So let’s circle the wagons here folks and discuss the real overarching question:
Do you think Adam finally found true purpose in his 33 year old life by visiting the glorious Nippon land for a second time? Or will this experience once again fail to provide him with any sort of higher meaning in his life as he returns to his mediocre job at AT&T?
I’ve decided to name this question the “Consoomer Quandary”
I hate to quote Facebook inspiration crap here, but there was a quote I found there that always stuck with me which was "next fatigue." If happiness will "always" be found in the next job, next relationship, or next place you move, then you will never actually be happy. Sure you can find better situations to be sure, but you yourself will never actually be fully satisfied with anything if this is your mindset IE fixing yourself vs. expecting circumstances around you to "fix" you.
It’s like the “never meet your heroes because they’ll never live up to your expectations” thing, except his hero is a country that’s been skewed and warped in its western perception by anime, videogames, and porn.
Yeah it's ironic when people consume pop culture media from other countries and claim they "now" know the culture of a country from it. Will some culture inevitably bleed over into said media? Yes, but like also NO because the people making these products are typically countercultural themselves. It's like think about the kinds of kids who tell their parents they are 100% going to be actors, musicians, writers, comic book artists, etc. and how their parents typically react to that, and even moreso in Eastern cultures where "face" is often much more prominent. I feel the kinds of kids who push themselves into "pop culture careers" are either typically super hot (think: pop idols) or super weird, or some combo of the 2. Since the average person is just going to be a teacher, or salaryman, or engineer, or data analyst or something along those lines. And that would likely be a better representative of a "country's culture" than a manga any day.
"Feeling a lot of doubt" this guy really did think he'd get a teaching job with no teaching experience, no teaching education, and virtually no ability to hold a conversation in Japanese over in Japan, a country that takes education very seriously.
I have actually worked in international education and I still regularly visit the Reddit International Teachers subreddit and just like a day or 2 ago, someone posted in the subreddit "BUT HOW DO I GET A BETTER JOB??" Dude/dudette had like 2 years of TEFL and some certificate he got online. People were like, "Well, for starters get a teaching license because TEFL doesn't mean $%#^ here, and doesn't count for ANYTHING in the actual teaching world."
america is so awful
chibi could always join the community of creepy middle age white expats in SEA.
My personal favorite ones are the ones who complain about how America is SO AWFUL OMG THE WORST EVER but then literally live like kings/queens on the AMERICAN dollar abroad. I just saw a news story from some American lady in Spain gushing endlessly about the work culture there and I'm like "You DO know the local unemployment rate in Spain, right? Like it's a net EXPORTER of workers who can't get any job. You do know that all of that amazing work culture comes at a price to actual gainful employment to the population?" Also, the only reason you can even WORK in Spain is because of that job you got in "TERRIBLE AMERICA." Good lord.
