. Since the tsunami cut deep into the family income, he was a little more accepting of their needs and slowly, but surely, he's growing out of it. It may take years for him to fully integrate into society though.

Also, people need to stop thinking of Tokyo as a "city". It's big and varied enough to be a "county" in the Western sense.

> Flashy loving != Flashy itself.

I was only quoting the previous commenter there :)

> Shiogama, for example, is primarily centered around the fishing industry. You can imagine what my friend was compelled to get into when he had his heart set elsewhere. Since the tsunami cut deep into the family income, he was a little more accepting of their needs and slowly, but surely, he's growing out of it. It may take years for him to fully integrate into society though.

That was actually my point. That there's a whole side to Japan that isn't like the western culture perceives.

> Also, people need to stop thinking of Tokyo as a "city". It's big and varied enough to be a "county" in the Western sense.

To be fair, that's true for many large cities - even in the west.

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