Middle-aged man trading cards go viral in rural Japan town
tokyoweekender.com1816 points by PaulHoule 11 days ago
1816 points by PaulHoule 11 days ago
I clicked the headline expecting a chuckle and left with an unexpectedly warmed heart.
> “We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” [...] “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.” > Kids have started attending local events and volunteering for community activities — just for a chance to meet the ojisan from their cards. Participation in town events has reportedly doubled since the game launched.
there's so much more I want to comment on--it's not screen-based, increased cross-generational interaction, strengthening community, elders having their stories known--but what I love is that these effects will compound into even greater benefits for the community.
This brings back something we've mostly lost in modern times. Elders had respect because they knew a lot and had contributed a lot, and everyone knew that. But that's not scalable, and we migrate a lot more now.
This is an engaging way that brings that back - rather than focusing on fantasy heroes, show kids real life role models.
Saying this as a rather old person myself...
I have a theory that, wrt knowledge, the relative advantage of age has been at least partially eroded by rapid technological advancement. In traditional/tribal societies, prior to the 20th century, wisdom actually accumulated with age, because the pace of change was slower. Wisdom & knowledge could be passed on from generation to generation.
Now, wisdom and knowledge become obsolete quickly. Many things you knew 20 years ago are outdated. The ICE engine you learned how to fix as a kid is now computer controlled, or has been replaced by batteries. Your optimistic/open/friendly mindset now makes you easy pickings for online scammers. Hell, even your family's secret cherished muffin recipe is spurned by your grandchildren because it has gluten or they're vegan or keto or whatever.
All this is just a take, but when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average.
Knowledge changes. I don't think wisdom necessarily changes. Maybe this is a philosophical discussion, but I think that is once of the key differences of knowledge and wisdom. However, I do think it is false that people necessarily accumulate wisdom with age. I know wise and unwise people of all ages, including people who think they're wise only because they're old.
when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average
Don't stop there, look at the US elected representatives! Washington is, from a lot of angles, a gerontocracy, and I don't think anyone would consider it "wise". The world has passed a lot of these folks by and even aside from that, their stubbornness to not step aside has in cases meant that they predictably die in office, so their seats go unfilled for a while, leaving people unrepresented...
> Washington is, from a lot of angles, a gerontocracy.
This goes deeper than one might suspect at first glance. The word "senate" comes from sennex, or old man, the same root word as "senile"
I'm not sure that's accurate. If I think of the crazies in Washington they're almost all (relatively) young.
The median age of the House is 57.5 years old and the Senate is 64.7[0]
Its really not great. There's very few representatives that have any life experiences of someone in the 30s or 40s. I'd argue that makes them out of touch on a host of very real, very pressing issues.
The other thing to think about is the age of those with the levers of power. Its one thing to be elected as a House member or to the Senate, its a whole other thing to sit on key powerful committees, be the leader of the party in the respective chamber etc. and the most powerful folks in congress trend into the 60s+
[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/16/age-and-g...
I disagree on the advantages of wisdom as these days I’m thinking the opposite:
1) Lack of wisdom leads to reinvention of the wheel. How many programming languages are there only now doing things the same way as 30 years ago? What is novel versus an unnecessary re-invention?
I started studying Tcl code from back in the late ‘90’s and honestly was surprised. Hell, many people don’t even know what macports is even though homebrew isn’t much but an attempt to reinvent macports with a “cool” spin.
2) Societal language and general problem solving skills are deteriorating. Language, and mathematics evolve ever so slowly, and yet emphasis on their importance is reduced in favor of the whims of technological advancement.
I would rather hire someone with the slow-developing, traditional skills, than the new-age fads.
In addition, with the advances in AI the only people worth hiring will be the ones with traditional education—and the wise, classically trained among our elders will be evermore important.
> How many programming languages are there only now doing things the same way as 30 years ago?
Similar thing in abstract, but differently in practice and it does matter a lot.
Yet what we’re seeing on the web with Typescript components turning to a pretty version of MFC minus the right/middle-click capability. The “single-page app” becoming a defacto standard mode of development.
Looking at the Fluent design React components just makes me wonder: this is progress from the desktop metaphor designed in the 90’s? What are we trying to achieve?
Then, I take a step back and realize that the 20-something’s from today don’t generally know what that is because they are cloud native.
Isn’t it weird how “old people” are so much like other people? The insecurities, hopes and so on? It’s like stereotypes just don’t work or something.
Be careful extrapolating too much from the emotional maturity of one generation where an unfortunately large majority was lead poisoned as children.
Elder and middle millennials are just about equally as poisoned, and we're all full of microplastics
For the future of the USA this is fortunately not very accurate, and microplastics are not associated with increased incidence of dark triad personality traits, as far as I know.
I think this is true from a pure knowledge perspective but definitely not from a wisdom perspective.
Old people have -through their experience- gained a tacit wisdom that can be very helpful when considering life choices.
The craziest and stupidest things I hear regularly are from older people. There are broad swathes of old people that, not having been raised to be skeptical about media consumption on the internet, are entirely credulous about all manner of insane dis/mis-information.
That said, it's also something I'm seeing with younger people as well.
The oldest are the easiest to swindle. This isn’t new.
Also, current media has the veneer and polish of old media which makes it difficult for the unsavvy.
Old people are also just a lot more numerous, relative to young people, than in previous eras of history.
Every time I scroll through r/wallstreetbets or r/cryptocurrency I realize that I understand something about risk and patience that many young people do not. I am not disrespecting individual investors and I don't hate btc (tbh I don't invest in it either).
It's obvious that a lot of people feel like they have to find a way to get rich in the next three years or they will be poor forever. I am sure my generation was often the same. But people who have been through good times and bad times understand risk and patience.
people today cannot imagine what it would have been like to have each generation do, experience and believe exactly the same thing. for thousands of years. even just a few hundred years ago, new ideas were basically a waste of time because everything had already been tried. history would swallow you up.
I find many “elders” I know think climate change is a hoax, solar power is dumb , transsexuals are evil, immigration is silly etc, basically they hold extreme views and it effects my ability to trust their word or opinion.
I’m not sure if technology is to blame, I think social media is probably part of their corruption, Fox News too, but yeah, the lack of interest in their opinions is mostly self inflicted and I feel they choose to believe in nonsense because it’s fun to hate things.
What technology has done is give me access to lots of knowledge and wisdom and now I don’t have to put up with all the cruft to get what I need.
Some elders in my life are more balanced and I enjoy seeking their opinion and wisdom and leaning on their experience for all sorts of things.
One exception for me is that in Japan, even opinions are considered to be potentially offensive so elderly people are careful with their words. I’ve very really interacted with an older Japanese person who just spits rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Japanese even are careful to make a statement like “this is the best chocolate I’ve tasted”, It’s much more common to say “I think this is wonderful”.
> ...but when I look at voting patterns in particular, I find myself pessimistic that the elderly are wiser than average.
Wisdom like 'It's harder to build something than it is to tear it down' and 'Change carries its own risk.'
The irony is that older people overwhelming voted for Trump on the basis of returning things to the way they were... and then Trump staffed his administration with young ideologues who are determined to upset the traditional order.
Midterms will be curious.
People group together uncorrelated concerns way too much in politics. I guess it's necessary side effect of the "us vs. them" mind virus.
> The irony is that older people overwhelming voted for Trump on the basis of returning things to the way they were... and then Trump staffed his administration with young ideologues who are determined to upset the traditional order.
There isn't any irony there. People heard promises of some X and Y and Z returning to the way things were, they voted accordingly, and then their candidate proceeded to go against them on A, B and C. This is only surprising if you believe there's a strong ideological correlation between all these things (there isn't), and that parties and their leaders act according to their purported ideologies (they don't).
It's not {X,Y,Z} vs {A,B,C}.
It's {X,Y,Z} vs {X,Y,C}.
That portions of the investment community threw in behind Trump and are now shocked (shocked!) that he has bigger priorities than keeping the market pumped is absolutely ironic.
Counterpoint: The only people who voted for Harris more than Biden were old white people (especially old white women).
The biggest shift towards right wing authoritarianism from a demographic perspective is among the young (specifically young brown/black men in America). This is happening globally at a rapid and unprecedented pace.
Get ready for a conservative, violent, radicalized youth. A Clockwork Orange but with 4chan like characteristics.
I'm not pessimistic about Boomers anymore. They're becoming teddybears as they age.
> radicalized youth
Two of my teenage sons play sports and at times it feels like all content consumption roads eventually lead to “manfluencers”[0]. If they’re watching content on lifting techniques, sports discussions, or gaming—not uncommon topics for teenagers—the recommendations are riddled with rabbit holes into the so called manosphere.
[0] https://www.psypost.org/rejected-and-radicalized-study-links...
I think society hasn’t figured out the incentives for elders currently. In private settings it’s fine, but in the work context I’ve seen few incentives for >50 year olds to support younger generations. To the contrary, many of these people fear losing their job just before retirement so choose risk-averse behavior. At the same time, unlike in the village, the juniors are not their relatives so that is also not incentivizing any positive behavior.
And yes there are of course very nice people who are the exception, but from what I’ve seen they are truly the exception. As Charlie Munger put it “Well, I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.”
Worth noting that the relations to elder is really getting rocky, and people are rethinking them in both directions.
We can't hide from the influence the elder generations had on the current situation. Japan is a developed nation with a crazy low crime rate and incredible infrastructure thanks to them. It's also a social mess and the poster child of stagnation thanks to them.
This whole trading card game surfaces both sides of the coin, with what these people are bringing to the community and also why small kids shouldn't look to much upon them as it's a recipe for trouble.
Japan always does the hard thing. If someone misbehaves and two people are close by you can be sure that they loudly will talk with each other about how the person misbehaves (they are not afraid). The prisons are very strict, with beatings if you don’t follow authority. The police acts swiftly and have small offices everywhere . Green tea and healthy food makes people be able to control their mood (hard to not stuff your face).
The rules are very open and clear. The deincentives for misconduct are strong.
The newspapers focus are different. More fun or actionable news.
People just think they are built different, that is not the case. They just succeed with many small things that makes a greater whole. But people just dismiss it as a culture thing, which is reductive.
> If someone misbehaves and two people are close by you can be sure that they loudly will talk with each other
This is the exact opposite of my experience (and all my Japanese friends). They will stare at the person misbehaving but will absolutely not challenge him. Their culture is "avoid the problem/confronting at all costs".
> The police acts swiftly
They are considered tax thieves, even by Japanese people. Also, talk to some foreign women that got sexually harassed or even raped how the police helped them. In fact, I don't have proof, but I sincerely believe that if the police was trained well, crime rate would increase because they would find more crimes.
> healthy food
Are we talking about deep-fried food? Or perhaps over-salted dishes? Oh, no, you meant the sugar they add in basically all their cooking? Time where they mostly ate fish and rice is over. They barely eat enough vegetables. And fruits are for the well-off only.
It's a country that I love and have spent quite some time there—and more to come—but your observations are exactly the opposite of what I saw.
What they do correctly is the low unemployment rate, though I think it's starting to rise with younger people. People don't need to commit violent crimes to feed themselves if any work lets them afford necessities.
I think they are opposite because when I say police acts swiftly, you turn around and say that they are tax thieves. They can both be true?
Healthy food. Yes they eat healthy and their BMI shows it. I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis. Proof is in the pudding (BMI). Yes it is getting worse and I hope American tariffs will help in this regard. Again, healthy living AND getting worse can both be true, especially with people that are friendly with cultures they want to know more about (many, but still a small subset).
Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids. But the narrative that is pushed heavily in media is the equal sign between poor and criminal, instead of the correlation, which again is reductive. Why? Is there anger? What food do trigger it? What mindset?
My grandparents where very poor (as in oat porridge for weeks poor). They would never hurt a fly. In certain minds that would have been a weakness, in certain minds it’s self sacrifice and equal strength.
Most want to be the wolf among the sheep. It is US greatest strength and greatest weakness at the same time.
I think it's more likely that social pressure to control people's weights is responsible for Japan's low BMI, not anything to do with the food. Japan is the land of vending machines and convenience stores. It's easy to eat junk food all day if you want to. But people will notice you getting fat, and unlike in Western countries they're likely to criticize you for it.
"Bring back shame again" increasingly feels like something that would actually be beneficial in the long run.
We tend to hit a Goodhart’s Law situation, where focusing on weight and BMI comes at the expense of actual health. That's how we get eating disorders and other mental health issues as well, so as usual it's complicated.