Quirky video shows the 'real Japan'
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I watched the video. A lot of the "strange" facts are seemingly blown out of proportion for effect, or simply gloss over details that would change the tone in which they are presented.
- Quips on Japan's water and food consumption/waste were compared not to consumption/waste of other countries, but to how many people die from poor water supply and food shortage. You could pick any other major economic power and cast a nearly identical picture; the comparison is meaningless. The sound byte about children under 5 dying from starvation was of particularly poor taste; it's not solely Japan's fault that people die from starvation, and Japan is actually an incredibly charitable country (with widespread programs, like collecting all those billions of bottle caps to help produce vaccines for children in 3rd world countries).
- Japan uses incredible amounts of disposable chopsticks (wari-bashi), but the majority of those chopsticks are made from scrap wood (the wood left over when cutting trees to form lumber). This is wood that would otherwise simply be discarded. And of course the wood is sourced from China; Japan simply doesn't have any significant landmass as the island it is, to develop its own forests. And yes, poor panda; but not because of Japan -- China is already busy creating its own environmental disasters such that deforestation is among the least of their immediate concerns.
I know I sound like an apologist, but so often do people like to portray Japan as "strange", when in reality Japan is not so strange after all, and it is the person who has (un)intentionally ignored a whole host of facts in order to arrive at the conclusion of "strange".
- Quips on Japan's water and food consumption/waste were compared not to consumption/waste of other countries, but to how many people die from poor water supply and food shortage. You could pick any other major economic power and cast a nearly identical picture; the comparison is meaningless. The sound byte about children under 5 dying from starvation was of particularly poor taste; it's not solely Japan's fault that people die from starvation, and Japan is actually an incredibly charitable country (with widespread programs, like collecting all those billions of bottle caps to help produce vaccines for children in 3rd world countries).
- Japan uses incredible amounts of disposable chopsticks (wari-bashi), but the majority of those chopsticks are made from scrap wood (the wood left over when cutting trees to form lumber). This is wood that would otherwise simply be discarded. And of course the wood is sourced from China; Japan simply doesn't have any significant landmass as the island it is, to develop its own forests. And yes, poor panda; but not because of Japan -- China is already busy creating its own environmental disasters such that deforestation is among the least of their immediate concerns.
I know I sound like an apologist, but so often do people like to portray Japan as "strange", when in reality Japan is not so strange after all, and it is the person who has (un)intentionally ignored a whole host of facts in order to arrive at the conclusion of "strange".
