🤣

The Zen of silent-mode DDR.

That would certainly explain the jogging motion Dogen is doing lol

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Green, black, and blue make the colors in the sky. @@Dogen

笑

I am not religious The same person 😂

@@SpacePopeIIII don't think Japan told Christianity to go away if I remember correctly until a British guy came there and convinced them to kill the Christians Japan actually had a non-insignificant population of Christians but this could be just a fairy tale of history.

@@SpacePopeIII they are essentially pagans. The japanese practice shintioism regularly, marry in churches and attend funerals the buddhist way. In other countries that kind of mixed practice would be considered blasphemy.

@cunnylicious Christians celebrate Christmas by going to church and also decorating a tree in their house

Religion is simply when people believe a myth to be true and are steadfast about that view. Buddhism is more of a discipline than a religion. It cares less about having belief in myths (and adherence to it) and focuses on self growth. Weirdly enough, despite having a ton of deities (or maybe because of it), Shintoism has a ton or interesting stories behind it but does not force people to blindly believe. At the very least, doesn't vilify non-believers.

@@xaphon89 And?

it's just traditions, for getting good luck, avoiding bad luck ya know. nothing you need believe on it right?

@@MaxIronsThird Same reason non-Christians will nonetheless celebrate Christmas -- cause it's fun, cause it's social, cause it's nostalgic, cause it's habitual, etc.

Some people classify religion as “what you do” and faith “what you believe”.

Meanwhile Protestantism has "sola fide" (Latin for "only faith")

@@TheOvy or why atheists say "oh my God".

That’s some hardcore religion.

Very perceptive of the commenter

20+ years living in Japan as a foreign-resident, and I totally agree with that statement!

as a japanese, It's true.

Dogenmatic side.

Some religions are more about orthodoxy (right belief) while other are more about orthopraxy (right action).

It's not really about what side, it's that both are traditional practices that different people from different places have been used to and still carries out today out of habit.

Ironically, religious or spiritual rituals are dogma.

I think one aspect is the influence of Confucianism that lies a strong focus on rituals

Japan: The country where one week after celebrating christmas you go to the buddhist temple, and the day after that you go to the shinto shrine without it feeling weird.

@@yeehaw693 俺が小さい頃にクリスマスにKFCは無かったが、、、これも神道なんか？

@@poniso9142あのチキンの美味しさは神レベルだよ よって神道

Were they 5¥ coins? That would kind of make sense.

Hey, one of the gifts given to baby Jesus by the 3 magic kings (idk how anglophones refer to them) was gold, so it's kinda lore-accurate

@@kokorochacarero8003 true. and i believe we refer to them as the "3 wise men". I prefer magic kings though xD

お賽銭だね。 祈願成就で神社やお寺に納める事だけど、お賽銭の賽の字の意味は、神さまから与えられた福を感謝して祭り上げる意味だけど、ある意味、日本的。 神様への感謝と敬意だけど、過去に、映画、２００１年、宇宙の旅でモノリスが展示されていたら、モノリスにお賽銭が供えられて、神社やお寺でのお供え物や飾り付けがされて、祭壇化したそうです。

Closet wannabe Christians? 😂 “I don’t what to switch over, but I’ll still try to gain KIRISUTO’s favor. “ 😅

日本人は年末にその年のことを鐘の音とともに忘れなければならないし 来年のことを考えると悪魔に呪われると洗脳されているはず だから１月は毎回初めての年になるのでは そして、どうげんさんは日本語がきっと読めるはず

You confused yourself. What you are describing is literally practice. The good/bad thing comes from millenia of several schools of thought including buddhism... Wether they realize or not. In rural areas of Japan people may be more conscious about these things.

41% attend regularly? I'm from Italy and like, what the hell. EDIT: I looked it up and, for reference, in Italy the people who attend a place of worship on a weekly basis are the 18% (ISTAT), with 80% of the population being christian (read: baptised. Reminder to self: formally reject faith already).

is there difference between Christian church and Catholic?

@@soffio2000 i have to imagine that there's either a really loose definition of "regularly," or perhaps some older and/or regional (i.e. Southern/bible belt) groups that are really lifting those numbers. Almost nobody I know goes to church at ALL, let alone enough to consider themselves "regulars"

41% "regularly" ? wtf? and what does that mean? One time per month? I'm not american (thanks god!) but these numbers seem a bit exagerated, don't you think?

@@hoangdung7494 catholic is one of the many branches of christianity, too many of them to list.

I think praying for the spirits of the dead is definitely religious.

Animism isn't inherently religious, but it is supernatural and not based on scientific evidence.

Yes it is. Religion ≠ Abrahamism@@ActionGamerAaron

@@Astavyastataa Japan must be the only OECD country which doesn't have widespread Abrahamism.

But what do you think that happen to the dead? Do you believe that there exist something supernatural (souls, life after death, gods and spiritual beings, destiny,etc)? Sorry to bother, I'm just curious, because this is a spirituality a bit hard to understand for a westerner like me.

do it, learn anime language and finaly become a true gigachad alphamale attractive to all females, and weebs on the planet

Jozu desu ni 😂

You already our dear waifu.

YEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!! お願い!!!!!!

You have to learn Japanese. There is no better language to use to insult weebs with.

Can I go?

To be fair, another big point to draw people there are power spots and the touristic "edo-mura" aka souvenir paradise.

Japanese is totally religious, just "the religion" has no name or a book. Some consider it barbaric superstitions, I don't know, but there lies the joke.

From the Christian perspective it could be generalised paganism

Well, to be fair, it is the holiest shrine in Shintoism, so it makes sense.

Shintoism isn't a 100% indigenous belief system either, since there was definitely influence from a variety of mainland practices over the centuries.

@@digitaljanus there's even a lot of connections to be drawn with Indo-European religions (think Norse, Hindu, Roman, and Greek mythology).

Well it isn't "from India". Chinese immigrants and returning Japanese personnel brought it home. As far as they're concerned that's not foreign, that's just neighborhood religion. Imagine if some aliens from Andromeda came to introduce new numeric glyphs to Americans and when refused they say "um your numbers come from India, this is also foreign"

And got to Japan through China, with a weird mix with local folk religions.

​@@yaygya "Indo-european"? What-??

I just saw weird bouncing and thought it was very odd, did not catch on until i read this comment.

Kinda made me nervous.

Someone in the comment said they were saying DDR 😂

She was probably a woman if she was that old

that's because the word for religion in japanese is a word made up to translate english or dutch "religion" which fits religions such as christianism, so by definition they're right in a sense, because shintoism or boudhism don't have the same system as abrahamic religions do. however, that's where it gets tricky : how to define religion as a concept rather than a single restrictive word ? and this is where most japanese people would agree, that they're indeed religious.

It seems to be treated more as culture than religion.

@@bookofkittehs english ain't my main language :/

Yeah, because foreigners in Japan that start the conversation with “I’m interested in religion” are usually Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses.

Japan

Japan

Nippon

完璧

So, a shame based religion?

And depending on the denomination and your local congregation, many churches serve only non-alcoholic wine at communion. Mine does. I've also been to churches that serve grape juice instead

@@Siseja This is usually a consideration to recovering alcoholics. Many congregations know of or have members that deal with this and makes communion more open and accessible.

@@watvannou I mean that is ONE of the reasons but also the fact that children participate in communion and also many denominations just don't do alcohol in church or alcohol in general. My denomination (Norwegian Lutheran) is both a no alcohol in church kind of culture AND Norwegian alcohol laws are super strict and they just don't wanna fuck with them

@@Siseja catholic must contain alcohol. grape must is an option but it has some small amount of alcohol. pasteurized grape juice is invalid

@@GigsVT well Catholics are weird so

This is one of the dumbest shit I've ever heard. He simply didn't come up with the good translation so he put the blame on the Japanese language. He must be stupid to think European languages had adequate words for theological concepts in pre-Christian era. Most of the theological terms were loaned or translated from Greek philosophy or Semitic languages.

It's hard to explain nonsense through sensible language.

@@TheMahayanist Which is why it's hard getting them to understand English and English grammar in general. But that's probably cuz English is a bastard language with Greek, Latin, German, and French all mixed in.

@@TheMahayanist Rich coming from Buddhism.

@@azurepulse1870No more so than Japanese is one with multiple waves of Chinese, Portuguese, German, English, and more all mixed in.

its interesting that not knowing that kind of thing is considered 非常識 or 世間知らず while its normal to not know the difference of temples and shrines.

@@VV-xl6sr Yes, and it sounds very reasonable lol Now i'm getting to feel like Japanese people are religious in a way.

@@VV-xl6sr And yet, despite not knowing the difference, they instinctively know not to clap at temples.

@@VV-xl6sridk if it's normal to to not know amazake is made of rice, but the temple shrine confusion kinda makes sense because lots of shrines (like those to inari) were built inside temples and smaller devotional buddhist altars , especially jinzo and fudo myo-o, were often built in temple-shrine complexes. Like in the west, the houses of worship are explicit to that religious group in terms of use, which is easier to enforce because, the objects central to worship (e.g.: reliquaries, crucifixes, copies of the torah) are all portable, but in Japan, sacred places historically act as kind of religious centers that prior to buddhism were the site of a village's local gods due to special geologic formations/springs/other natural features that acted as an object of worship to communicate with kami (you've probably seen pictures of these sacred trees or boulders with paper streamers on them), but then after buddhism arrived they specifically built temples next to the shrines so the priests could "help the kami with their karma", basically co-opting shinto cosmology into japanese buddhism. So the official title of "shrine" or "temple" basically comes down to which religion happened to be more in power politically when the local government registered the name in regional maps; while in reality most of the time it's just both.

We kind of have that. It's called a euphemism treadmill or perjoration, where neutral or positive terms gain negative connotations. An example is that "moron," "idiot", and "imbecile" were neutral medical terms for varying levels of intellectual disability. Eventually they became generic insults we throw at people and were completely divorced from any medical meaning. These aren't quite swear words today, but the idea is the same, just less extreme.

@@WD2du Another good example I just thought of is "bitch." It means "female dog," but no one uses it that way anymore. Now it's a slur for women.

@@Trainfan1055Janathan It's still the official term of the AKC. You will hear many who style themselves dog experts call female dogs bitches in the US.

@@Trainfan1055Janathan It seems to me that people who raise and breed dogs do still use the term bitch in its original denotation without any problems, to this day. And it's no longer just a slur on women, lately people just throw it on anyone of any gender who is behaving contrary to how they want them to, or has an unpleasant attitude in general.

Try calling a woman Miss

Consider it as a philosophy to live life but not like hardcore religion like abrahamics.

Syncretism though much for show rather than religion I'd bet, like atheists celebrating Christmas (itself stolen from pagan roots) it's just a fun event.

It's kind of like Hinduism. Like in my own family, my father never prays but does celebrate certain holidays and performs yearly ritual rites for the ancestors. My mom prays (when she has the time) but isn't strict about blasphemy or looking at religious texts as just mythology. And for me I'll participate here and there for the community feeling but inside I don't believe in Gods. When I look at Japanese behaviour towards rituals and superstition I'm reminded of my father's stories about how their village didn't really worship idols or go to temples when he was young. It was seen as a way of life rather than something you needed to perform. A lot of people have actually become more dogmatic about Hinduism now compared to before.

This is common in many European countries also, particularly in Northern Europe. People go to church for Christmas and Easter, get married and baptise their children in the church, but if you ask them if they actually belive they will say they are atheist or agnostic. They do the church thing because it is tradition and because it gives important life events a framework, and because they don't want to offend that one aunt that is an actual believer. Very few, even if staunchly atheist, will take themselves of the member list of the local church.

This is true for the west too specifically catholics, which is the point of the video. People say “oh my god” and “bless you” in every day life so much the original meaning is lost. “Jesus” is used as an interjection when you are surprised instead of having actual meaning. People go to church like they do shrines and dont even know what the bread and the wine represent anymore. They go because they are pressured to. Most of europe is atheist but their entire architecture, culture, and rituals are extremely christian with some pagan. My family had traditions in new year that were definitely religious at some point (not eating meat) but now are just “traditional”. Rituals are an interesting thing, at one point they had a meaning and were used to remind us of spiritual connections, now they are just husks of their former selves, acting as something that makes us just relate to other people of our culture, but not carry any spiritual meaning. It’s normal in the modern world to say you’re not spiritual, even though you pray for bad things not to happen, do rituals which had connotations but now dont, and use words that have spiritual meanings but now dont either. We live in a strange world

I'll pretend that I learned something amid all that Kanji and Chinese.

I wish wabisabi was ingrained in japanese culture. The japanese would greatly benefit from rediscovering it and learning how to appreciate imperfection, how to find perfection in Imperfection and be less obsessed with manipulation (of even the atmosphere) and outward appearances.

Now there’s a perceptive and well-researched comment! I’ve lived in Japan for 20 years now, and that concept wasn’t something I really understood until recently. But yeah, absolutely. 👍

@@Jordan-inJapan Thank you for noticing. I spent my elementary school years outside of Japan due to my dad's work, and when my family returned to Japan I was fascinated by Japanese customs. I often wondered why many people in Japan identify as 無宗教 (or no religion), yet have no issue with Christian/Church-style weddings, Buddhist-style funerals, celebrating Christmas, and visiting Shinto Shrines for New Years. It didn't make sense to me until I took a class in college on Japanese Cultural History, and only then I realized that Japanese culture/customs and religion are so intertwined, most Japanese people don't or can't differentiate the two. This aspect is what makes Japan unique, but it also explains the enormous cultural difficulty when Japanese nationals move abroad or when foreign-nationals live in Japan. (The barrier is not simply grammar/vocab, it is cultural which spans from how people interact and how society is organized.) I think Japanese society is one that puts enormous amount of pressure on foreigners to adapt and assimilate to Japanese language, culture, and mannerism. Some foreigners struggle with it, others absorb and integrate with Japan. As you must have realized over the years, the latter group are the ones who are deeply appreciated, valued, and trusted by Japanese society.

It does sound like its original Japanese name!

Oh, I didn't know you had to take your shoes of when going to church in Japan. That's interesting.

As someone who is just at the beginning stages of learning Japanese, learning 元気 has basically tripled my vocabulary.

As someone who is newbie to Japanese Language, that definitely caught me off guard, cuz I would imagine that a double genki = I'm great

Just think of it like in English: "Everything going well?" "Yeah yeah(in that same tone)" Double "yeah" doesn't mean the yeah is stronger. If anything it's a completely dismissal of the question. It's also the same in German (ja ja) and in French (ça va ça va), probably many other languages that I don't know well enough to speak about them too, where the doubling of the answer does not correspond to a strengthening of the answer.

i guess he just doesnt translate it literally, i noticed his subtitle always try to adjust it with how american usually speak english, if that makes sense.

@@JuanTabaresit’s kinda like if someone said “how’s it going” and you said “fine, fine”. Doubling it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doubled in intensity

Which is kinda like what pagan Europe/middle east was like before monotheistic religions took over

Aren't there also festivals in Japan? And days where you might visit a temple or shrine may be during big holidays, so there will be a lot of people attending.

​@@m.m.1301Maybe for the common people, we don't actually, but those that could afford it did grand and lavish ceremonies with sacrifices and all that

America isn't the only country that practices mass, you know...

@@animesoul167 There are but it's more like a state fair you don't listen to a priest talk at those.

There' differences between non-religious and atheist.

That's great ! How's the Japanese rite look like ? :)

@@Herghun not much different from the European traditions. I found very compelling the fact that the eucharist veneration can be done sitting on the ground.

Also Jesus apparently died in Japan as well so he got around

Really only a Puritan thing. European protestants still do the wine thing and have no prohibitions against alcohol, since we drove all the puritans out to go live in america

@@Candlemancer Good on ya.

Poor Mormons everyone always leaves them out

@@Candlemancer Well it's their fault they even banned Christmas at one point for god sake. Real uptight a oles, quite unfortunate even current America has to deal with the historical consequences of their migration.

I thought the basis of Shinto was musubi.

@@4grammaton Japanese mythology, yes. I meant they lie underneath Shintoism.

Atheism isn't taking down Christianity that's so untrue and dumb. It's like me saying Christianity is 99% touching kids and disrespecting other religions. See how messed up that is.

I do it in India! Mostly cause it's fun but also for a sense of community. Plus it's cool to see all the mythology.