kanjiwarrior Wrote:I prefer to just hand women a note that says "I like you. If you like me check this box[ ]."

Quote:If the girls in the book knew that someone else had prepared their

whole conversation, every single detail about their meeting, including the

angle that the guy approached from, for the specific purpose of getting

them to sleep with them, do you think they would still do it?

Quote:there's a big difference between "learning to communicate

effectively" and "learning to communicate in a way that brings about a

certain effect".

Quote:It's not two way. Other examples are hustling and swindling.

Quote:I should try to not say things which might bore her, or stay on one

subject for too long.

Quote:Now, all of this, if you're thinking about it for yourself, should

be reasonably obvious. But the way in which you put across all these

things, IT HAS TO BE YOUR OWN.


You have to want to learn to do all this stuff, not just for the end

result, but, because you actually like doing it. You shouldn't ever be

saying or doing something you think is stupid or boring, just so you can

sleep with a girl. Choose your own sense of style . Find jokes and stories

that you find funny. If you're not capable of making them up on the spot,

its ok to prethink it. And, i think everyone repeats jokes, stories, ideas,

that they've heard other places. But, not whole conversations. And you're

going to have to learn to be flexible with it too.

kanjiwarrior Wrote:I prefer to just hand women a note that says "I like you. If you like me check this box[ ]."

Quote:There were a few songs that even a hater like me secretly listened to when others could not see.
Kenny Rogers

Quote:PS You will now fall hopelessly in love with me ... kazelee

TheTrueBlue Wrote:Interesting name there pal...

woelpad Wrote:To get off the virgin thread, I'll just list some random gripes I noticed that didn't get much attention yet, but could be important for people marrying in Japan to a Japanese, and that not only goes for the OP.

I've never been to a dancing in Japan. They don't seem to exist outside of gaijintown in Tokyo. If Japanese love music, it's because of karaoke and concerts.

お見合い exists, but young people are more interested in 合コンs. No idea how they are organized, but the prototype seems to be some kind of blind date between typically 5 boys and 5 girls, where both groups don't know much about each other beforehand. I hope some more knowledgable people can fill us in on their effectiveness and customs.

Group excursions are a good way to engage with people and initiate friendships. Japanese love to travel their own country on short trips. Combine this with the obligatory お土産 and I get the impression they're pretty self-sufficient when it comes to tourism inside Japan. Still, since it's a trip, people tend to be more willing to open up to each other.

One reality (in Kanto) is that Japanese work in Tokyo, but typically don't live there. If your target is the "library" or the grocery store, you'll need to take the train (or set up base) and go out to cities an hour away: Yokohama, Saitama, Funabashi, Chiba, ... Still not 田舎 though, more like middle-class.

Japanese families typically have 1 or 2 kids. The biggest obstacle against a third that I've heard is the fear of not being able to afford getting them all through higher education. They also have a strong sense of preserving the family name (related to maintaining the family grave etc.). Given this, chances are you will be propped to change your name to that of your fiance's instead of vice versa, or that both keep your respective names, which might lead to the kids taking on the name of the mother.

Coming to live in Japan means you'll be far from home and your own family, but your wife won't. Unless you move to another part of Japan, she'll still have all her friends, family and schoolmates. This inevitably creates an imbalance in the relationship, which may be a source of friction. She may be spending a lot of evenings/weekends away from you for social obligations, like weddings (rarely are partners invited), get-togethers, お見舞い, 社員旅行 or 飲み会s, leaving you home with the kids. Play therefore your cards wisely. Don't commit to living in Japan without at least hearing her out about a possible future elsewhere on the planet. That should at least give you some perspective for when the pressures of society take a turn for the worse.

On the same note, don't expect her to make learning your language a priority, unless she is already fluent before she met you. Apart from talking with you, who are already adapting to learn her language, what big incentive is there for her? She doesn't need it to function in her environment, which didn't change. Educating the kids in a second language is evidently your task. That's unless you intend to travel a lot together to (fill in your idiom)-speaking countries or invite over/mix with your (idiom)-language friends every so often. There are couples though that raise their pre-elementary school kids in the less common idiom exclusively. But with the couples I know or read about, usually both parents are already fluent in that language to start with.

On the subject of close relatives, how far will you live from her parents? It's custom here to move in with the (wife's) parents the first three months after the baby is born. Nannies are hardly an option, for babysitting you're mostly reliant on day care (up to 8 in the evening, less long in weekends) and the grandparents (on both sides, but since yours are an ocean away...), another reason to keep the distance between your and their house short. It's not abnormal to live in the same 二世代 house, what with the ground prices being sky high over here. You think you can/are willing to cope with that?

Your wife will also make you attentive of paying respect (お礼) to this and that person, usually with some standard phrase, like her boss when a kid is born (thanking him for giving her time off), and of returning a present with a present of typically half the value of the original. She will do that repeatedly, which can turn into nagging, because you never seem to learn.

And, since it's night time now, you know that kids sleep with their parents until they reach elementary school age? It's considered an important part of family bonding. I can't count the nights that I spent at least partly on the couch because kids that don't fall asleep immediately tend to roam and push and shove until someone leaves.

Just a couple of things from my own (limited) experience that were something of a surprise to me and might be for other westerners, insofar as they're not unique to my situation. No need to have your answers ready right away, but if it helps you to shape your image of the place you're going to, I think I'll have accomplished something.

TheTrueBlue Wrote:To those people, I reccommend a mid-life crisis fund, when they're 35 or 40 and realize how pathetically normal their life was, so they can afford that sports car, leather jacket, and tanning salon bills. All that burst of an effort when it could've worked 20 years earlier. And now that time is down the sh*tter. Time spent living a life that subconsciously and now openingly is acknowledged as simply not what they want in life. Sucks to be them, and I don't plan on it one bit.

nadiatims Wrote:个

liosama Wrote:I would expect my spouse to learn my mother tongue if she is from another country. This is purely out of respect as I would learn hers too. Because marriage is a family activity after all and I deem it most respectable to learn their language. Practical day to day usefulness is out of the question, it should be done, and done so out of respect and love.

I'm talking in the general sense here (finding a partner anywhere), but even if I do happen to go and marry in Japan, I'd expect her to learn my language too.

IceCream Wrote:Kazelee:

kazelee Wrote:If you read over your entire
passage, I think, what it's saying, at least to me, is that you are OK
being manipulated so long as you don't think you are being manipulated.

違うんです！反主義のです！
I think one problem here is that there are two different interpretations of "manipulation".

kazelee Wrote:Every human engagement is a form of manipulation on some level.

This is an incredibly wide definition of manipulation. I can see where you're coming from, in that every communication has some result that is preferable.
However - the type of manipulation that creeps me out, has a certain epistemic status attached to it. Specifically, what the operator's epistemic status is in relation to the epistemic status of the receiver. i.e. what the guy thinks he is doing, and what he believes the girl in question beleives about what he's doing. I'l come back to this in a minute.

kazelee Wrote:Human's are not rats, though. You can't "make" them do something they don't "want" to do.

ermmm.... rape?!
But, there are definate actions that have definate psychological responses. Intermittent reward is an example of this. NLP contains many examples of it. I don't want to take an absolute stance on this, so it's better to phrase it like, we can say that certain actions have the tendency to provoke a certain psychological response. It will work on most people, or a certain type of person, but not all people, in the same way.

The thing that distinguishes human beings from rats is that we have the ability to consider what someone else is doing and make a response based on our beliefs about what that person is doing. This is what i meant by "the epistemic status of the receiver". i.e. If i believe that someone is using intermittent reward (either consciously or unconsciously) to have a certain effect on me, i now have the ability to change my response. It's not going to have the effect they want.

Lets look at the way a few different situations affect our intuitions about the way someone is acting.
1. a pool hustler. He is a pro pool player, who plays a few games badly in order to convince someone they can beat him, in order to raise the betting and thereby gain more money.
2. a swindler who calls old ladies up to tell them they have won the lottery, but must send $5000 dollars immediately to claim their prize.
3. a poker player, who frequently uses offputting body language and phrases in order to convince their opponents to put more money in a pot they cannot win.
4. the male hosts in the video Bodhisamaya posted somewhere near the start of this thread, who use pretend personalities in order to "sell women the image of a dream relationship"
What are your moral intuitions about each of these situations?
In none of these cases, someone is forcing someone to do something they don't want to.
However, my feeling is that whether these actions are right or wrong depends on the epistemic status of the operator in relation to the receiver.
In the first 2 cases, the operator believes that the receiver does not have the awareness that the actions of the operator are not genuine. So it's not good.
In the poker example, i'd say that, everyone who enter's a poker game knows that deception is part of the game. The operator believes that the reciever has full knowledge that every action in poker is liable to be ungenuine, so it's ok.
The last case, my feeling is mixed. I'm not sure what these women beleive they are paying for if not that, but i'm not sure why they would be falling in love with these guys if they knew it wasn't actually their personality either. But, I think whether the guy believes the women know their personalities are not genuine has a big effect on whether it's really ok or not. If they think the women don't know, it's not good.

Ok, so now for the epistemic status of the operator. In all these cases, the operator is knowingly communicating in order to have a certain result. (in the way discussed yesterday)

So, i guess my view of creepy manipulation has turned out to be slightly more complex than i set out yesterday. So, in order to be creepy manipulation:
a.) the operator must be knowingly acting in order to have a certain result
b.) the operator must believe that the receiver does believe that their actions are genuine
c.) their actions, in some sense, must not be genuine.

Ok, i'm not going to provide a definition of "genuine", cos this post is already way too long and i've got lots more to say.
This is what was (one of the) problem(s) was with the guy i described yesterday. Because i thought he knew that i knew that his actions weren't entirely genuine, i thought b.) wasn't fulfilled. Unfortunately, i was wrong.

kazelee Wrote:The point of separation lies in personality type and the amount of "practice." Should an extremely introverted guy (little practice) approach you you'd almost always get that "creepy" feeling.

Definately! But, it's a totally different type of creepyness than the creepyness described above. It's the type of creepyness you don't want to bother dealing with, or feel a bit sorry for, but, unless they also fulfill b.) its not going to totally creep me out. Some people do have to put a lot of thought into their actions, and also to practise a lot to get it good. But, that's not the same as the type of manipulation i'm thinking of. It's also not the incongruence between body and words, because this can just be a matter of someone being shy, or not used to giving the right signals. it's not always that they aren't genuine.

kazelee Wrote:I'm a pianist (non-practicing ). So repeating the lines of other people before I can take the substance behind them and form them into something all my own is just something natural for me.

lol... why don't you practise?
i take your point, but, the problem is, a closer analogy would be, a pianist taking the lines of someone else and then playing them in front of an audience pretending they're his own.

kazelee Wrote:Unfortunately, she does not do the "effective communication" thing, ie. say something like "hey, let's talks about something a bit more interesting," "if you don't lean in so much I don't feel as weird about you," or "if you smile a bit more I might not be so afraid."

ハハハ can you imagine? mmm, nothing like outright insulting a guy to help improve his confidence and make a romantic atmosphere :p

kazelee Wrote:So the interaction and how it plays out is mostly the responsibility of the man.

girls are so lucky in this respect. Even 4/10 5/10 girls can generally find guys to sleep with them relatively easily, though they have to work a bit more at it, not as hard as guys do.

kazelee Wrote:how many guys just talk to females without any intention of sleeping with them?

lolol really?? like, 90% of my close friends are guys. this sounds like something my mum would say! how old are you really?

kazelee Wrote:I like that you know exactly how a man need perform in order to interest you.

mm, i was more trying to give a logical definition of how a guy should go about thinking about the kind of communication rules are for most girls in this situation. Personally, i like a little more actual interesting conversation about interesting things thrown in as well as the entertaining stuff. But that's cos i don't really go to clubs often, and even more rarely have one night stands (the standard generally sucks too badly). So it's going to take a little longer to get me interested in having casual sex with someone.

kazelee Wrote:With your description of him going psycho, it tells me that he's probably made the same jokes and said the same thing with other females, only, you, in particular, made him 'crazy' or (or more so than usual).

Hahah if this had happened, it would have been a lot better than what actually did happen. Nope, when I said "psychopath", i meant he had an honest to god literal wiki-definition psychopathic personality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath#Hare.27s_items). Only one i've ever actually met. You really don't want to know the end of this story, as it would bring a whole new level of absurd naivety to this thread that hasn't even been touched on here (if that's possible).

kazelee Wrote:PS You will now fall hopelessly in love with me ... kazelee

<@_#> i......will.....do.....anything....you....say....

kanjiwarrior Wrote:I prefer to just hand women a note that says "I like you. If you like me check this box[ ]."

i'm sold.

Another monster post.... sorry!!!

IceCream Wrote:um... sorry if i've offended you, but what are you actually referring to?

IceCream Wrote:Actually, i've got no idea what "academic slander" is. If you think academics represent the truth, well, you're wrong. It's all theory, like anything else. The post above isn't pulling out random facts, and presenting them as the truth...

i've almost always used words like "my opinion" "this is from memory but..." "this is what creeps me out". The point of what i was saying, in any post, wasn't to convince anyone of the objectivity of anything... in this post, only to define why i found a certain thing creepy!?

No, i don't have a PHD in anything. I do have a degree in philosophy, which contained in it philosophy of psychology. However, this is irrelevent. I took it for granted that, either the things i've said are easily verifiable, philosophy points (which are always arguable), or very obviously my opinions. If someone tells me i'm saying something wrong, fine!

In the post above, the only things i can see could be taken as saying scientifically objective things, are the things about intermittent response and NLP, of which, i said yesterday, intermittent response was only from memory. If you want to replace the examples i gave with "if someone shouts at someone else, it will have a tendency to make them angry" that would serve the point equally as well.
Oh, and the psychopath thing, but hopefully none of you know this guy, and fwiw, it's also just my opinion. i also thought that was obvious.

Most of that post i made would be suitable for a degree level philosophy essay. So i'm really not sure why it wouldn't be ok here...

bodhisamaya Wrote:A random now you know moment...
When quoting another user, it is possible to delete parts not relevant to a response

IceCream Wrote:

TheTrueBlue Wrote:IceCream: Nolite to bastardes carborundorum.

xxx
yonosa, read my post above again. i do, have a degree in philosophy (from one of the best universities in britain). yes, the post above isnt in such a serious style as i would hand in an essay, or as detailed. but the reasoning is the same.

In a philosophy essay, there isn't any slander. the whole point of philosophy is looking at reasoning, argument, and definitions. If any slightly skewed rationality was slander, then to be honest, most of philosophy wouldn't exist, as western philosophy is a lot about how you can pick logical holes in almost any argument, unless it's x=x. where i've made points i'm not sure on, i've generally qualified them as that, same with my opinions. Since philosophy and argument isn't objective truth, there is no "subject matter" to damage. The entire point is the reasoning process. I assume you're coming from a very different academic background. As for people misunderstanding the viewpoint, well, fine, but im not soooo bothered, so long as its in the general direction of what ive said. hope that clears things up.