wait what?

i hate to blog based on flabbergastedness but here goes. someone told me that they wish they could speak great english and great japanese. thinking i had stumbled upon one of the few people here who don’t think japan is the scum of the earth, i ventured to ask why.

“because the japanese language is like chinese. it comes from chinese”

“well, no,” i said, clearly foolishly, “the writing system in japan is based on chinese and they use kanji characters, but no the japanese language isn’t really related to spoken chinese”.

this was briefly refuted and then she moved on to tell me that she wanted to learn japanese also in part so that she could understand the news and all the evil terrible things they say about china on a daily basis, which is fine by me because then she may realise they have more things to talk about in japan than how much they hate china. the kicker was when she told me that “also, because japan was a part of china”.

“uh… when?”

“qing dynasty,” she said.

“uh actually no that’s not really true. japan was never a part of china and certainly not during the qing dynasty. taiwan, sure. but no not japan.”

and that’s how i became one of those “___ isn’t part of china” foreigners in her eyes. but seriously, japan?

damnit austria. give vienna back to china already. this has gone on for too long.

—

update:
as the day wore on japan kept coming up. the kicker was when i was told in all seriousness by more than one person that japan is without question building up an army, a secret illegal army mind you, to take over china for the resources. or at least take over manchuria.

i had little better to do so i made my first twitter poll. since much of my self worth is going to be determined by the number of people who respond to it, please take a moment to vote and save me from the clutches of depression.

here’s the link.