Random Thoughts: The Big "E's"

Some time ago, I attempted to have a dialog with someone whose experiences in Japan and opinions as a consequence of those differences were rather different than mine. The exchange ended at an impasse because it was clear that we would never agree. It wasn't that there was fundamental disagreement, but we couldn't settle even on a basic structure on which to reach conclusions.

As an example

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Random Thoughts: Gilligan's Island

When you live in Japan, people make an assumption about why you are here. More often than not, they fill the gap in their knowledge with their own motivation or ones that they are familiar with based on what others have said or they have read. Some people come here because they love aspects of Japanese culture, especially manga, anime, or pop culture. Others follow a dream of knowing this "exotic

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Random Thoughts: Relativity Theory

Sometimes I have thoughts about living in another culture which I'd like to incorporate into blog posts here, but due to the format I have chosen, I can't really flesh them out effectively in any brief individual post. Rather than simply keep them to myself, or worse, forget about them entirely, I've decided to occasionally make a "random thoughts" post. This will be the 1000 Things equivalent to

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