Comments on: Friendships from high school figure highly in Japan

By: High school friendships really matter to Japanese | Lolicon Images

High school friendships really matter to Japanese | Lolicon Images — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:58:47 +0000

[...] to a survey conducted within the MyVoice internet community, over half of Japanese made their friends in high school. And when you consider that nearly a [...]

By: hajime

hajime — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:43:27 +0000

i think this survey lacked definitions.

ex. definition of a “friend” according to the Japanese social criterion.

it would be cool to contrast this type of survey with other countries/cultures/religion

ex. the socio-psychological implications of “It’s best to keep a certain distance from other people”

By: wintersweet

wintersweet — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:06:26 +0000

The number of people reporting friends dating back to elementary school/kindergarten is pretty impressive as well, though typical of East Asia. I think a lot of North Americans don’t even have one friend they actually *see* from those days (Facebook doesn’t count). Maybe rural folks who haven’t moved since childhood, but…yeah. I was always impressed by the importance of the classmate relationship when I was in Taiwan, even seeing elderly ladies having a grand time at lunch with their “classmates” from elementary school. I felt kind of jealous. I’m only in close contact with *one* schoolmate (from junior high-high school, in my case, and even she lives hundreds of miles away), though Facebook has brought me back into occasional online contact with a few others. I suspect it’s pretty healthy to have frequent face-to-face and phone contact with people who have known you so long, though it may also be a little stifling.