Blood

[Kaikitsune Makoto]

Well like it or not Japan is a country that countains a good deal of overt or thinly veiled racism. In the case above the medical professionals may or may not realise how stupid their actions are, but I'm sure they refuse donations because they realise that many people would react with fury if they knew they were given foreign blood. If that sounds unlikely to you then I suspect you haven't lived in this country.

I am aware of the racism in Japan but personally haven't encountered it that much. Probably because I have only stayed 6 weeks max at a time in Japan and other stays have been 2 weeks max. Also knowing Amanogawa does give a super positive view on attitude towards foreigners in Japan and my home stay family was very foreigner-friendly and has welcomed many foreigners to stay at their house since my departure (Hmm I was their first..maybe I was so nice that they wanted to try more! Nobody else can teach them sumou like I did though.. (Neener, neener...) ). Certainly I have seen the prejudice too but in many ways I do understand it. Same in Finland where foreigners are not so common as for example in Sweden. I am 100% sure receiving Somalian blood would be quite a no no no for many Finns and who honestly thinks that Russians enjoy equality with Finns in Finland. Certainly a lot of suspicion and prejudice towards them too. In Japan foreigner stands out still, especially outside of big cities. Hospitability can be there despite the distrust and suspicion. I doubt many Japanese really hate foreigners but just aren't used to that and their habits. Heh, slightly off topic in a way but Japanese psychiatrist residing in France explained that many Japanese women who travel to FRance suffer from the culture shock of impolite people. Lot of cases where the Japanese woman has gone to Paris and ended up staying mostly in hotel due to the shocking treatment by French in stores :-D Difference to Japanese service culture is so big.

Anyways, Japan is a bit strange country in many ways but also rich with foreign influences. That unique filtering system they have has moulded the country in interesting ways. It is difficult to say about the true level of prejudice and racism in Japan before I get the chance to live there which should be reasonably soon. Probably racism is worse towards Chinese though.

Personally I have automatic prejudice towards refugees and other people who come to Finland and NOT learn the language much at all, unless their stay will be short. Maybe many foreigners in Japan who don't make the effort to get reasonably fluent in the language get even more prejudice too. Again, I don't know how it is but if someone goes to live in a country where only their native tonque is widely spoken and not learn the language, it does give an impression that one doesn't really care. This is highlighted in Japan where you really can't survive with English with average Japanese people.

[Gusoyama]

Recently, there was a Dr. Who episode where everyone that had A positive blood was turned into a zombie. This was a joke by the writers about the English royal family, who all have A positive blood. I believe it was one of the first episodes with David Tennant as Dr. Who, who is currently displayed as Manekineko's avatar, in his Dr. Who costume.

Edited March 27, 2007 by Gusoyama

[Petr]

Many people are extremely kind to us but there are also some people who are quite unfriendly. Both types of behaviour are a demonstration of the mindset that people who look different should be treated differently. This feeling is quite strong in Japan. (Which is partly justified. If you are Caucassian, you're statisticaly less likely to understand Japanese stuff.)

The other day I have visited a centre for "handicapped people". I had mixed feelings when I found out that foreigners are kindly included among "handicapped people" in their brochures. The brochures were illustrated by manga-like pictures showing how to deal with the "handicapped". Black faces with curly hair and white faces with big noses and yellow faces with "slanted eyes" (many Japanese believe they have the biggest and roundest eyes), all of them speaking in katakana ("アリガトウ"） and cute Japanese youth "helping" them getting around.

Yesterday, some obaachan in a restaraunt kept super kindly explaing to me in pre-elementary Japanese about Japanese food although I didn't ask her and just wanted to quitely have my lunch and quickly go back to my lab.

It has to be admited that we often profit from being treated differently ("the gaijin advantage"). I don't think that, for example, the Australian sumo team could approach women at home the way they do it here..

[Manekineko]

Recently, there was a Dr. Who episode where everyone that had A positive blood was turned into a zombie. This was a joke by the writers about the English royal family, who all have A positive blood. I believe it was one of the first episodes with David Tennant as Dr. Who, who is currently displayed as Manekineko's avatar, in his Dr. Who costume.

Ah, yes, "The Christmas Invasion". That was fun! I just love the way Dr Who crew poke fun at Britishness overall and Wales (where they are based) in particular. I think I laughed out loud when they blew up Downing street 10 in the previous (Eccleston) season.

I'm A+, too.

[Cassia]

I'm from Britain and I've given blood in Italy, the US (although not any more), and Australia, but no one has ever let me give blood here, not even at the pharmaceutical company where I worked and thought they might be more open. The ever-smiley explanation was, 'But you might have been infected by BSE'. I tried saying that I'm vegetarian (I'm not, but I was curious) but the simple fact of being English was enough. Apparently the rule is that if you've been in Britain for more than one day between 1980 and 1996, you can't give blood in Japan. Their loss if they don't want my nice B- blood. When I went home at Christmas it was one of the first things I did - I'd hate to have an accident and assume that there was blood available without ever having donated myself.

As for the blood type/personality thing, I can't remember how many times waiting to cross the road I've had some old woman tug on my sleeve and ask me: 1) Where are you from?, 2) How old are you?, 3) Are you married?, 4) Why not?, 5) What blood type are you? And all kinds of people have given me an amused knowing look when I say I'm B - why is that so bad!! It's kind of frustrating to be labelled so terminally but hey, I'm a blonde Englishwoman over 30 living unmarried and childless in Japan - I've already got a whole host of labels to contend with!

[Petr]

I'm a blonde Englishwoman over 30 living unmarried and childless in Japan

In Tokyo? (Censored...)

Edit: I just noticed "Kyoto" in your avatar (Pulling hair...)

P.S. I don't know what is my blood type which shocks everyone here but I like that they cannot classify me according to their bloody mental models.

Edited March 28, 2007 by Petr

[Cassia]

Don't get excited, we already met...

[Jakusotsu]

Don't get excited, we already met...

Why doesn't that surprise me at all? (Chucking salt...)

[kaiguma]

And without blood, we couldn't get tattoos, and that would just be horrible.

We couldn't? Please, elaborate!

It may very well be a myth of 'conventional wisdom.' You almost always bleed when getting a permanent tattoo. I've been told by tattoo artists that the ink mingles with the blood, which has two effects. 1, It draws the pigments deeper into the subcutaneous than the needles actually go, which increases permanence. 2, By mixing with the blood, the ink is 'vetted' so that the body won't try to clean it out as a toxin, which would be similar to piercing rejection. I've never questioned this so I always assumed it was true.

If it were race or religion, that would be discrimination, but here we are talking about a method of perceiving personality, whether or not you agree in the method.

I really can't believe that you think it's ok for companies to take blood type into consideration. :-O

<snip>

Blood type determining personality is nonsense. I doubt you can find a single reputable scientist who would even entertain the notion that the world is divided into four basic personality types.

<snip>

It's exactly the same as a woman being told she couldn't have the job because "women aren't mentally as logical as men".

First, I didn't really say I think it's ok. If I was in charge of hiring at a company, I would never use that method of screening. I think misled would be a good way to describe it. However, it's not complete nonsense. It's fine to have 4 basic personality types (it's actually 8) as long as they are extremely broad and allow for personal experience and other factors to adequately account for wider natural variations. So if an employer was coupling the bood test with a verbal personality test, or even his own sound objectivity, I think discriminationn could be avoided. It really depends on how they handle it. If they are stupid about it, then they may be inadvertently creating discrimination.

But it's certainly not the same kind of outright discrimination in your example of not hiring a woman, or the multitudes of false Eugenics reports that were used in the past. Race, religion, sexual orientation, sex, disability, etc. can all potentially be discerned via superficial observation. They can also be falsely discerned this way. As I keep on saying, there is no "second-class" blood type or blood type that has been treated as a minority, and not even unworthy in a context broader than hiring practices. Maybe extreme widespread misuse of bloodtype screening in hiring practises could create that kind of second-class within a specific region, but I think it's very farfetched. I really doubt they've simplified things that much. In other words, I don't see any real danger in the practice and I still think your outrage is exaggerated.

Employers can make you take a drug-test, and ask if you've ever been convicted of a felony. This is also a method of perceiving personality by actions you either take in your private life or actions you took in the past. Isn't that quite a lot more invasive that a physical characteristic that has a scientifically-proven link to certain hormone levels which have been proven to influence personality?

Working under influence of drugs or committing felonies would directly impact the employer. Impact of blood type is quite questionable to say the least.

;-)

It's highly questionable to assume that a past felon has not been rehabilitated, and thus he is a liability. I'm honestly on the fence here, but I don't see it as cut and dry. My point is that I think it is a borderline invasion of privacy. It is definitely unfair to assume that an employee who has recently used some illegal substance will engage in said substance while on the job and thus screen for hiring based on recreational drug use. I'm sure many would disagree, but I have a very liberal attitude on this subject.

Big companies all over the world now are using tests very similar to the Jung-based test you took. That just happens to be a personality-evaluation that you believe in, so you can accept it and you wouldn't call it discrimination.

That comparrison is flawed. There is nothing to believe about such personality / aptitude tests. Each person is free to choose whatever answers they want and if they do so truthfully and the questions are well chosen then you can get a general idea about the decisions a person is likely to make in ceratin situations and in which areas they are comfortable and which they are not. If I wanted to get a particular reading it wouldn't be hard to selectively choose which answers could give me that outcome.

Blood types / star signs etc give the person no chance. You are doomed to be labeled and boxed the minute you are born (or even before it). The experiences you have in life, whatever education you receive, the relationships you have with the people around you, whether you live on a dollar a day or are a billionaire. None of these things it seems affect your personality. If you are B you are selfish. End of story. How anyone could give credence to such an idea is beyond me.

"...if they do so truthfully and the questions are well chosen..." is precisely why my comparison is not flawed. IF bloodtype

were completely accurate and provided for more variation, it would be much more reliable than any verbal test, because it is decided genetically. And that is the obvious draw it has for these companies. If you're taking the verbal test and getting hired is on the line, you'll say exactly what they want you to say, so it's not guaranteed to be accurate. Neither one is particularly accurate, and therefore neither deserves to be the final decision-maker. Hopefully they aren't and are instead being used primarily to narrow down the field, as I suggested before. IF they are ever used as deal-breakers, then that is a problem.

I doubt you can find a single reputable scientist who would even entertain the notion that the world is divided into four basic personality types.

Yes, because reputable scientists in psychology have agreed on five. :-D

Now imagine that instead of saying: "there are only 4 (8) psychological types of people in the world," we say, "the Big 5 produces 32 variations. If we couple those with the 8 bloodtypes, we have now expanded the field to 256." Once you have completely thrown out an option, you can no longer take advantage of any good it may have done for you.

Edited March 28, 2007 by kaiguma

[Jakusotsu]

And without blood, we couldn't get tattoos, and that would just be horrible.

We couldn't? Please, elaborate!

It may very well be a myth of 'conventional wisdom.' You almost always bleed when getting a permanent tattoo. I've been told by tattoo artists that the ink mingles with the blood, which has two effects. 1, It draws the pigments deeper into the subcutaneous than the needles actually go, which increases permanence. 2, By mixing with the blood, the ink is 'vetted' so that the body won't try to clean it out as a toxin, which would be similar to piercing rejection. I've never questioned this so I always assumed it was true.

Hmm. As for 1, why should bleeding draw the pigments deeper into the body? I'd expect rather the opposite, unless some osmotic effects are at work, but that won't make much sense either. It a) would diffuse the picture, b) won't really need bleeding specifically (any ol' body fluid would do), and c) doesn't work well with pigment particles of considerable size (on a microscopic scale). And if 2 really works, then why would anything be rejected by the body since every intruder has more or less contact with blood?

Need an expert....Kaikitsune?

Edited March 28, 2007 by Jakusotsu

[Kaikitsune Makoto]

Need an expert....Kaikitsune?

No idea about tattoo stuff. Manekineko is scientist and probably has cool tattoos on her skin so she can understand the osmosis and stuff.

[Petr]

Don't get excited, we already met...

;-)

[Asashosakari]

I'd like to add to this discussion that my blood type is B+. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that. (In a state of confusion...)

[Manekineko]

Need an expert....Kaikitsune?

No idea about tattoo stuff. Manekineko is scientist and probably has cool tattoos on her skin so she can understand the osmosis and stuff.

Alas, I don't have tattoos, and frankly have no idea whether the argument above was true or not. If someone would point me to a source I could see if it makes "scientific" sense, but it's really a biochemist and not a chemical engineer you want.

[Kotoseiya Yuichi]

I'd like to add to this discussion that my blood type is B+. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that. (In a state of confusion...)

Hey, a blood brother. ;-) Actually I'm not too sure about my Rhesus factor (probably + (15 % for +, 2 % for -)) but B anyway. BeOS, Plan B, Blood type of the Bastards.

How could anyone associate blood type to personality is beyond me.

[Itachi]

I don't have a problem with seeing blood, as long as it's other people's blood. It has never made me particularily queezy, and it seems very natural.

Very different when it's MY blood - I can't give blood, even giving a blood sample for testing makes me feel very strange. Come to think of it, it isn't just the blood issue, I guess. I also hate the idea of having injections, external fluids injected in me... Some kind of irrational fear of creating imbalance in my organism.

I feel the same way. Even today I am avoiding a trip to the clinic for a routine blood/cholesterol test. The thought of that needle in my vein gives me the willies!

Because of this, I doubly encourage those of you who don't mind this sort of process to give lots of blood for the folks that may need it. I just hope I'm unconcious if I end up needing it myself so I don't have to get all creeped out again.

Well, today I finally went in and had them take my blood sample.

It was much easier than previous times I've had it done but I neglected to put adequate pressure on the wound afterwards and now I have a gross looking bruise caused by blood leaking under my skin.

[Kaihayaiha]

Having diabetes, I deal with my own blood on a regular basis although not in large (or even significant) quantities. I also donate blood regularly. Nurses have a habit of warning me "this is going to hurt" before they prick my finger to take a sample for iron testing before I donate blood and it always makes me laugh.