Have been a laserdisc fan since more than 30 years: I bought my first Laserdisc (Star Wars) and LD player (Philips VLP-720) back in 1985 in Munich/Germany - so I am a kind of veteran now? Half of my laserdisc collection I have bought before 2000 - as a matter of course for the original prize - the other half of my collection I bought much later when they were sold at a loss ...

For me the most interesting about the Laserdisc was to see its technical evolution "live": more and more features were added over the years - features that younger people now take for granted when they use their Blu-ray player or media center streaming.

My LD collection is not huge, just moderate because of limits in money and space . But in the moment nearly all of my stuff is packed away for another half a year because I am still in the train of moving from Europe to Japan. Now I live in the "homeland of the LD", however in a rural area where the nearest two "Hard Off" shops are 50-60 km away (and one of them has recently stopped selling Laserdiscs) ... and Tokyo is about 800 km away.

Recently I have renewed my account in the LDDb and started browsing through this forum that is still new to me, so I say hello to everybody that is still here to enjoy the great old format Laserdisc that most other people have already forgotten.

Cool intro, welcome. Are you going to move all your LDs to Japan with you or start a separate collection in Japan?

Welcome to the forum and good luck with the move! Nice introduction, I loved hearing your evolving story with laserdisc.

Japan is a wonderful country with such amazing people. It's one of the few places I've visited and thought I could happily move and live there.

Sadly I barely saw any laserdiscs when I was there last year, but I'll have a proper hunt for them when I'm there next month.

Visiting is a lot different to living. On the surface Japanese people are all nice but underneath they're exactly the same as people worldwide, good and bad, it's just that their culture is based on giving face. A lot of foreigners that live there find it frustrating that they are and never will be treated as equals, no matter how good their Japanese gets or how hard they try to integrate. Visitors don't usually get passed the face part and usually don't speak the language and hear some of the racist comments made about them in crowds and even to their face.

I'm not saying Japan is bad, just that it's just like anywhere else.

Thank you for the friendly welcome messages!

@forper:

I sent all my laserdiscs together with my other stuff in a small seafreight container to Japan. But to unpack my stuff I have to wait until my future domicil gets ready. Now I live already in my target area, but in a temporary "makeshift".

It is correct that basically the Japanese are the same humans as we all are. But there is a difference, and this is the education: the Japanese live in a culture where it is absolutely normal (and mandatory) to treat other people with friendliness and respect. This behaviour is taught and trained already to little children in the families as well as later in kindergartens and schools. Though this education is not the same effective on every person, the interpretation as "giving face" is much too superficial, it does not hit the mark. The Japanese feel their behaviour to be right, it has become a part of their national and personal soul. Well, I am not only a veteran of the Laserdisc, but also one of Japan: during my school time one of my favorite hobbies was learning Japanese (at that time I was looked at like a freak learning Martian or something), later I married my Japanese wife, and then I got sent by my company three times to work in Japan because of my language capabilities. So my total experience of living in Japan - up to now - is already close to 10 years, the first time I went to Japan was two years before the first Laserdisc ever was released (in the USA), so to speak in the year "2 BC" resp. 2 years "Before the Creation of the LD" .

@hippiedalek:

Also me, I am thinking that Japan is a wonderful country to live in. Because of this I decided last year - together with my Japanese wife - to emigrate to Japan. Unlike foreigners in Japan that insist in communication be done in THEIR language (that triggers eventually negative remarks) I try to integrate myself - of course my face will never look Japanese, but I feel to be accepted as foreigner living here.

I feel sorry for you that you did not find many laserdiscs in Japan. Before your next trip to Japan you should prepare an complete address list of all "Hard Off" shops that are close to your intended travel route. Because these shops normally do not interchange their discs, you will find in a Hard Off usually only those discs that were sold to exactly that shop - you can get lucky at any one of them, or with bad luck not find anything. Besides "Hard Off" there are also other shops that occationally sell laserdiscs, e.g. the chain "JAM" or shops selling used gear etc.
And there exist (or existed?) also some very small shops in suburban towns near to Tokio, Nagoya or Osaka, that are run by a single person and sell used laserdiscs (and used VHD etc.) only (!), but it is often not easy to get there - and there you most definitely would need Japanese language skills to communicate.

There is no contact with each other but I have relatives in Yonago.
And there are my relatives who got married to German man, they seem to be living in Germany now.

naru hodo



That is an interesting comment. I would say if anything is mandatory in Japanese culture it is to conform and not rock the boat.

I lived, studied and worked in Japan for over 8 years total. I speak pretty fluent Japanese and have a totally different perspective to you. I encountered a lot of hate, evil, prejudice and ignorance as well as some very cool and genuine Japanese people who managed to break out of the confines of their exclusionist society.

I lived in America for 3 years as well and found Americans much more friendly and genuine than Japanese in general.

Would you say the American educational system teaches people to be unfriendly and disrespectful? Because in America I've never been so floored by courtesy. Someone comes within 3 steps of me in a supermarket there and it's like "excuse me sir". And it's genuine. I've never been called sir in my native country Australia where people are very rude and selfish in public places.

When Japanese use courteous language it's hard to take it seriously because you know it's encforced by their face giving culture and not coming from them, merely they are expected by others around them to do it. ie it is a shame based culture, you have to give face.

Hello !

Your not a veteran ... Your an Old Guard ! ! !

Welcome to the Membership !

I lived 7 years in Japan and, except for an old granny who changed places when I sat next to her, I can't say I had to face exclusions.



And I had sometimes the opposite experience.

To each his own

Julien

I agree that people are essentially the same all over the world and that's because they are exactly that; people. People are both good and bad. I'm certain that's the same in Japan but my limited experiences are all positive. I love their culture of consideration to others, it's something we sorely lack in the west.
allgaeuer
I live in the UK and I feel constantly embarrassed and ashamed at how we treat visitors and even non-Caucasian residents.

@allgaeur I'd love to visit a Hard Off but as I don't drive when I'm in Japan they can be a bit hard to get to. I always visit just about every Book Off I come across though. When I was last in Japan I actually saw more laserdisc players than discs! I've been recommended a shop in Osaka so I'll be checking it out this time.

Hi, thanks again!

@cold_sleeper:

This is a surprising coincidence - actually it is exactly the Hard Off shop in Yonago which I mentioned before: this is the shop about 50 km from here that has recently stopped selling laserdiscs! I am here on the countryside of the prefecture Tottori - the one of the 47 Japanese "prefectures" with the smallest absolute population. But I love this place - there is the shore of the Japanese Sea, interesting landscape, and the mountains, all in a nutshell. However during my working in Japan I have lived in and around Tokyo, where Japan looks very different.

@forper:

Obviously you have much experience with Japan - but what you wrote is not really a contradiction to what I wrote: all Japanese undergo a similar education which enforces - in general - friendly behaviour, but also many other "similar behaviour" that you prefer to call "conformity", a feature which I consider not to be so bad in itself. Especially if that means that everybody behaves in a friendly manner. Well, I like it here, but I am not Japanese, so I do not feel the full pressure to "conform" as much as I would if I were Japanese ...

Maybe with you and the Japanese it is the same as with me and the Americans, or with me and dogs? Somehow they perceive that I do not like them, so they react accordingly. When I went the first time to the USA, for a 3 months work in Florida, during the first meeting with my American colleagues I did not understand something, so I said - also for the very first time - "I did not catch that sentence, could you please repeat it?", the answer was "If you don't understand English, go home to your own country." I certainly cannot imagine a Japanese reacting like this. Of course there are also friendly US Americans, I could also get friends with some - however in Japan I have had much more friendly contacts.

Or maybe my experiences in Japan have simply been basically nicer than yours, because Japanese have a positive attitude towards Germans and a good opinion about us as well.

@firehorse_44: Thank you. But I hope I am not the only one old guy in this forum ...

@julien: If the old granny changed places, maybe it was only because you were much bigger than she (?), or maybe she was afraid to be eventually spoken to in English, and the sheer thought of being eventually unable to understand and to react accordingly, gives an uneasy feeling to quite a lot of Japanese, mainly because many of them think that it would be THEIR fault not to be able to communicate in English
This fear can be seen even with Japanese who know that this particular foreigner can speak Japanese - some strange part of the "Japanese mind" seems never to believe that there is such a thing as a Japanese speaking foreigner ...

@hippiedalek:

If you want to check for Hard Off shops in Osaka or somewhere else, just start Google and input e.g. "Hard off Osaka" then you will see the locations of three shops in a map. Below the three names A, B, and C there is a blue link in Japanese (sara ni hyôji): if you click on it, all shops in this area (usually more than three) do appear, together with their precize addresses and phone numbers, and their location in a google map so that you can identify each address by its position and you can amplify the size of the map at will, to see how you can get there. I suppose you will bring a Japan Rail Pass with you when you come to Japan - then you should not have a problem to get anywhere in larger towns, because there are usually many JR lines around (trains & buses).
I wish you a nice trip!

PS: Unfortunate for me, since this year I am not any more entitled to get a Japan Rail Pass, because JR has changed their rules and I have recently become a "permanent resident of Japan" - now I am "excluded together with all Japanese (!)" from this very useful tourist benefit ...

@hippiedalek: I forgot to say something about the shop in Osaka which was recommended to you - most probably "Snow Records" ? Well, if it is this shop: I have been there a few years ago, and they had really a lot of laserdisc stuff, in extraordinary quality, however their prices were above the line I had drawn for myself. I prefer to go "laserdisc hunting" in Hard Offs from time to time, with the hope to find something interesting for a low price. There is some gold digger mentality in me, I guess.

Well I'll never forget walking along in Tokyo, a Japanese comedian was standing on a box in front of a crowd telling jokes. As I walked passed he yelled out "HARO GAIJIN SAN" at me and the whole crowd laughed their a** off at me. This is just one example. I was treated differently almost every day. I always felt like a freak and an outsider in Japan. In America I met some assholes too but when people were nice, which most people were, it was more genuine because their culture didn't force them to do it.

I guess me and Japan didn't get along. I still wish I could get a work visa in the US, I pretty much think it's the greatest country that's ever existed.

That was very unfortunate. Please recognize that we are still immature people.

@forper

I feel sorry for you that you felt discriminated by that event.

But what do you expect from a performing comedian? He is trying to make jokes and get laughs, and everything that comes with strong emotions is good for jokes ... addressing a foreigner is certainly one of the things that cause much stress on Japanese - so much that nowadays little children often get extra training to approach a foreigner without being too afraid ... Once a boy (probably 1st class of junior high) suddenly came approaching me, standing nervously in front of me saying "this -- is -- a -- pen", then blushing and running away, and his colleagues were laughing from "safe" distance. Must have been some kind of "test of courage".

I have been in a lot of similar situations like you, but never felt "discriminated". I AM a gaijin and if somebody calls me so, it is just the truth. The joke in your event was that he was addressing you in Japanese ("Haro" is considered Japanese as well as gaijin and san, "hero" would have been "English") though you are a foreigner supposed not to understand Japanese. Japanese consider this to be funny, in the sense of "stupid me", and certainly it was not intended as an offence. I think that in this situation you should have also started to laugh - this would have shown that you understand the situation and also you can laugh about a little joke. But you seem to be much more sensitive than the other Australians I know (my brother-in-law is Australian and my sister became one, I visit them from time to time in QL). So you did not laugh, and the bewildered face you probably made when he spoke "Japanese" to you, stimulated further laughs ...

In my eyes Japan is not just another country, it is more like a country on another planet, inhabited by people with very little experience of seeing a foreigner. When I came to Japan for the very first time, into the rural prefecture I am now, lots of children and even some adults were staring at me - just as if an extraterrestrian had landed. They felt incredibly relieved when they understood that I could speak Japanese with them. Some people invited me even to their homes saying I was the first foreigner they ever saw LIVE (as opposed to see one in the TV)! Since then I understood that Japanese are able to marvel at new things like children - without any idea that somebody could feel offended by their behaviour. In Japanese TV shows like e.g. "Naruhodo the world" I could see this naive approach to the world - oh I loved that show, but when I recently saw it again - it is still on air, but mostly with different reporters etc. - now it is not any more the same.

@cold_sleeper:
Today I made a trip to Okayama-ken to see the Hard Off shop in Tsuyama, and unfortunately found that after Yonago also the shop in Tsuyama has terminated acquiring and selling laserdiscs! They have still a few laserdisc players to sell, but no discs any more
By the way, in which part of Japan do you live? Are there still Hard Off shops with laserdiscs?

I have not visited Tsuyama, but it seems to be an old city with historical achievements. At HardOff of Sagamihara where I live, still sell a few Discs and Players. Sometimes I come across some precious titles so I visit regularly.
If you are looking for a specific title with a good preservation status, I recommend using auction.
I began collecting from around the end of the 1980s, so it's a late start than you. Securing the location is always a big problem

@allgaeuer It was Disc JJ, Nipponbashi, that was recommended to me. These days there are very few Japanese LDs I'm still looking for, I'm mainly curious to have a look. We are getting the JR Rail Pass. It really is a bargain and makes travelling all over Japan so easy.

@forper That is an awful story. Sadly you get bad "comedians" all over the world who just go for the lowest common denominator.

@allgeuer I found your "this is a pen" story amusing. I often hear the phrase "これはペンです" used to describe useless phrases taught to Japanese learners, I guess it's the same for students learning English. I had a similar experience but it was a very young kid just saying hello then running back to their friends. I got the impression they were proud to have managed communication.

Good early morning Allgaeuer,

Welcome to the forums / Site Sir,

I enjoyed reading about your experiences and of your enthusiasm of all things Laserdisc.
No your not alone with regards being a LD Veteran or as mentioned by my Good Friend ''Fire horse'' an Old Guard.

Thank you for your contribution, for each person here has a unique angle to describe and that's comforting.

Keep writing as it's a pleasure to read from you,

Kind Regards