Moving to Tokyo

[Professor Smooth]

My wife accepted a pretty exciting government gig 500 miles away, in Tokyo. She was approved for security clearance yesterday. The moving guys are coming on Sunday. She starts her job in two weeks. And I'll be following...in four months.

I think this might actually drive me crazy.

[Kaylee]

My wife accepted a pretty exciting government gig 500 miles away, in Tokyo. She was approved for security clearance yesterday. The moving guys are coming on Sunday. She starts her job in two weeks. And I'll be following...in four months.

I think this might actually drive me crazy.

It sucks you'll be far away for a while

Tokyo is ******* amazing, though. I miss it every day! Very exciting

[Hound]

Can someone sort me a move out to America, please?

[bumblemusprime]

Sorry, bud. On the good side, I am coming up on winter break, so I'll finally send you some script for those videos and you can make them to your heart's content...

[Professor Smooth]

Sorry, bud. On the good side, I am coming up on winter break, so I'll finally send you some script for those videos and you can make them to your heart's content...

That'll be us remembering the good times while Dark Cybertron is going on, yes?

[Computron]

Can someone sort me a move out to America, please?

Where exactly do you wanna go?

[Hound]

Can someone sort me a move out to America, please?

Where exactly do you wanna go?

Anywhere that will have me

Man I'd love to live in San Francisco or anywhere in California #GayStereoTypeAndProud

[bumblemusprime]

Can someone sort me a move out to America, please?

Where exactly do you wanna go?

Anywhere that will have me

Man I'd love to live in San Francisco or anywhere in California #GayStereoTypeAndProud

Come to Washington! Weather is gay and rainy.

[Kaylee]

Can someone sort me a move out to America, please?

Where exactly do you wanna go?

Anywhere that will have me

Man I'd love to live in San Francisco or anywhere in California #GayStereoTypeAndProud

You surprise me. Meaning no disrespect to our American brothers, the USA seems to veer wildly from being slightly conservative to really, really conservative...

[Computron]

You surprise me. Meaning no disrespect to our American brothers, the USA seems to veer wildly from being slightly conservative to really, really conservative...

It depends where you go. Urban areas almost uniformly tend to be quite liberal. Heck, Vermont has a single payer health care system. Its the rural areas and/or the South that tend to be conservative. Its just that our conservatives tend to be really loud about their opinions.

[Professor Smooth]

You surprise me. Meaning no disrespect to our American brothers, the USA seems to veer wildly from being slightly conservative to really, really conservative...

It depends where you go. Urban areas almost uniformly tend to be quite liberal. Heck, Vermont has a single payer health care system. Its the rural areas and/or the South that tend to be conservative. Its just that our conservatives tend to be really loud about their opinions.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that what is considered "liberal" in the US, is still fairly conservative by many European standards.

[Hound]

I find it hard to articulate my love for America.

Perhaps it's the novelty or the sense of adventure every time I go there.

Maybe it's because I feel a sense of belonging I seldom feel at home. I feel gutted to my core whenever it's time to leave.

I appreciate the religion and the politics and stuff are pretty ******, but it's never been a problem in the places I have been before.

[Computron]

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that what is considered "liberal" in the US, is still fairly conservative by many European standards.

Oh that is quite true, but even then, there is a substantial part of the nation that is truly progressive. It just doesn't get in the news.

I find it hard to articulate my love for America.

Perhaps it's the novelty or the sense of adventure every time I go there.

Maybe it's because I feel a sense of belonging I seldom feel at home. I feel gutted to my core whenever it's time to leave.

I appreciate the religion and the politics and stuff are pretty ******, but it's never been a problem in the places I have been before.

Where have you visited? Northern California is crazy awesome. (San Francisco, Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe etc) Virginia and North Carolina are just gorgeous, and Chicago is the best damn city in this nation.

Not that I am biased.

There is a lot to love about America despite its flaws. Millenials are generally awesome people who probably are the first truly race/gender/sexual orientation blind generation in American history. No doubt there are some serious problems in our country, but by and large it's rather friendly.

[bumblemusprime]

I live right in Almost-Canada, and much of the liberal state concern from there bleeds over into our politics.

Which is not to say the conservatives aren't horrifying. The problem isn't so much that we lack liberalism. We have it in spades. But we share the country with gun-toting Jesus freaks who want the gays to just plain go away so we can get the Don Draper era right back. These guys were raised with the idea that American conservative values should run the world, and have since WW2. Also raised with the idea that Merka won that war single-handed, and we need a good war like that one back. I can go on and on.

Problem is, a lot of the time these people are our own bloody families. I can either disown my sister for listening to Glenn Beck, or love her anyway. That means I try to be tolerant of people who believe the most damaging **** ever shat out of a pundit's mouth.

[Shanti418]

Yep, all that is true. Like most of the world, urban centers in the US are more liberal and tolerant, rural, small town areas less so. Because we're so geographically isolated from anyone else and each other - unlike Europe, where everyone has HAD to learn to live with each other on some level and there's all kinds of history about the negative effects of what happens when you don't get along at different historical epochs - we've still got strains of jinogism, xenophobia and isolationism that, as bumble said, we have to learn to deal with.

Because the US ("America" refers to continents, and I think we've done enough colonizing throughout them that we shouldn't also steal their name) DOES tend to be center right, US liberalism is usually constructed in the negative and thus does come off as a bit lame and milquetoast.

Comps is right that there are plenty of US people that could get their "I'm A Liberal" card in Europe but you don't hear about them (because they don't have representation in government: Thanks, 2 Party System!), Comps is NOT right about millenials (who may be more inclusive but are far from free of endorsing and reproducing systems of oppression) and Chicago (where it's freezing, the sports teams are cursed, and the pizza is blasphemous[/jonstewart]).

I also would have to disagree with bumble that we have liberalism "in spades," although I'm sure I would feel more like that if I was in the Pacific Northwest as well. My main problem with mainstream US Liberalism is that it's allergic to a economic materialist perspective. Again, unlike Europe: We have no history of "powers that be" screwing us over. WE have always been the government (so goes the story), not monarchs. We have always imagined ourselves as a "classless" society. Hence no strong history of labor unionization, no true critique of modern capitalism. (And now I'm speaking more to post FDR United States) Somebody goes "there's 99% and there's 1%" and here its revelatory, it's transgressive, but I imagine to most European liberals it would be like, "Yeah, people with the money have the power and they're operating in their own interests. No s***." Essentially, the United States liberals and conservatives both buy into the idea of the United States as this amazingly meritocratic society which dulls the blade that could sharpen our critique of social inequality and that critique is what has helped European nations foster a more progressive liberalism. Another point of this that I don't have time to get into is the fact that "English" and "German" mean something. Why not take care of your fellow Brits through a health care system or general social welfare? Here, we have no real ethnicity - or increasingly culture - to tie us together, so when it comes to helping out Random Other Citizen, people are much more selfish and racist.

[bumblemusprime]

Interesting discussion, and I can go on.

I think that the ethnicity/race thing tends to be very pronounced here--maybe that's because, unlike most white people in America, I'm significantly in the minority at my workplace. The conservative white hegemony has to have a way to write off the marginalized. When you sleep in a million-dollar mansion, you don't really want to invest in Pine Ridge, or North Charlotte, or Watts. So they focus on public assistance programs, and characterize those programs as counter to the idea of the American self-made man. It's an easy answer and a lot of people take it. I know lots of people who bitch about welfare queens while they're using their food stamps to feed their four kids, after two years of unemployment.

Actually, that's my wife's family. Remember what I said about relatives?

I've never expatriated (should have applied to that job in Canada) but I feel that the US has a particularly good way of inducing self-loathing in its working classes with this myth of the self-made men. You are still dirt-poor after years of working? Work harder. You're still an adjunct when you should be a tenured professor? Write more papers and do more presentations.

That strain of thought creates a society where it's considered unpatriotic just to talk about the welfare of the overall state, and "socialism" is a dirty word to a lot of people.

[Computron]

and the pizza is blasphemous[/jonstewart]).

SIR! You have offended me! To the field of honor!

You are right that Millenials haven't completely rejected the systems that got us into this mess, but I think it is fair to say that at least we're moving in the right direction. The occupy movement was primarily millenial driven, and hopefully that attitude will lead to a moderating of this virulent strand of Ayn Rand-ism that seems to be infesting our politics.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
—John Rogers

Fundamentally there is a huge empathy problem in the States. (Obviously not just a U.S. problem but still) Lots of people were born on third base and think they hit a triple. There is no self-reflection on just how much sacrifice other people did to put you in the position you needed to be in order to succeed. (Whether it is public schools, roads, police, clean water etc)

That attitude is compounded by a conservative "news" media that flogs stories about people abusing welfare, food stamps, Medicaid or any other public assistance program and then clearly implying that everyone on those systems is just as corrupt and "those people" are wasting your money.

It doesn't need to be said that "those people" are implied to all be minorities even though statistically they are most likely poor white people from Appalachia.

It can be really depressing to see a politician attack NPR (Public Radio) or Food Stamps as a dire waste of government funds, but then turn around and authorize a tax cut many hundreds of times larger that only affects those making millions of dollars a year, utterly guts the budget and does so with a straight face.

That strain of thought creates a society where it's considered unpatriotic just to talk about the welfare of the overall state, and "socialism" is a dirty word to a lot of people.

I love that socialism is now a naughty word. I love even more that it is assumed it is a tautological truth that socialism is bad because, well, it's socialism. Duh.

I guess these people want to live in a Shadowrun world were the police are privatized, you pave your own roads and your citizenship is dependent on what corporation you work for. All in the name of Freedom.

[Professor Smooth]

My wife leaves for Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.

I thought I was alright with it. And I'm really excited for her. But when the enormity of the very concept of being alone for the next four months hit me, it hit hard.

My situation now (job, etc) would have been unthinkable before I got married. I teach pre-school (and pre-pre-school) nearly every day. I play Santa at the mall. I *smile*. And I don't drink every ****ing day. And whenever I start to get carried away with whatever bull**** catches my fancy, she finds a way to keep me from going too far overboard.

Vs right before I got married where, somehow, I managed to drink frankly laughable amounts of booze daily, befriend a fairly well known yakuza group, and wound up as a bar tender on my days off.

I REALLY like my current situation, and I'm kind of terrified I'm going to find myself back in the previous one if left alone for the next third of a year.

[angloconvoy]

Did you make the move safely?

[Professor Smooth]

Did you make the move safely?

I did, thanks!

It's incredibly stressful, but I'm back with my wife.

[angloconvoy]

Good stuff. I guess we're practically neighbours now then (well, Chiba's not exactly Tokyo but it is Kanto). Which area are you in?

[Professor Smooth]

I live in Kawasaki and work in Akihabara.