Vibe Check #10 (May 2024)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the tenth edition of vibe check for Jay Japan, where we talk about anything and everything dealing with anime, Japan, Japanese culture, or anything that’s on the top of our head as to what’s been going on in the month of May. Hope you enjoy the reading~

Check #1: Anime Progress

On the route to watching 50 anime series in the year, there are three anime series that stand out from all the other anime series: Wind Breaker, Viral Hit, and Demon Slayer. Out of all three of them (as of right now), mostly I would go for Viral Hit.

The reason behind it is it’ll be a nice way to learn three things at once: learning how to have some self-confidence and stand on what you believe in, learning how YouTube (NewTube) works and how you can monetize it, and how a small success can make you go for more success in the future.

The fighting scenes from Viral Hit was mediocre to barely decent at best compared to Wind Breaker and Demon Slayer; however, at least it’s a little more realistic and understandable to learn for the average person to deal with.

There was one anime series I started watching called Good Night World! It was similar to the series Sword Art Online besides the whole “If you die in the game, you die in real life” type of situation. After watching the first episode, there was a family who basically can’t even look at each other in the eyes, yet when they play in the virtual world, they’re super close and treated each other like family.  The series was cool, and there can be a chance I can look at the entire series by the end of the month since it’s 12 episodes and it might not take so long for me to finish it.

With that in mind, because I was busy with tons of things inside and outside of the store, I didn’t get the chance to watch some awesome anime such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy X Family, and even No Game No Life. Also, I need to catch up on the second half of the sixth season and the current seventh season of My Hero Academia.

So, the progress can hopefully be better in the summertime.

Check #2: Foreigner Terror in Japan

With notable foreigners terrorizing Japan and the Japanese people, there are new rules and regulations that the Japanese government published to put the foreigners (good and bad) in their place.

With the Japanese public and government trying their very best to welcome foreign travelers, the bad travelers tend to make it bad for the foreigners that respect and admire Japanese culture. As we learned from primary school (or elementary school), “the good have to suffer from the bad”

Plus, the sad thing about the situation is there are foreigners outside of Japan that loves and adores Japan and Japanese culture the healthy way tends to have a huge barrier to deal with, in which they cannot fulfill their lifelong dream of going to Japan (family reasons, health, financial situations, etc.). Whereas bad foreigners that don’t really care about their situations and wanted to use Japan as a content creation and a personal playground tend to go to Japan without any thought process of what disadvantages they must deal with (language barriers, currency conversion, managing finances, social etiquette, etc.)

The Japanese yen being weaker and foreign currency are getting stronger isn’t helping the Japanese people since they’re not really used to having tons of foreign travelers coming to Japan all at once, and they’re forced to do drastic measures to earn a profit from businesses. One of the examples was for Japanese restaurants is foreigners who asked for English menus tends to have a pricier meal compared to Japanese menus. Another example would be to getting rid of tax-free stores (again, don’t fully quote me on that).

My opinion is because of COVID and people seeing what Japan is like from social media such as TikTok and Instagram, it makes people drop everything and go to Japan the moment they open their doors for foreigners. It is a great thing, but at the same notion, there are foreigners that don’t really care about everyone other than themselves.

I can understand both perspectives for the Japanese. They cannot punish all foreigners because there are some Japanese people that can tell the difference between bad foreigners and good foreigners; however, without stricter rules and punishments from bad foreigners, it’ll influence the behavior even more for future travelers.

Hopefully, the situation would get better in the future for both Japanese and foreigners.

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That’s all for this month’s Vibe Check! I deeply apologize for the small vibe check since due to me watching tons of anime and making changes inside and outsode of the store, nothing much fully happened on my end. Tune in on the final Friday of next month to see what’s been going on for the month of June~