Nobody tells you THIS about 'culture shock':

If you're open-minded, you'll learn to hate your own people as much as the ones you went to live with.

It's my British (father), Japanese (residence) and Canadian (birth and most of life) experience that makes me despise most people of each; why does nobody love me?

Every international organization, from the UN to JET to the deracinated couplings in Roppongi, professional and freelance, put it out in their copy that the experience is a melodious choir of 'kumbaya'.  Lies.  The problem isn't that there aren't an equal number of good and thoughtful people in all cultures: there probably are so few in each.  It's not because there aren't beautiful women, or men, to fall in love with wherever you go: there are (but obesity doesn't help, N.America).  No.  There's just two nagging problems that nobody wants to address: most people are ugly inside and out no matter where you go, and often that ugliness is manifested in ways unique to their culture.

I'm not going to enumerate the sins of assholes from the cultures I know well, because those of you who know these cultures know the sins as well as I do; if you don't you should learn on your own rather than let me bias you.  The reason I put up this post is not because I feel guilty about some of what I have written about Japan, because I have written worse about Canada (and I feel no guilt at all for what I have said about the French fleeing Tokyo).  Yet this post is motivated by guilt, atheist lapsed-Catholic that I am.  I have linked an interesting blogger on my blog roll: a Japanese guy blogging in English, which I'll never have 'the stones' to do in his language.  If he came to see my blog he'd think I hate Japanese people, unless he read further along to see I hate most Canadians.  You see...

I'm not bigoted or racist: I just hate the idiots in each culture I've known.