China or Japan ?

[DivineBled]

Originally Posted by icarus5

Tokyo or Shanghai for small trip?

icarus

Shanghai. hands down

[clairebear]

Well, Chaina isnt a country so I choose Japan.

[DivineBled]

Originally Posted by noodle

YOU ROCK.... haha, i like how sometimes, every once in a while someone with some sense posts a good response!! Thank you

agreed, you indeed rock.

[DivineBled]

Originally Posted by Rogozhin

To be honest, I'd probably go to China because I was meant to go there a few years ago with my Chinese class but the trip was cancelled (teacher became ill, turned out she had cancer). It'd be awesome to test some of my Chinese.

Same here. only when my class was supposed to go, a illness had broken out in China.

[anrakushi]

bit late onto this topic but since it is alive again...

China hands down would win. I have been to china 3 times, with the longest stay being 2 months. I have just been studying for a year in Japan and while at home resting now i will return to japan in a few month to work. so i have a bit of experience in both places as a foreigner.

I have never been to Shanghai (except for one night while changing to domestic plans to fly to Wuhan) or Beijing and to be honest I'm not terribly interested. I spent my time getting into the less touristy places to get a real feel of Chinese life, I hit the country towns, went on tours with chinese people in chinese etc. The people are wonderful there and so kind and giving. There is so much to see from deserts to wonderful rivers flowing through lush green limestone peaks. then you have the very modern things to the ancient. lets not forget china has a 10,000 year history. I got to witness the army, the poor, the pick pockets (many of those can be found around markets), the rich, the young and the old. rarely a westerner in sight at the places i went. it is a magnificent country and i love to study it's rich history and culture and i look forward to going back there again.

Don't get me wrong, Japan is incredible too but it doesn't give me that same feeling as China for a holiday destination. Japan is my choice for somewhere to work at least for the next few years, once China has had more growth and their currency increases in value and so on then I would look at working there.

I think there are many people who are coming to this japan forum who are not very well educated in Japan, let alone Asia so it is not the best place to come and ask for opinions. Luckily there are a few like some of those who posted earlier who clearly show an interest in the region beyond it's media and fashion.

[ryochonan1]

You are so right, this is one of the things I hate about alot of people interested in Japan, they for some reason think china is boring. Many here are so uneducated about asia. this is one of the reasons why I want to go to Japan so that I can show them that we are not all some anime obsessed, know it all about Japan loser.

I am sorry some people in this thread are so ignorant.

If I had to pick, probably china as I think the range in scenery is so great and that some towns look like they are still living in the past while the big cities look like they are from the future

Originally Posted by jasonbvr

A forum called japanforum is not really the best place to post this question. For starters, a lot of people on this forum have a) never been to Japan and are totally fixated on the image that Japan and the media make it seem to be or b) have never been to either Japan or China and seem to have a lot of badly formed misconceptions.

My short answer though, go to China. I went to school in Beijing and can tell you without any doubts that if you want an adventure, go to China. I live in Japan now and honestly it does not have the same sort of adventure feel to it.

If you asked me where should you live and work, Japan or China, I would say Japan. And I would say Japan because it is safe and convenient. Let me do a point by point comparison for you.

Buying things in China is always fun because at a lot of street vendors and out in the countryside you can argue your way to a better price. It takes a little bit of language skill, but in the end I always felt like I made a connection with them. In Japan, they are polite and everything but completely impersonal. (Except for the small bars and restaurants, some of them are really friendly.)

Traveling. Japan has convenient and safe transportation, but it will cost you an arm and a leg to get anywhere, especially by taxi. In China it is cheap, often a little more crowded and seems a bit dangerous. I would give quite a lot to be back in Beijing running red lights and passing a bus with oncoming traffic with some crazy taxi driver asking me questions he knows I barely understand.

I am going to have to cut this short but to sum it up, go to China first. And try to get out of the cities if you can.

ps~ As for the comment about Japanese girls being more attractive than Chinese, please stop watching AV idol videos. Just because China does not have a huge porn industry (because it is illegal) does not mean there are not beautiful Chinese women. And let's just get this down for the record, foreigners with Asian fetishes please stay home.

[Amnell]

Originally Posted by Acidreptile

Dude is better everyone be paid the same amount of money than a professional football or basketball player wins a thousand times more than a doctor for example.It is only too unfair.About anything else I agree with you.

*sigh*

Are you from Europe?

The reason that football players make more than brain surgeons is because they are public figures. Our (Western) culture revolves around those in the lime light (actors, musicians, athletes, politicians). People are interested by those things, and are willing to pay to know all there is to know all the time.

Not everyone needs a brain surgeon.

If you ever take an economics class, it's a simple equation of supply and demand. There is more demand for athletes, so the athletes get marketed and thus make more money. The doctor's demand isn't nearly as high because he fills an occassional need, and so has a smaller spot in the market.

That's Capitalism for ya. Why is it better than communism?

You said that it suxx0rz that football players make more than doctors. Well, by the same reasoning, a doctor should make more than an auto mechanic, right? But what if the mechanic and the doctor are getting paid the same? That's not fair, either!

Another economic thing to consider:

Having everyone getting paid the same leads to mass depression. No one feels like their work is getting them anywhere. Or, the know that it doesn't matter whether they do their best or do their worst, they'll still get paid the same, so why put in the extra effort? Either way, the quality of goods goes down and things start to collapse.

Why do you think we had that communist scare during the cold war? It wasn't JUST because we were fighting them. We knew (then, at least) that such economic philosophies are not feasible.

I wouldn't mind visiting China, but I would never dream of living there.

Capitalism ftw.

[SSJup81]

It's difficult to choose, to be honest. I've wanted to visit China, just like Japan and other countries, since I was very young. I guess for this poll, though, I'd have to go with Japan since I'm studying up more on it and its language lately.

Either way, I would hope to visit both countries someday. Who knows, maybe one day, if it turns out it was meant for me to live in Japan (and to be honest, I have no desire to reside in a place like central Tokyo), I'll take a trip to China (Shanghai or Hong Kong). At least it'll be closer to me then, compared to where I am now in the states. lol

[ToshiXeero]

Originally Posted by Kaicui

tyvm!!!!! lets knock some sense into these gaijin/lao wai's heads

because personally i am sick and tired of these wai guo ren外国人 whoes probably never been out of their own damn country like over 50 percent of all americans to judge on another country which is on the other side of the world. You americans/europeans are making ur decisions upon media influence. If u don't even know the cultural. try not to make certain statements. Dont just say "JAPAN IS BETTER" with absolute zero pros and cons stated tyvm

First: Laowai is a racist term.

Second: I am from Taiwan. There are 1 million Taiwanese living in China, investing there or doing other business. So we get much first hand info about China. I don't deny China could be a nice place, one of my best travel experience was to China. But compared to Japan China is still backward and uncivilized, and it will take at least 100 years to catch up with Japan.

[clairebear]

There's absolutely no need to get angry over this topic. Geez ¬_¬