To be honest, buddy, we had our share of these occupy central protesters in Japan two years ago. Its not good, especially if you know how Japanese society is like, we don't really tolerate civil disobedience , or this culture of non-conformity. So a lot of us can empathize with the HK government in trying to dispel the protesters.
Occupy Tokyo 2012:
Wow..........by Japanese standards thats quite alot of people i must say. As you rightly said, Japan is very comformistic. In fact i would say without a doubt that Japan is by far the most conformistic society i have ever been to in my entire life(and believe me, i have travel alot).lol The Japanese hardly ever go against the government/authority/system.Civil disobedience is almost non existent, unlike in other Asian/European and even American countries. Its for this reason i have said before on here that Japan is indeed an unique/special country in this regard, in that you will hardly ever find such large scale protests/civil disobedience like say the sunflower movement in Taiwan, 'democractic protests' in Hong Kong, countless/thousands of mass protests in China, social/racial Protests in U.S, riots in Paris/London, etc. I dont know why the Japanese are soooo obedient towards authority/government, sometimes its like they are robots, since nobody there wants to stand out/be an outlier. The system doesn't encourage that. However, i dont think its such a bad thing, since Japan is still among(if not the most) the most peaceful/orderly/cleanest country in this world. Anybody who has visited Japan can attest to that. I think there are things other countries can learn from Japan in how to make the world a better place/live in harmonious society.
I know right? I think somewhere down the line they even burned the White House in 1812! Those evil Brits!
Bah, humbug!
ahahahahahah....
Yes we did burn the white house.
But that centuries ago, when our empire(the greatest in human history) ruled the world.
However that's in the past, we have to live in the present and think about the future, not dwelling in the past like babies. Moreover, the U.S wouldnt/shouldn't whine about this(like the chinese seem to be doing) since doing so will kind of be an embarassement, since when you quite powerful/wealthy/influential, you dont want to bring back the past when you were a mere colony, took orders from others and had your presidential palace/white house burnt and looted by a foreign power. So why should the U,S bring back these past deeds when it serves no real purpose?
Let the past be buried. Moreover, i dont think we ever apologised to the U.S for colonizing them, making them speak our language(though they modified it to their own way/language), and burning their white house.
Well we're still mad over those Brits sinking some of our great ships during the War of 1812. At least I think they did...hmm memory failing...ah well I'm sure they did something bad...we'll never forgive them for all that whatever-they-probably-did or were thinking-of-doing...I'm sure it was real real evil incarnate somehow. I bet they at least kicked a dog or two.
Well i completely agree with you. However. you should know that China is different from the U.S in that China is a civilization state, uniformed society/race(Han dominant race with less than 5% as minorities) and the Chinese pay relatively more attention to the past and to the longer-term future while the Americans(U.S) is an immigrant country who are less interested in the past, but instead have their eye on near-term future. So this makes it easier for the U.S to forget/forgive than China, who is still haunted by its weak past and feels humiliated by it as a race. So i think it will take decades or maybe even a century for the Chinese to get over the past and move on. However its not just the Chinese though, confucian east Asian/south east Asian countries tend to have a similar attitude like the Chinese with focus on time Consciousness than the U.S. Reason you will see the U.S making friends/allying with its most bittter past rivals/ennemies without Americans ever questioning this move, since they couldnt really care less, unlike most uniformed societies like China, South Korea, Japan, south east Asian countries etc. So expect the Chinese to still be whining about the Opium war and seizure of Hong Kong for a long time to come, while many americans dont even know we once invaded burnt their presidential palace.
