Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaydelart
So, a Japanese student just accused me of making his/her country strange?
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No, it was originally directed at Japanese people and produced in Japanese - so it`s referring to citizens at the end.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SHAD0W
Cheeky? I think it was really harsh. Its strange for someone to wanna beat up on their own country like that.
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I thought the production was really nice, but the information given is incredibly misleading. There are reasons for most of those things that could have been introduced in order to bring attention to them - but instead it was just a bunch of facts and figures. The tone was of an infomercial, and I think the message itself wasn`t horrible... It just reminded me of those commercials selling anti-bacterial hand soaps. "Every year more and more bacteria are too strong to be fought by regular anti-bacterial soaps! So use our extra-strength version!" All the while neglecting to mention one of the reasons they are getting stronger is due to the over use of such soaps.
The reason all those disposable chopsticks come from China is that there have been a bunch of "environmental protection" movements to stop their production in Japan... The thing is, when they were produced in Japan, they were made from wood culled from managed forests to stimulate growth and to prevent overcrowding. Without being able to cull wood from the managed areas, more trees end up dying and being wasted - which is why it`s so common now to find areas in planted forests that have completely died. "Protecting" the Japanese forests has actually had the opposite effect.
The large amount of food thrown out in Japan actually has little to do with normal people and their consumption. 80% of it is food disposed of prior to sale or processing... And of that 80% I believe most of it is government action to raise the value of food. A few years back there was too much cabbage produced so to keep the market from being flooded more than two thirds of the cabbage produced was bought by the government and left to rot. You can`t try to fix a problem without having the roots and reasons brought to attention.
I don`t know. I guess I just think that a lot of these figures are brought up to make people feel responsible and change their habits... Even though those habits are a very very tiny part of the issue and there would be much more effective ways to change things.
It`s like telling someone their humming is noise pollution so they should keep it down... Even though it would be much more effective to get them to come with you to ask a neighbor to turn down the 100 speakers he has pointed at the street.