they eat a lot of rice

nah, just looking at the characters on the top of the gif
and I know that it's not Korean, that looks different from what's on the gif
anything southeast asian is a mess and whatever it is on screen is either Japanese or Chinese.
just that I can't read Kanji or Chinese, so I don't know and I would like to know

Chinese.

thanks.

wasn't Kanji based on Chinese or something?

Yeah, Kanji is based on traditional Chinese, though. Modern Chinese uses a simplified version.

source: Japanese major

man am I gonna be in a lot of trouble next year. (planning trip to Japan)
did some Japanese courses a few times on memrise, but can only recognize "i", "a", "ka", "fu" and a bunch of others. in hiragana. and "ka" in katakana, because it looks the same as "ka" in hiragana
I seriously hope english and some less than basic japanese will be enough

There is surprisingly more English in Japan than I expected, but most of it isn't very helpful.
Learning all the hiragana/katakana will definitely help, because a lot of kanji (the ones that matter, at least) will have its reading on top, usually in hiragana.
Knowing basic sentence structure and verb conjugations, some commonly-used words, and some basic kanji will ensure that you'll survive just fine.

isn't also better to stick to the cities and not go to someplace in the middle of nowhere?
if I were to go to a random village, for example, I'd actually need to study more Japanese than if I were to go to cities, no matter how big or small said cities would be

Definitely stick to cities.
Still, knowing all the kana will help you immensely. It helps you get around, and will also make learning Japanese easier in the future. Trust me, learning Japanese without knowing them is impossible.
Nonetheless, staying in Japan will make you git gud at Japanese real fast.

all this talk makes me want to start a moonspeak crash course on fj lol

aight
gonna bring my notes and try and get some more of the memrise courses done when I got time

Cool, hope you'll have fun on your trip!

thanks!

though I've only made reservations for two cities. still gotta order plane tickets, train tickets, make reservations for a first city I'm visiting and get some gear.
and I'd need to pass a bunch of my exams coming up during the next few months

Has any south american tribe ever improved when left untouched by Europe or America? nope, all still primitive. The shittiness isn't because Europe colonized them, it's because they lack the ability to govern themselves.

Define "improve".

Because, if you discount infant mortality, people live longer without- say- farming. It's only within the last hundred years that we've improved beyond the stone age in terms of life expectancy.

I know people for some reason hate it when I say this, but it's true. You can look it up on wikipedia (or anywhere else) if you like. The main issue is that farming introduces something called the "Malthusian trap"- basically, instead of living longer with increased materials from civilisation, people just have more kids. They also starve during famines (while nomadic hunter-gatherers could just bugger off to a new area) and are a hell of a lot more susceptible to disease.

Yes, and then superior cultures (read: white) figured out a way to overcome that obstacle. South Americans and Africans never stopped fucking long enough to realize they were all starving.

They weren't starving. That's the thing.

Industrial nations, on the other hand, were. It's only just right now that they've stopped being malnourished.

>Africans
>not starving
wut m8

They weren't.

They are now. They lack the ability to move past the point where they were hundreds of years ago. In fact in many ways they've regressed. Whereas western cultures figured out solutions to their problems and kept advancing (while conquering damn near the whole world mind you) Africans were too busy fighting each other and selling each other off for a quick buck. With the exception of the Islamic golden age, almost nothing of use to humanity came out of Africa.

That was my whole point, you might remember.

Also, they largely aren't starving. Nigeria is a thing. But I absolutely agree that most great African kingdoms declined, almost all of them as a result- if not directly, and if not deliberately- of Western imperialism.

i mean these south american tribes didn't improve but they didn't regress either xD

Twin. My name means twin. That's not cool at all.

I hate you for making me google this.

Thomas?

Yup.