Then what did you mean why you said “unfortunately”? I guess that part through me off.

And look, I’ve done a bit of traveling so I’m definitely grateful for places that welcome foreigners who don’t speak the language. I’m not saying those should go away.

But I’ve also spent enough time in some places to gain a little proficiency, and at that point it would be nice to have a few places to go where I’m expected to use the language. Otherwise people see me struggling and then they default to English. It makes it harder to get the level of immersion necessary to go from intermediate to advanced.

Plus, when I’m really immersed in a culture I like to avoid the touristy spots. I try to go to the places where the local language is used more. If I rely on every local’s English proficiency to get by, I’ll never learn.

And it feels nice to be able to differentiate myself from the average tourist, like “no I’ve actually been living here for months and have gained some basic proficiency in the language.” There’s a difference between going somewhere for a week to hit all the tripadvisor spots, versus going somewhere to immerse in the local culture and try to build a life there. Most places view tourists as a nuisance, and I don’t see why that’s a problem because the level of respect for the local culture tends to be lower among tourists anyway.

You yourself are saying it’s unfortunate that people mostly speak English in the nordic countries, and yet you argue that it would be xenophobic and wrong to try to incentivize society to use the local languages more?

That makes sense if you like numbers that are easy to multiply and divide, but it depends on region. Some people aren’t familiar with metric, and the recipes they write probably don’t use it. In all likelihood, recipes you find in imperial units were likely written by an american.

The volume vs. weight thing though, that transcends region or systems of measurement. It assumes everyone has a kitchen scale, when most non-professionals have volumetric measuring supplies which are typically way cheaper

Xenophobia: the fear or intolerance of foreigners

No, tourism and colonialism aren’t the same thing, but in this context it doesn’t matter.

Besides, which one are we talking about in Japan? We could call it tourism, but don’t you know they’ve literally been occupied by the US military since WWII?

And if you want a strictly tourism example, then how about Barcelona? How is this any different from a giant mural that says “Tourists go home”? And least in Japan they don’t spray gaijin with water guns…

I want to know what this is a recipe for. I guess I’ll just have to try it and find out…

Or giving units by weight.

I understand it’s more convenient if you have a kitchen scale because you can put everything in the same container, but not all of us has a kitchen scale and converting multiple ingredients from weight to volume is damn near impossible.

Literally every country on the planet is xenophobic, people only make a big deal out of it when it’s a western or western-aligned country.

The entire idea of inclusivity, tolerance, and multiculturalism is primarily a western idea sprung from western humanist values and honestly only even taken seriously in secular democracies which tend to be aligned with the west.

And then people act like the west and west-aligned countries are so depraved for not perfectly living up to those values, when hardly any other nation even tries or has any desire to.

It’s honestly kind of amusing once you stop giving a shit.

You’re right, in Barcelona they write “Tourists go home” in plain English in order to accommodate foreigners who aren’t fluent in Catalan!

America is a country founded upon immigration, so it’s not a comparable example. In broad terms, Japan is historically a fairly homogenous nation ethnically, culturally, and linguistically (and yes, I know those are very broad terms, I’m talking relative to North American countries like the US and Canada).

If the 1600s-1700s had gone differently, and North America remained predominantly populated by Native peoples speaking Native languages, then yeah I’d say it’s totally within their rights to expect visitors to either learn the local language and attempt to integrate, or be left out of certain parts of society such as restaurants that want to cater exclusively to people who speak Algonquin or whatever.

Show up in Algiers and try saying “Sorry, I don’t speak Arabic. Do you have a French menu?”

Was it xenophobia for Algeria to reject French-speakers?

“This is [Barcelona] and we speak [Catalan] here!”

Is this suddenly a different situation?

Yeah let’s start calling it racism when Barcelona locals spray tourists with water guns and see how quickly these same people scream “THAT’S DIFFERENT!”

If an American moves to Europe and doesn’t attempt to learn the local language, then by a few months to a year in with zero effort people will say they’re in the wrong for not making an effort to integrate and expecting everyone to speak English for them.

Clearly “Americans expecting foreigners to speak English” is different from “Other countries expecting Americans to speak the local language” from a moral point of view. So why is Japan then lumped in with America as the “Local people must accept and accommodate foreigners who can’t communicate in the local language” bucket, when anywhere else it’s “If you’re traveling there and you didn’t even try learning the language, then you’re ignorant and entitled.”?

What happens when you get her to your room and she says “Is that my shoe?”

Steam the what? STEAM THE WHAT?!

Or you could have a magical pouch that transports items to a storage closet in another dimension, and a magical servitor to set up and take down a luxury tent with all the comforts and essentials.

Unless you have the magic pouch and servitor though, yeah a pack animal is your best bet other than roughing it…

All of that becomes tolerable the moment you remove the hairs from your ass crack.

If you know you know.

If everyone was born predestined for a certain career path, with the latent talents and interests that will lead them to and help them excel in that path, my destined profession was “adventurer/questing”

I feel pretty jipped [ripped off? shorted?] that it’s not a real profession…

Is this from something or are you making it up? Because if it’s from something I need to know what it is. It’s brilliant.

Right here