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Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア) Profile picture
Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア)
@OliverJia1014
Kyoto-based American researcher on Japan-DPRK relations | @nknewsorg @spectator @japantimes @unherd @Quillette @lostincult On Substack. Likes cats! ENG/日本語
Jul 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Decades of Holocaust education have evidently failed and it’s only going to get worse from here as the last survivors pass away.

Currently listening to KL, a 30 hr audiobook on the history of concentration camps. The vast majority of people have no idea how horrific it was. Image I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish people. Antisemitism to me was such a foreign concept, I had no idea it even existed in the modern sense until I left my town.

Even now it’s still hard to believe there are major figures who downplay Hitler and the Holocaust.
Jul 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Whenever I hear someone has “learned Japanese in 6 months,” my immediate thought is that they probably harnessed their autism into memorizing 3000 kanji.

Their speaking skills are nonexistent, but they can get through Tokimeki Memorial ok. Which I suppose was always their goal. Image I imagine it's possible to speedrun learning Japanese in a year, but it requires:

1. Basically having no other real commitments.

2. You're usually a college student or a NEET. See above.

3. Some degree of autism to not give up. Which works well with the first two.
Jul 14 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Japanese people who voluntarily move to the U.S. long term to permanently are very much a rarity these days.

The bubble economy era was when it made the most sense to relocate for business reasons, but America now is going to be far too expensive with how weak the yen is. Having recently booked a hotel in New York City for a trip I'll be taking later this year, the price of about ¥50,000 a night really hit home how wide of a gap there is now between Japan and the U.S.

The average Japanese person is simply never going to be able to afford that.
May 6 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Israel annexing Gaza is dicey for many reasons, but there are few options left on the table.

The Israelis withdrew in 2005 and gave the Palestinians 18 years to build a state. Hamas instead turned it into a totalitarian Islamic dictatorship. All of this is on them. It's too early to tell what will happen in the long run, but Hamas cannot be allowed to rebuild and commit October 7 again.

The best we can hope for is that the annexation is temporary, but Palestinians in Gaza will obviously resist Israeli rule. It's going to be ugly.
Feb 25 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Really bonkers to see this playing out in the West because in my experience the majority of Japanese women in my age group (late 20s) could not give less of a toss about politics.

Dating sounds like a complete disaster for young people now and I'm not sure what the solution is. There are obviously other factors, but it does seem that smartphones/social media being the primary method of communication between people has had a direct connection with how bad dating has gotten.

It's caused everything from worsened social skills to extreme radicalization.
Feb 25 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Good start if true but the general public no longer cares about Star Wars even if something like Andor occasionally comes along.

Lucasfilm under KK dropped the ball where it should’ve counted with the sequel trilogy. Star Wars went from cultural phenomenon to niche interest. In general, Disney is going to have to make some huge changes in the next decade.

I think Star Wars and Marvel will always be around in some capacity, but the oversaturation of mediocre to awful content has probably done irreparable damage.
Feb 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Assuming this is actually true and not Trump doing more BSing, this only feeds into what me and others have said that Ukraine and Russia will probably end up like the Koreas separated by a kind of DMZ.

Any "peace deal" now will just turn the war into a frozen conflict. Remember that even though at this moment North and South Korea are not actively fighting, the North's stated goal is still to take over the entire Korean Peninsula. Same with China and Taiwan.

The least worst scenario now is a similar situation with Ukraine and Russia.
Feb 23 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
For as cringe and narcissistic as zoomers can be, millennials shouldn't be given a free pass either.

Reddit/Tumblr making online discourse unbearable, the MCU-ification of pop culture, cynicism being the default mentality, etc.

All of that was started by millennials. Everything that makes the internet intolerable today can pretty much be traced back to millennials.

Obviously most of the poor decisions can only be viewed in hindsight, but zoomers just used the resources that already existed and created their own subcultures from them.
Feb 21 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
And another franchise bites the dust. Barbara Broccoli wasn't perfect, but she was protective of James Bond for good reason and generally tried to honor her father's legacy.

Amazon is going to suck away everything that made Bond great. Welp, it was a good run while it lasted. The one consolation is that in 2035 the original James Bond novels are going to enter the public domain.

Hopefully that'll give other filmmakers freedom to do proper adaptations of the books. We know that the Amazon execs don't understand Bond. I have zero faith in them.
Feb 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Being raised on social media has turned zoomers into tone-deaf narcissists.

I dunno what the solution to this idiotic behavior is, but young people need to be taught that doing this isn't ok at places of solemn mourning like the 9/11 memorial or Auschwitz. Image As a late-gen millennial (or zillennial), I consider myself lucky to have been raised when social media and terminal onlineness didn't infiltrate every facet of daily life.

And even back then people were saying kids my age had poor social skills. It's gotten much worse.
Feb 4 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Wife showed me one of the Crayon Shin-chan movies for the first time, but for the life of me I couldn't get into it.

I know it's a beloved franchise in Japan, but it's one of those things where if you didn't grow up with it as a kid, you won't have the required nostalgia. Image This is completely down to personal taste, but I find the voice of Crayon Shin-chan's protagonist completely grating.

I'm also not a fan of the art style. And again, I know there are tons of people who enjoy it, but give me Doraemon over this any day.
Feb 3 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Currently reading a book on the last surviving Civil War veterans.

A lot of old men pretended to be veterans to get fame or financial benefits, but the last verified person who participated was Albert Woolsen who served as a drummer boy at age 14.

He died in 1956 aged 106. Image The last Civil War combat veteran was James Hard who died in 1953 but lived even longer to 109.

Can we just stop for a second and acknowledge how badass it was that his last name was Hard? Even this picture goes hard.

These men were made out of tougher stuff than we are now. Image
Jan 5 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Finally cracked open this Japanese Blu-ray box set I bought in 2021 containing Stanley Kubrick’s early films, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, and Paths of Glory.

It’s a beautifully designed box, but apart from some booklets, there are no extras. Criterion Collection this is not. Image
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Image Stanley Kubrick is probably one of the most beloved American directors among Japanese filmmakers and cinephiles, but that’s not too surprising.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, his films dive into compelling universal themes that resonate with everyone regardless of cultural background.
Oct 9, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I keep trying to tell people that this is what the majority of Japan actually looks like, but no one believes me. If there were actual job prospects for me, I’d gladly choose to live a quiet life in the middle of nowhere, Japan.

Let me tell you, there’s no greater feeling than getting away from all the Kyoto tourists and living in a secluded countryside town.
Sep 11, 2024 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
23 years ago today, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the deadliest terrorist attack in world history.

I've been researching 9/11 for awhile.

The following is a thread highlighting some of the lesser known aspects of the event.

Never forget. Image First, I wrote this lengthy piece last year about the search for 9/11 lost media.

Despite being dubbed the most photographed event in American history, much remains left to the imagination.

I tackle the question of what media should be made public.
foreignperspectives.net/p/the-search-f…
Aug 5, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I feel like the fitness YouTuber/social media influencer space has an anti-running bias.

Lifting weights is great of course, but people in those circles seem to hate jogging as cardio. I didn’t realize there was such a huge lifting vs. running conflict until relatively recently. I think this Reddit thread sums it up well.

You can’t really monetize running unless I guess you get some kind of lucrative sponsorship from a shoe company.

Jogging is completely free and anyone can do it. No gym membership required.
reddit.com/r/running/s/zw…
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Jul 18, 2024 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Finally got around to watching She-Hulk as part of my watch of the MCU slop, I mean shows I haven’t seen. Yes, I hate myself.

While there were some enjoyable parts, this series is a total mess and has some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in a modern television show or film. The whole time I was watching She-Hulk, I couldn’t help but keep asking myself “How the hell did this cost $25 million per episode to make?”

Because it certainly doesn’t show it. There are PS3 cutscenes that look better and carry more weight than this.
Jun 29, 2024 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood yesterday for the first time since it came out 5 years ago.

I think it’s held up beautifully and represents a stellar filmmaking achievement for Tarantino. More of a vibes movie than a plot movie, but the vibes are immaculate. Image There are people who’ll criticize Hollywood for being too slow or boring, but I loved its pacing and how it takes its time bringing you into the world of 1969.

You believe it from the first scene. The attention to detail is something Tarantino always excels at. Image
Jun 28, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Utterly ridiculous. Why is it that Yasuke was never classified as a samurai on Wikipedia *before* the Assassin’s Creed controversy?

Why all of a sudden now? This is pure ideological capture and the prime example of why Wikipedia is utterly useless for these topics. I’ve already established how Thomas Lockley is full of shit.

His entire book is basically just this extended over 400 pages. If anyone takes his fiction seriously, they’re not an academic. They’re an unreliable crank.
Jun 25, 2024 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Man this exchange has everything:

-A British guy pretending he lives in Japan
-Said LARPer posting a picture of Kyoto’s Kiyomizu-dera, a crowded tourist spot, and calling it a “Japanese village”
-An Islamist blaming the Jews
-A racist tankie spouting more nonsense about Japan


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Image This the “village” in the photo Cringelord Otaku Gatekeeper posted.

Of course if he had actually stepped foot in this country once, I’m sure he’d immediately recognize it as a tourist spot.

Instead he just pretends he lives here.
en.japantravel.com/places/kyoto/k…
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Jun 13, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Most anime, like all other media, is garbage. 10% is passable and maybe 5% is truly worth watching.

It’s understandable why many are turning to it because most Western media is horrible now, but I don’t give bad writing or cringe characters a free pass because it’s Japanese.
Image Like many I went through my high school phase of being obsessed with shows like Steins;Gate and Haruhi Suzumiya. Some of it was good, some of it in retrospect wasn’t.

I don’t regret enjoying anything I watched back then, but with age I’ve gained a more critical eye.