beerface702 wrote:
Japan is awesome
dunno if it's a utopia. i spent 5 years there. and i must say i would move back in a minute.
i was younger..left when i was 16..but still i remeber it being just really awesome, very friendly people. good economy, great education system, no overspending on military, crime levels that are some of the lowtest in the world, including 80% of European countries..
plus they have great toy and hobby brands..
People are friendly, but when I understood the language better (this is in my case, I don't know if you can speak Japanese or not) I found that they were just as racist and stupid as anywhere else. The economy is based upon feudalistic taxation and archaic distribution channels making everything three times more expensive than it needs to be, the military is the second most expensive in the world (next to the US), crime levels are low but are also among the most unreported in the world (the police are incompetent boobs, though tend to be very nice), the laws enacted allow for 30 day detentions without any access to the outside world, there is no jury system, the conviction rate is higher than 99% because evidence is based upon what the cops can make up in time for trial, women make less than 60% what men do, ad infinitum.
Japan is probably the industrialized nation FURTHEST from utopia, though it does look great on the surface.
This all being said, I like it. You just can't trust the cops, shouldn't pay taxes, and don't bother voting because the same party always wins, but, it ain't that much different than anywhere else in terms of culture.
Utopia=Prince Edward Island.