6 rants tagged.
In a country obsessed with silence and reading the room, the Japanese salaryman sneeze detonates like an artillery shell on the 7:42 Yamanote. Nobody flinches. Nobody comments. It is the loudest permitted sound in the quietest culture on Earth.
Thirteen years of collecting LINE accounts from strangers who never message again. A field report on the great tatemae friendship performance, and why I've finally stopped pretending.
Japanese online reviews are a masterclass in tatemae: glowing paragraphs of praise attached to a savage 2/5 rating. Welcome to the most passive-aggressive scoring system on Earth.
Understanding tatemae vs honne is the single most important bit of cultural knowledge you can have in Japan. It is the difference between living here and being managed here.
Why does Japanese food culture treat British food like a war crime when nobody here has actually eaten any of it? A rant about the smuggest culinary inferiority complex on earth.
Japanese passive-aggressive tutting is a national discipline performed by old men in stations. Here's what happens when you turn round and ask one of them why he's doing it.