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  #81  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 8:55 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by McBane View Post
You want to talk about a city that's dropped off the radar? How about Athens, Greece?

Athens reached its pinnacle 2,500 years ago and then declined so precipitously that, by the time of Greek independence in 1822, it was nothing more than a backwater village of around 4,000 people and fun fact, it wasn't even the first choice to become the national capital. Of course, it did end up being the capital and by default, became Greece's largest and most important city, but otherwise, has lost all of its global and regional influence (except for Classical Greek architecture). Among tourists, Athens pales in comparison to Rome, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and other similarly ancient cities. As a gateway for international tourists, many spend an obligatory night or two in Athens, see the Acropolis, and then set off for the islands.

I just read a very fascinating article on modern Athens that could definitely be spun into its own thread about ancient cities in today's modern world.
Even by the time of the Roman conquests of Greece Athens had already fallen from prominence. Then by the time Rome began to fade Constantinople became the center of the known world for the next 1000 years until the renaissance brought the power and focus back to western Europe.

Then for most of the last 600 years Athens has been just one moderately sized city in the Turkish ottoman empire only very briefly being truly independent and now it exists as a sort of geographic oddity/ward of the EU.

For a place with such a massive impact on the world and our culture it is amazing how its been sort of tossed around by history like some poor helpless rag-doll.
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  #82  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 9:15 PM
McBane McBane is offline
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Interestingly enough, Rome and Istanbul, both important ancient cities, also ceased being "the center of western civilization", although they never declined to the level of Athens. Rome and Istanbul continued to be major, influential cities. The other peer city I mentioned in my earlier post, Jerusalem, however did follow a similar path as Athens (bottoming out as a small backwater of a few thousand people), though Jerusalem's peak never came close to Athens' peak, making the former's fall from grace not as dramatic.
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  #83  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 9:32 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by McBane View Post
Interestingly enough, Rome and Istanbul, both important ancient cities, also ceased being "the center of western civilization", although they never declined to the level of Athens. Rome and Istanbul continued to be major, influential cities. The other peer city I mentioned in my earlier post, Jerusalem, however did follow a similar path as Athens (bottoming out as a small backwater of a few thousand people), though Jerusalem's peak never came close to Athens' peak, making the former's fall from grace not as dramatic.
The population decline of Rome was pretty severe in the early middle ages. By the time the Western Empire moved its Capitol to Revenna, Constantinople/Istanbul was already arguably the more important city or at least well on its way to be and Romes population was already well off from the highs of the time of Good Emperors when it was something like 2 million

By the early middle ages Rome was small enough that Muslim raiding parties were able to sack the city in 846. Not a Mass invasion...a Raiding party.

Rome as a region only grew back to the size it was in ancient days during our modern era.

Constantinople however has never really shrunk in size, at least not since about 1000 ad and while not being the premier city on earth in a very long time its been a major World city pretty much consistently since its foundation under Constantine 1700+ years ago.
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  #84  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 9:54 PM
LA21st LA21st is offline
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Did anyone notice that Boston for example is less of a big deal than perhaps 20 years ago? It's still a wealthy, large metro with amazing institutional assets, and has maybe the most polished urban core its size outside of Europe. But I don't know if it's just me, but I don't hear about Boston very much anymore. In the broader culture (outside of sports of course), and for that matter on this forum, where you would guess it would be pretty popular.

What changed? Any other metros like this? Casually looking back, I get the sense that Montreal was a lot more culturally prominent before the 2008 recession than after. Chicago also seems like it kind of went into a funk after 2008. I wonder why?
Miami doesn't seem as popular in culture/media as it was in the Lebron era or 90s. It might have more visitors these days, but it's def been over taken by Atlanta in that part of the country, and possibly even Nashville now.
Just my own observations on it.
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  #85  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 9:59 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by LA21st View Post
Miami doesn't seem as popular in culture/media as it was in the Lebron era or 90s. It might have more visitors these days, but it's def been over taken by Atlanta in that part of the country, and possibly even Nashville now.
Just my own observations on it.
As others have said places come and go in popularity. Miami was big in the 1950's and 1980's but is defiantly not as in the zeitgeist at the moment.
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  #86  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 10:20 PM
park123 park123 is offline
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Ancient Athens had a really interesting history. It's absolute peak was right before the Peloponnesian War, when there was really an unprecedented amount of cultural development and ferment going on. This was a "city" of about 60,000 inside the city walls, and about 300,000 in the entire city-state. Not a big place by any stretch of the imagination, but drama, philosophy, democracy, historiography, realistic representational art, were all being developed at exactly the same time in that small town, really.

There was a decline following the war, but Plato and later Aristotle were most active during that 4th C BC. Then from my understanding, it was Alexander the Great's conquests and subsequent development of large Greek empires in Egypt and the Near East which really kind of dealt a death blow to Athens. Talent was sucked away to Alexandria and other cities. Already by around 150 BC you had people writing how surprisingly small and poor Athens was.

And then there was a Renaissance under the early Roman empire, especially under Hadrian and the next few emperors, who turned Athens into kind of a big university town, or theme park of Ancient Greece. They built a ton of impressive public buildings, funded chairs of philosophy, and encouraged private patronage from wealthy eastern Roman notables.

That was followed by chaos in the Roman Empire, and a sack by the Goths(?) in the late 3rd C, from which Athens never fully recovered. When the Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire went full hard-core Christian, there was a decline in the pagan philosophical schools in Athens, and then Justinian shut the last one down. A bit later Greece was overrun by barbarians again and never recovered until the modern era.
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  #87  
Old Posted Feb 21, 2020, 11:28 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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I was just thinking.

St. Louis seems like it was far more prominent economically and culturally years ago as the link of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers. (All major transportation rivers)

But with modern highway transportation and population changes it is no longer as important of a city as it once was.
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  #88  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 12:43 AM
Omaharocks Omaharocks is offline
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Originally Posted by McBane View Post
You want to talk about a city that's dropped off the radar? How about Athens, Greece?

Athens reached its pinnacle 2,500 years ago and then declined so precipitously that, by the time of Greek independence in 1822, it was nothing more than a backwater village of around 4,000 people and fun fact, it wasn't even the first choice to become the national capital. Of course, it did end up being the capital and by default, became Greece's largest and most important city, but otherwise, has lost all of its global and regional influence (except for Classical Greek architecture). Among tourists, Athens pales in comparison to Rome, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and other similarly ancient cities. As a gateway for international tourists, many spend an obligatory night or two in Athens, see the Acropolis, and then set off for the islands.

I just read a very fascinating article on modern Athens that could definitely be spun into its own thread about ancient cities in today's modern world.
Well, I would agree if you're going way back...but if we're talking the timeframes of perception between the 90s and now, as many previous posts have, than I'd have to disagree strongly with Athens.

Despite the recession, Athens been resurgent as a destination in recent years, even independent of the islands. This is particularly true amongst the Euro party circuit, where Athens is now about top billing up there with Berlin.

The whole "Athens was a small village of only a few thousand people a hundred and fifty years ago" is technically true, but the reality is that much of the valley that Athens occupied was home to a number of other cities and villages that were virtually connected, and were swallowed up as all part of Athens in the 1950s-70s.

I'd argue New Mexico is the best example in the U.S., and has been supplanted by Colorado as the main destination in the west. I think people forget how large NM once stood in the cultural zeitgeist among the Boomer set. Now in the interior west it's Denver this, Denver that.

I'd also agree with Boston losing prominence, as well as Vancouver, with the shine coming off a bit from all the best-quality-of-life accolades.
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  #89  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 1:44 AM
Shawn Shawn is offline
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Originally Posted by yuriandrade View Post
Again, the average Japanese pay 99.9% of their bills with Yens, not Dollars. The fact is: Japanese didn't get poorer over this period and the purchase power shows exactly this. The only thing that happened was there's no longer a bubble.

That's why, vis-à-vis to Americans and western Europeans, Japanese standard of life had any decrease all over this period.
Let me jump in. Japanese have absolutely gotten poorer over this time period. There has been a systemic shift in employment patterns coupled with a major change in marriage behavior. The massive rise in haken contracts (moving from permanent employment and all the benefits this brings to non permanent staff with no benefits) and the sharp decline in marriage rates means many more single person incomes derived from low-wage, unprotected jobs. Forget “no more lifetime employment” - which was still the standard in the early 2000s Koizumi era - we are now at non-salaried, hourly-wage contract workers who need to live with their parents well into their 30s. Because when you make 160,000 yen a month working your max 40 hours a week (no legal OT opportunities for haken contract workers), and 18 sq meter apartments cost 80,000 yen a month minimum sans utilities, it’s hard.
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  #90  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 3:38 AM
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Let me jump in. Japanese have absolutely gotten poorer over this time period. There has been a systemic shift in employment patterns coupled with a major change in marriage behavior. The massive rise in haken contracts (moving from permanent employment and all the benefits this brings to non permanent staff with no benefits) and the sharp decline in marriage rates means many more single person incomes derived from low-wage, unprotected jobs. Forget “no more lifetime employment” - which was still the standard in the early 2000s Koizumi era - we are now at non-salaried, hourly-wage contract workers who need to live with their parents well into their 30s. Because when you make 160,000 yen a month working your max 40 hours a week (no legal OT opportunities for haken contract workers), and 18 sq meter apartments cost 80,000 yen a month minimum sans utilities, it’s hard.
I remember "Japan Inc." from the 80's and 90's and their global economic conquest almost seemed inevitable and then they fizzled. Americans were so paranoid the Japanese were going to buy up the US piece by piece. Now it's China that is until the coronavirus turns them into the Walking Dead.
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  #91  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 3:39 AM
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Japan was popular in the 1980s because they made awesome products (Nintendo , Honda etc)

After to the 1980s, other countries sort of caught up a bit
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  #92  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 4:06 AM
Shawn Shawn is offline
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Originally Posted by dc_denizen View Post
Japan was popular in the 1980s because they made awesome products (Nintendo , Honda etc)

After to the 1980s, other countries sort of caught up a bit
I'll say this though: before I moved to Japan in 2002, if you wanted to get your hands on manga, you needed to go to a specialty shop or order directly from Japan. Now, every Barnes & Noble in every suburb in the country's single biggest section is manga. All in English too, meaning the demand is high enough to justify the localized print runs. Japanese comics, graphic novels, and anime (more through stylistic influences on Western animators) are waaay bigger in America than ever before.

Ai Nori is one of the most watched Netflix properties in the US and Canada markets. That's nuts to me - it's reality TV without any of the trashiness, so what's the point? - but the North American markets eat it up.

In markets like Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Thailand, Japanese cultural exports still dominate. Especially fashion cues and J-pop style girl groups.

I was a late 80s early 90s kid, and a lot of my Japanese cultural exposure happened without my realizing it was Japanese in the first place: Transformers, Battle Beasts, GoBots. I was vaguely aware Nintendo and Sega were Japanese, but an Italian plumber and an early 90s attitude hedgehog didn't scream "Japanese". The only thing that was clearly Japanese was Dragon Ball. All of my younger cousins were late 90s kids, and they all obsessed over Pokemon, which they all understood to be Japanese and "Cool Japan" from the get-go.

So to tie this back to the OP: while Japanese may not be traveling abroad and spending as conspicuously as before, I'd say Japan's cool profile has risen considerably in many Western markets, and consequently many Japanese cities are seeing profile boosts in Western markets.
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  #93  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 6:26 AM
dave8721 dave8721 is offline
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Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
I'll say this though: before I moved to Japan in 2002, if you wanted to get your hands on manga, you needed to go to a specialty shop or order directly from Japan. Now, every Barnes & Noble in every suburb in the country's single biggest section is manga. All in English too, meaning the demand is high enough to justify the localized print runs. Japanese comics, graphic novels, and anime (more through stylistic influences on Western animators) are waaay bigger in America than ever before.

Ai Nori is one of the most watched Netflix properties in the US and Canada markets. That's nuts to me - it's reality TV without any of the trashiness, so what's the point? - but the North American markets eat it up.

In markets like Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Thailand, Japanese cultural exports still dominate. Especially fashion cues and J-pop style girl groups.

I was a late 80s early 90s kid, and a lot of my Japanese cultural exposure happened without my realizing it was Japanese in the first place: Transformers, Battle Beasts, GoBots. I was vaguely aware Nintendo and Sega were Japanese, but an Italian plumber and an early 90s attitude hedgehog didn't scream "Japanese". The only thing that was clearly Japanese was Dragon Ball. All of my younger cousins were late 90s kids, and they all obsessed over Pokemon, which they all understood to be Japanese and "Cool Japan" from the get-go.

So to tie this back to the OP: while Japanese may not be traveling abroad and spending as conspicuously as before, I'd say Japan's cool profile has risen considerably in many Western markets, and consequently many Japanese cities are seeing profile boosts in Western markets.
Seem to put out the best rock bands these days too.
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  #94  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 1:05 PM
Shawn Shawn is offline
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Seem to put out the best rock bands these days too.
For real. As huge metal heads, my wife and I try to see a show at least once a month. Crossfaith, Crystal Lake, Man with a Mission, Her Name In Blood, Tricot . . . Japanese metal is good. Babymetal doesn't count.
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  #95  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 2:04 PM
park123 park123 is offline
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Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
In markets like Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Thailand, Japanese cultural exports still dominate. Especially fashion cues and J-pop style girl groups.
I'm too lazy to go hunting for sales data, but J-pop and J-fashion most certainly don't dominate in most of those markets. Maybe Taiwan and Thailand. I personally prefer Japanese styles to Korean styles. I think they are more original, quirky, and "first world", for lack of a better way of putting it. But my taste is in the small minority these days, in Asia.

Even Korean stuff has peaked I think. China more or less kicked them out for geopolitical reasons, Japan had this weird thing where Korean stuff suddenly disappeared from TV during the Abe administration. It's coming back again but not like it was before. And those are the two biggest Asian markets.

Cultural influence trails past economic influence, sometimes for a very long time. I think everything in Asia happens faster though.

The West doesn't engage very much with Asia culturally, so their Japan is very vague and indistinct and about 15 years behind reality.
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  #96  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 2:06 PM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Yeah Japan is like the poster-child for dropping off the radar, at least relatively speaking. It's been one long, slow, but unrelenting decline since the 1990 peak.

Japan in 2000 was already not what it was in 1990, but it was a lot more in people's minds than Japan in 2010. And so on with Japan in 2020. Going forward forever I imagine, with their now rapidly shrinking workforce and eviscerated consumer electronics industries.

Fun fact - Japan's relative GDP actually peaked in 1996, when Japanese total GDP was 75% of America's GDP. Not GDP per capita. Total GDP. Now it must be more like 30% of American levels.
Jesus, for such a relatively small population being 75% of the USA's GDP is insane.

On a side note, I think Japan is becoming a more popular tourist destination.
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  #97  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 2:11 PM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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I think Tokyo is much more on the young Westerner tourism circuit than it was 10 years ago. Chinese tourism (up until this Corona outbreak) has absolutely boomed in the past decade, and Japan was one of the main beneficiaries.

Part of this is because Japan is much more affordable than it used to be. Conversely, foreign countries are much more expensive for Japanese travelers than they used to be.

Also, there are just trends for travel. Bali is also trendy for a certain kind of NYer or European. But I wouldn't say Bali is important or culturally influential.

Japanese pop culture boomed in Asia in the 1990s. Since then it's been supplanted almost completely by S Korean culture. You still have the shadow of past Japanese achievement keeping up their reputation, especially in the West. But the country has been on an almost unprecedented relative decline from around 1990. First an economic decline, and then a cultural decline. Cultural influence almost always lags economic influence.
Yep, me and the gf did a China/Japan trip this summer.

Tokyo was CHEAP. We got a APA hotel near the imperial palace for something like 70 dollars a night.
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  #98  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 2:29 PM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
For real. As huge metal heads, my wife and I try to see a show at least once a month. Crossfaith, Crystal Lake, Man with a Mission, Her Name In Blood, Tricot . . . Japanese metal is good. Babymetal doesn't count.
Jesus Christ...what did I just get myself into(listening to Babymetal as I type lol).
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  #99  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 5:26 PM
Buckeye Native 001 Buckeye Native 001 is offline
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Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
I'll say this though: before I moved to Japan in 2002, if you wanted to get your hands on manga, you needed to go to a specialty shop or order directly from Japan. Now, every Barnes & Noble in every suburb in the country's single biggest section is manga. All in English too, meaning the demand is high enough to justify the localized print runs. Japanese comics, graphic novels, and anime (more through stylistic influences on Western animators) are waaay bigger in America than ever before.

Ai Nori is one of the most watched Netflix properties in the US and Canada markets. That's nuts to me - it's reality TV without any of the trashiness, so what's the point? - but the North American markets eat it up.

In markets like Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Thailand, Japanese cultural exports still dominate. Especially fashion cues and J-pop style girl groups.

I was a late 80s early 90s kid, and a lot of my Japanese cultural exposure happened without my realizing it was Japanese in the first place: Transformers, Battle Beasts, GoBots. I was vaguely aware Nintendo and Sega were Japanese, but an Italian plumber and an early 90s attitude hedgehog didn't scream "Japanese". The only thing that was clearly Japanese was Dragon Ball. All of my younger cousins were late 90s kids, and they all obsessed over Pokemon, which they all understood to be Japanese and "Cool Japan" from the get-go.

So to tie this back to the OP: while Japanese may not be traveling abroad and spending as conspicuously as before, I'd say Japan's cool profile has risen considerably in many Western markets, and consequently many Japanese cities are seeing profile boosts in Western markets.
There was a saying/joke from my friends who were into anime in the early 2000s when I was in college: "Cocaine is cheaper"
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  #100  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2020, 9:19 PM
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besides a couple shows (akira, macross) never understand the appeal of anime.

whats the draw ?
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