The Internet Is Fun Again

0. Forward

The bulk of this post was written during the peak of the cultural exchange. So if you’re about to say “ok, but it’s not that way now” then just hold your horses, we’ll talk about that at the end.

1. The Event

I opened Twitter to look to see what a couple of my Twitter friends were up to and see if there was anything interesting to comment on. I do that periodically, I’ve talked about it before. A lot. Usually Twitter is kinda trash. Someone’s arguing with someone else about something, some stupid asshole is trying to tell us there will be no jobs in 6 months for the third or fourth year in a row. That sort of thing.

Not so on this particular day. There’s some Japanese guy with an auto-translated post. It’s a backyard barbecue, a big one. There are some guys gathered around an extremely large homemade grill covered in steaks. He simply says that he thinks it’s cool and wants to experience an American barbecue sometime.¹

This isn’t actually the start of the conversation though. It’s a reply to a lovely little scene from a Japanese artist. This artist sometimes draws small pictures with a little story attached to them. Things that they observe in the world around them. This one is a story about how excited some US servicemen were about the bacon at a Japanese yakiniku restaurant.²

Everyone is very excited about all of this, and they’re sharing barbecue stories, invitations, and in general being extremely wholesome about it. Japanese folks are initially very curious about American barbecue, but then they feel the need to “fight back” and start sharing amazing looking Japanese food. And then people start sharing basically anything and everything they are interested in.

American cars are also pretty big over there, apparently. And not just in the sense of “too big for our streets”, but there is plenty of that too. There are clubs for people that appreciate the Chevy Malibu of all things. And they joke about how they need to park it crookedly and keep McDonalds bags in the back.

I’ve also seen the sentiment multiple times that they don’t generally consider New York or California to be American. They see those regions as being just kinda more of the same as Europe. What they are interested in is the “midwest” of America. They’re a little bit confused about the names of things, because they mostly mean Texas when they say that. I believe the confusion comes from a combination of “western” movies being set there, and from Minnesota and friends having a region name that doesn’t make any sense to anyone who’s seen a map.

Basically Japan thinks cowboys are cool and us having them is pretty unique. Which… you know… fair enough. I really like Tombstone too. The movie, not the pizza. The movie is great, the pizza is ehh. It turns out “western” culture is big over there. They basically cosplay as cowboys and have revolver spinning and quickdraw competitions that are legitimately impressive. The Japanese people have applied their stereotypical diligence to mastering these quirky hobbies, and it’s incredible.

2. Social Media

This is what the internet is supposed to be. This is what social media should be. They feel it too. I’ve seen a ton of posts from Japanese folks saying they are so glad their timelines are full of meat and cars and whiskey instead of politics and bickering. We’re all learning so much about what everyone has been up to lately.

I went into this whole crazy thing with an above average knowledge of Japan because I took Japanese in high school. Part of that was learning about the country and culture, but that was a long time ago now. And we mostly focused on the past there. I learned that a lot of things are the same. They think of meals from a standpoint of “what do I eat with rice” as opposed to thinking of rice as a side dish. They are still kinda shy and humble. Some of them were a little freaked out by all the attention.

Other things have changed though. Apparently they’ve been under the impression that we don’t like them. As in the average Japanese person thinks that the average American looks down on, or dislikes, them to some degree. So they showed up and showed how they respect our food and culture, in a time when we’ve kinda been told that we don’t have any culture by a lot of the world. And we responded like Americans usually do when someone polite shows up and says “hey you guys are doing cool stuff, we appreciate it.” We reciprocated. We showed them our cool stuff, encouraged them to show us theirs.

Now there’s a guy in Oklahoma making videos where he tries foods that the Japanese love, but have a reputation for being a little difficult for the American palate.³ And there’s Japanese people trying to figure out how and where to try barbecuing, or where to get some barbecue. Apparently their morning news show just talked about an uptick in reservations at restaurants and shared the illustration that started this all, as well as parts of an American food YouTuber’s barbecue video. Someone also shared the old Southern practice of putting peanuts in Coke, they’re really enjoying that too. They have been experimenting with other kinds of soda, seasonings, and adding alcohol.

It’s not all wine and roses, there’s trolls on both sides of the ocean. And there are the usual attempts by what the Japanese call “impression zombies” to capitalize on the trend for engagement. But they are generally being drowned out by a mutual respect and admiration. We have a ton in common with them. And the Japanese sense of humor is amazing. They seem to mostly tend towards dry humor, and they’re extremely witty. Sometimes they post something a little inscrutable, but humor usually translates very poorly across linguisting boundaries, so it’s kinda incredible that they are able to make jokes land at all.

Everyone is extremely aware of the fact that machine translation is at play here, and commenting on how their writing has changed as a result. We’re all trying to be extra clear and keep the language simple. And we’re enjoying learning new terminology. Someone was trying to explain food porn but worried that the translation was wrong until everyone re-assured them that it’s a valid and non-offensive way to describe the current phenomenon. For my part I have particularly enjoyed “food terror” and “cheese violence” as terms. The former being the concept of endless food posts making you hungry, and the latter seeming to indicate an excessive amount of cheese in a dish.

3. Winds of Change

It’s easy to dismiss this all as the “honeymoon phase” that everything goes through. There is for sure an element of that. The cultural exchange is new and shiny, and some of that luster has already started to wear off. But everyone is aware of that. This feels kinda different. For one thing, a lot of people have done a very good job of dispelling the myth that we dislike Japan and her people as a general rule. And they have been extremely clear in return that they appreciate us as well. People are talking, and finding common ground.

America and Japan have been friends “on paper” for a long time. Cities have a history of gifting one another trees. But now ordinary people are learning what kind of people live on the other side of the ocean. And it’s not being forced. I’m seeing posts where they show some jackass on Tick Tock being loud or disruptive, and they’re saying “we don’t like these kinds of people” or asking if we actually think this is funny. And the replies are full of Americans saying we don’t like that sort of behavior either. I believe them, I find the behavior distasteful and I know other people do too, they’ve complained about the same sort of thing. We’ve also talked a lot about the elephant in the room. World War Two.

It turns out they have had a sense of needing to be ashamed or participate in humiliation rituals regarding Pearl Harbor. The fact that they can feel this way despite the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki being culturally filed away as more of a thing that happened and was dealt with is astonishing to my American mind. Apparently the president made some sort of joke about Pearl Harbor, and it sent a shock wave of relief through the Japanese public. A sense of being able to put it behind them. It was incredibly surprising to me, because other than an understanding of the importance in world history that Pearl Harbor played I never really thought about it. Certainly not as a reason to dislike a country full of people, who had no say in the matter, almost a century later.

But that’s got a lot to do with why this feels different. For some reason both sides feel like we can ask these hard questions without ruining this. We can ask, and we can listen. It feels like both sides are a little uncomfortable talking about it, but that we both wanted to face that elephant head on so that we could put the matter behind us. I think this mutual honesty and desire to face reality are both key ingredient in why the exchange is working so well.

I don’t pretend to know the future, but I feel in my bones that things are changing. This event is just the latest example of the “sea change” that I’ve been feeling. I’m not really sure how to fully describe it, almost like people are deciding to take the reins in their own lives a little more and work towards building a more hopeful world. It’s little things like deciding they’d rather talk about barbecue with Japan than argue with someone about political crap. But small changes are exciting! Real change is brought about by small changes over time, and small changes can be absorbed by humans much easier than big ones.

4. What Do?

I intentionally let this post marinate a little bit to see how things turned out. I expected things to slow down a little bit as the newness of it all wore off, and it has, slightly. The algorithm is pushing less Japanese content now as people’s interest has waned a little bit. I’m still seeing plenty of Japanese folks sharing cool models, cool cars, and delicious looking food though. I keep interacting with those posts to reinforce the fact that I want more positive content.

I have also followed a bunch of Japanese accounts that are super funny and/or extremely talented at model making and mini painting (also things I am interested in). I’m going to keep chatting with these folks the same way I do with other folks on social media. I know other folks have done the same, because I still see their replies. I actually consider this to be the best possible outcome. If it was just a momentary curiosity we were all going to forget then I wouldn’t be seeing this sort of thing.

Twitter is slightly less lousy, people have made friends. It’s been a good couple of weeks on the internet.