EPTAnd... I'm going to put it like this: most people who praise japanese culture usually know very little about it and what they do know is often superficial. I'd recommend you read up about cultures of both countries before you make your choice. Read up as in a book from a library, not on the Internet.
China or Japan - Page 4
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Birthday
17 Posts
And... I'm going to put it like this: most people who praise japanese culture usually know very little about it and what they do know is often superficial. I'd recommend you read up about cultures of both countries before you make your choice. Read up as in a book from a library, not on the Internet. | ||
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Roffles
Pitcairn19291 Posts
The way I see it, both languages are probably equally as hard, the culture is gonna be equally as different as what you're used to, and pretty much everything we're talking about is gonna be a drastic change whether you move to Japan or China. | ||
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crazeman
664 Posts
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On September 24 2010 14:21 Cambium wrote: Overall, I think Japan will be less of cultural shock to you than China. Maybe it's just me, but this is actually a negative for me. I'd much rather live in a place where my limits are pushed and I have to always be quick on my feet rather than a place that's comfortable. Of course both Japan and China will be a bit of a shock but I suspect, like you said, that China is more of one. Dirtier, stranger, probably more dangerous. Then again, living on a college campus might not be very different in either country. I guess another thing to pay attention to is what is college culture like in each place. I have no clue, but I'm sure the culture at colleges and universities is much different than in the rest of society. | ||
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ParasitJonte
Sweden1768 Posts
For me personally, I would have problems living in China. But Chinese will be much more useful than japanese. The problem with Japan is that their economy is not doing good and their population is shrinking and getting older. If you're interested in technology however I still think Japan would be the most interesting country. They have a lot of top notch research and very successfull companies. | ||
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x2fst
1272 Posts
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Deleted User 37864
780 Posts
I suggest going to Japan to study. Japan is much cleaner and developed. College is a breeze there too. Basically, China is a great place for shopping, but horrible place to live. Japan is too expensive to buy anything, but so fun to live at. | ||
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ioldarnech
France36 Posts
Don't listen to the cultural shock b/s. Especially from people who haven't lived there or haven't learned the language. What is true though is that China still has a lot of poverty which can be quite shocking to an European, but isn't as bad as India for that matter. When I first went to Japan I could neither read nor speak Japanese, so I did feel like an illiterate idiot trying to find my way but total cultural immersion fixes that very quickly. Japan really is expensive though. English is next to useless in Japan so you really should spend 3-6 months learning the basics if you want a smooth, easy start. I married a Japanese girl so I'm biased but I'd chose Japan over China anytime for a long stay. But to be honest, China is so vast, it's a bit like asking : which is best, Poland or Russia? What I can say is that, for having spent quality time in Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Osaka and having visited a lot of Japan, its a great country. I like the south (Kyushu) better. The excess of formality is tiresome but they don't really expect foreigners to totally conform to their social code so, unless you meet exceptionally close-minded people, its quite easygoing. | ||
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pyrogenetix
China5098 Posts
china is on the rise. it will be a big player in the future of the world's economy. simply having lived in the culture gives your CV a gigantic boost, and then you learn some broken mandarin... it's going to be a lot more useful than japanese for sure. | ||
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Loanshark
China3094 Posts
True, if you mingle with the locals there might be some discomforting situations but shouldn't be a reason not to go. Maybe you should look at the universities and decide solely based on that. | ||
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bmml
United Kingdom962 Posts
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Mawi
Sweden4365 Posts
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Tru_m4n
162 Posts
As for the languages, I think japanese pronounciation is much easier than chinese (I'm also north european like OP), but chinese really isn't that hard, it's just an image that westerners tend to have... Like "how can you learn chinese, it always sounds the same, impossible to understand anything!!". I admit the tones can be tricky for a westerner since we don't have tones in our languages, but the incredibly simple grammar more than makes up for it in my opinion. Chinese grammar is much easier to learn than japanese (also my japanese friends say this). being very straight and just... simple. Might be worth thinking about. Then there's the characters. I believe most people think that japanese is easier because there aren't that many kanji to learn, and most of the texts you find are hiragana or katakana. I, however, only find it to be annoying and confusing when there are three different types of characters in a single sentence, I like the flow in chinese much more, at least it's easier for me to read. Think of it as having roman letters, cyrillic ones and greek letters in one sentence. What finally made me decide for mandarin (and Taiwan) was that I really love the way it sounds... again, it's the taiwanese accent mandarin I'm talking about, and it's pretty different from the mandarin you'll hear in for example Beijing. Japanese for me sounds very hard and rough, while mandarin imo is more smooth and friendly for the ears. Once again, I think you should try to visit both places before you decide where to go and what to study, it can really change your mind. | ||
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meegrean
Thailand7699 Posts
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Fanharijo
Norway12 Posts
One other thing which might be worth considering is that at my university there is alot of chinese students who I might practice chinese with. | ||
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.risingdragoon
United States3021 Posts
On September 24 2010 19:12 Tru_m4n wrote: Japan is A LOT cleaner and overall more westernized in my opinion. Japan's, well Tokyo's even more industrialized than the west. It's fucking Bladerunner city, good or bad depending on how you look at it. Can't say I enjoy living in sardines cans though, places like Tokyo and Hong Kong are terrible to live for me. I think Caucasians have an image problem with Chinese is just cus nobody knows jackshit, not even the basics. Pinyin isn't English, and it's not pronounced like English, at all. All that racist chingchong gibberish that Caucasians made up's all from listening to overrepresented Cantonese, which is just a regional dialect. Mandarin's the common language, learn that. China's in the midst of industrializing its cities, and it's got a lot of cities. This isn't Japan or England little island level of industrialization, this is at least x10 times larger n scale. I don't think they stopped building new infrastructures in the last 15 years. Things are constantly churning. I know Norway was shitpoor before Denmark gave it some fishing grounds or whatever which turned out to be bajillion dollars in oil and stuff. The level of transformation is gonna be like that, come time it'll be unrecognizable. Can't say I have a preference cus really it's just two places, and neither will be anything like you could imagine beforehand. Just pick one and go. I want to pick up Spanish in one of the Latin countries (not Spain), I don't think "more industrialized" fits into my decision at all, being a man and all. | ||
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Robinsa
Japan1333 Posts
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ZERG_RUSSIAN
10417 Posts
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ZERG_RUSSIAN
10417 Posts
This is just a story I heard from my friend, who's like the nicest guy in the world. But seriously, go to Japan. Fuck all that "Chinese is more practical" shit, business is done in English everywhere and there is no way in hell that you are learning Chinese or Japanese well enough to do business from a year of homestay anyway. I lived in Japan for 5 years and my parents are both Japanese and I can't speak it well enough to do business, much less Chinese which has 20 words that are spelled exactly the same but mean different things based on your intonation. | ||
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Scoop
Finland482 Posts
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