[Maru]

Article is a little older, but found this when researching the issue. Birthrates are only getting worse... maybe eventually that could be a problem here? We're already starting to see record low birthrate in the US... (but some there probably look at our problems and wouldn't want to swap with us just yet )

I was completely fascinated with the story about the sex worker... maybe nymphomania/sex addiction serves the natural purpose of continuing the human race despite other declining environmental factors that would otherwise discourage procreation. Though given my transgender fish & birth control thread, maybe contraceptives are interfering with nature's work... of course, we wouldn't want to overpopulate the planet either, so good we have them.

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ped-having-sex

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ped-having-sex

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.

The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge.

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence".

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. "Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage." However, the pressure to conform to Japan's anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. "People don't know where to turn. They're coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there's something wrong with them."
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Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan "might eventually perish into extinction".

Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011's earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. "Both men and women say to me they don't see the point of love. They don't believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."

Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.

Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women."

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – "strictly no intercourse" – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure.
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Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.

I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. "A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up."

Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me."

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence."
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Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai."

Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".

The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success.

"It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant".

The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen ("Girly Men") was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting "pink sparkly things" and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan's corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned.

Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn't knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. "I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated," he says. "I can't be bothered."
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Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles – wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day – also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan's cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafés, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan's cities are extraordinarily crime-free.

Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. "Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality".

Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children.

"Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction," Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a "pioneer people" where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said.

Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.
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They don't seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The café they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. "We meet once a week to go clubbing," she says. "I don't have time for a regular boyfriend. I'm trying to become a fashion designer." Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. "I gave up dating three years ago. I don't miss boyfriends or sex. I don't even like holding hands."

Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn't want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because "girls can't have flings without being judged". Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound.

In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire."

Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop.

Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan's youth, says it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. "Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind.

Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama – Queen Love – is determined to educate her clients on the value of "skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart" intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn't take over. "It's not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other," she says. "Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives."

Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don't want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for "making it hard for single people to live however they want" and for "whipping up fear about the falling birth rate". Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn't help anyone. And that's from a woman who knows a bit about whipping.

[Maru]

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – "strictly no intercourse" – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure.

.

[Mystic Mock]

There's something wrong with Japan if they don't even want to act out on lust.

[smudgie]

Maybe the 18-34 age group are just waking up to the fact that there is more to life than just sex or relationships.
As we live longer, maybe it’s a good thing, have a longer independant life before settling down.
My two have both been in long term relationships, now they are both footloose and fancy free, enjoying life on their own.

[Withano]

Everyones depressed, broke, and busy.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Withano

Everyones depressed, broke, and busy.

And they have those weird pixelated / blurry genitals, that must be pretty off-putting.

But yes on a more serious note, I agree. The youth of Japan have been in the grips of an existential crisis for decades, and increasingly, youth in the West are very much in that same boat. Stressed, anxious, jaded people have lower motivation for all sorts of activities... And that includes sex.

[Ammi]

..Japan is a leader in technology../...electronics etc as well...so maybe get distracted and diverted with video games and such the like...gadgetry etc...lots of things for young people interest...

[Livia]

Perhaps they're worried about the future? That in the next 15 years the population will rise by one billion; and by 2100 the population will have grown from 7 billion in 2015 to over 11 billion by 2100. They're staggering and unsustainable increases.

[Tom4784]

she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general

An icon.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

Perhaps they're worried about the future? That in the next 15 years the population will rise by one billion; and by 2100 the population will have grown from 7 billion in 2015 to over 11 billion by 2100. They're staggering and unsustainable increases.

Well that is true, but I just can't imagine that there's a conscious thought process there - especially when effective contraceptives are available. There is some interesting theory in social psychology though, that as populations increase, people notice subconsciously and sex drive naturally decreases. Makes me wonder if everyone would suddenly be at it like rabbits in a post-apocalyptic scenario .

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Well that is true, but I just can't imagine that there's a conscious thought process there - especially when effective contraceptives are available. There is some interesting theory in social psychology though, that as populations increase, people notice subconsciously and sex drive naturally decreases. Makes me wonder if everyone would suddenly be at it like rabbits in a post-apocalyptic scenario .

I kind of knew that TS, I was making a point. A very valid point, and maybe falling birthrates anywhere will get people talking about the fact that it won't be long until the Earth can't support all the humans on it. We're busy developing cures for everything, people are living longer, and the people who reproduce most quickly are the poorest people.

[Tom4784]

It comes down to a few factors really, the working day is too punishing in Japan to such an extent that death from overworking is an epidemic there and has it's own term (Karōshi) so a lot of people can't be bothered and, like the article said, the situation for women in Japan is awful.

I think another aspect is that a lot of Japanese media tends to push chasteness as an attractive option (while at the same time having this whole other weird side of bizarre sexual kinks and **** that's just beyond the pale), there's always been criticism about shows aimed at teenagers in our society pushing sex too much but I think Japan's an example of the opposite side of the coin in that regard. If you have a slew of media aimed at teenagers and older audience that has an almost primary take on romance then I think that will rub off on the populace if it's promoted as the ideal take on relationships.

If Japan wants to overcome this downward population curve, they need to make relationships sustainable through economic means, get work hours in check and make work situations less hostile to women. They also really need to push to modernise a lot of their archaic idea of idealised families.

Japan's a country I've always wanted to visit but it's always been a place I'd hate to live in.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

Japan's a country I've always wanted to visit but it's always been a place I'd hate to live in.

Yeah, I know someone who went to live there. He's loved Japanese culture his enitre life, has a degree (a 1st) in Japanese... was his life's dream to live there. He moved back after two years, had come to hate living there, and was actually put off a lot of what he loved about it for a while (though he does still love it, now, and goes for short term visits).

A lot of that can be put down to "culture shock" I guess, most people struggle a bit living in a culture they weren't raised in, but also there are just aspects of day-to-day life in modern Japan that are just brutal, and seemingly unavoidable... for many, you can either work ridiculous hours and be exhausted and miserable - or not work the hours, and be ridiculed and miserable. People working 50 hour weeks being laughed at like "lazy part-timers" etc.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

I kind of knew that TS, I was making a point. A very valid point, and maybe falling birthrates anywhere will get people talking about the fact that it won't be long until the Earth can't support all the humans on it. We're busy developing cures for everything, people are living longer, and the people who reproduce most quickly are the poorest people.

It's definitely a huge concern... I remember watching "Quarantine 2" a few years ago (it's not a great film... but anyway...) and at the end it's revealed that some "sciency villains" have deliberately created and released the virus to dramatically cut the global population because it's becoming unsustainable, and everyone is like "Oh no how terrible, evil scientists!" and I was sat there like "............. well they're not wrong are they..."

[bots]

the answer is simple .... there is so much "exotic" japanese porn on the internet that people are simply to exhausted to indulge in the real thing

[arista]

In Japan
its all costings of having children, that has stopped couples.

[kirklancaster]

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

The answer is simple: They got married.

Only joking Maru.

[Maru]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

The answer is simple: They got married.

Only joking Maru.

Bad kirk!

[Tom4784]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Yeah, I know someone who went to live there. He's loved Japanese culture his enitre life, has a degree (a 1st) in Japanese... was his life's dream to live there. He moved back after two years, had come to hate living there, and was actually put off a lot of what he loved about it for a while (though he does still love it, now, and goes for short term visits).

A lot of that can be put down to "culture shock" I guess, most people struggle a bit living in a culture they weren't raised in, but also there are just aspects of day-to-day life in modern Japan that are just brutal, and seemingly unavoidable... for many, you can either work ridiculous hours and be exhausted and miserable - or not work the hours, and be ridiculed and miserable. People working 50 hour weeks being laughed at like "lazy part-timers" etc.

Yeah, it's a common story. I've known people who have lived there too. They always say the same, it's a great place to go on holiday but not a great place to live.

For me, there's a few reasons why I'd never live there.

- Not the greatest place to raise kids, child sexualisation is prominent, child sex laws aren't considered a priority to enforce and actual rates of imprisonment are low. Aside from that the school system, like the work system, is punishing.

- Karōshi plus the rate of suicides are insanely high in Japan across the spectrum.

- Backwards attitudes regarding women and sexuality plus racism (although that's more apparent with the older generations that eschew western culture and races while younger generations tend to embrace them).

I'd still love to visit and see the shrines and Shibuya (and sob like a maniac over Hachiko) and such and enjoy the less horrid elements of the culture but living there would be out of the question.

[RichardG]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Yeah, I know someone who went to live there. He's loved Japanese culture his enitre life, has a degree (a 1st) in Japanese... was his life's dream to live there. He moved back after two years, had come to hate living there, and was actually put off a lot of what he loved about it for a while (though he does still love it, now, and goes for short term visits).

A lot of that can be put down to "culture shock" I guess, most people struggle a bit living in a culture they weren't raised in, but also there are just aspects of day-to-day life in modern Japan that are just brutal, and seemingly unavoidable... for many, you can either work ridiculous hours and be exhausted and miserable - or not work the hours, and be ridiculed and miserable. People working 50 hour weeks being laughed at like "lazy part-timers" etc.

I'm moving to Seoul in South Korea in August on a study abroad program. I'll be there for ten months. I've been obsessed with Korea for almost five years now, I'll be so disappointed if I don't enjoy my time there. At least I'll be an exchange student doing study abroad modules which don't look very difficult or stressful. But, if I'm having to walk around with a mask on every day because of the toxic air pollution, and if I experience the racism that a lot of people say exists over there, and if the local people really are as image obsessed as the internet says they are, and if my accommodation dorm gets nuked by Kim Jong Un, then I might come back with a different opinion on the country.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by RichardG

I'm moving to Seoul in South Korea in August on a study abroad program. I'll be there for ten months. I've been obsessed with Korea for almost five years now, I'll be so disappointed if I don't enjoy my time there. At least I'll be an exchange student doing study abroad modules which don't look very difficult or stressful. But, if I'm having to walk around with a mask on every day because of the toxic air pollution, and if I experience the racism that a lot of people say exists over there, and if the local people really are as image obsessed as the internet says they are, and if my accommodation dorm gets nuked by Kim Jong Un, then I might come back with a different opinion on the country.

I think 10 months is still short enough really to feel like a short term trip... In fact really it's not so much the time that triggers real "culture shock", but the idea of not leaving . Like if you know you're (supposedly) making a permanent move there it all feels very different? It happens even with very similar cultures and cultures that people already know well, like people can spend 3 or 4 years somewhere for University and love every minute, but then when they decide to take up permanent residence after graduating they suddenly realise that they miss their "true home".

My wife still even sometimes feels "out of place" in Scotland (she's from the North of England, so not even far). It's the little things really... She's totally clued up on "Scottishness" at this point, has no trouble with accents and colloquialisms and things like that which she did at first, but smaller things like culture-specific childhood experiences, even when you know what they're about, you didn't live them so when people discuss certain things you start to feel like an outsider again. Not sure how much sense that makes .

[kirklancaster]

Originally Posted by Maru

Bad kirk!

Great Scott, Maru, I'm not bad
A bigger lie was never Spock
Chekov my reason
I'm the Real McCoy
Not a bad boy.

[Brillopad]

Originally Posted by RichardG

I'm moving to Seoul in South Korea in August on a study abroad program. I'll be there for ten months. I've been obsessed with Korea for almost five years now, I'll be so disappointed if I don't enjoy my time there. At least I'll be an exchange student doing study abroad modules which don't look very difficult or stressful. But, if I'm having to walk around with a mask on every day because of the toxic air pollution, and if I experience the racism that a lot of people say exists over there, and if the local people really are as image obsessed as the internet says they are, and if my accommodation dorm gets nuked by Kim Jong Un, then I might come back with a different opinion on the country.

Oh Richard that did put a smile on my face. I hope you have a great time and it all works out the way you want it to!

[Maru]

Originally Posted by RichardG

I'm moving to Seoul in South Korea in August on a study abroad program. I'll be there for ten months. I've been obsessed with Korea for almost five years now, I'll be so disappointed if I don't enjoy my time there. At least I'll be an exchange student doing study abroad modules which don't look very difficult or stressful. But, if I'm having to walk around with a mask on every day because of the toxic air pollution, and if I experience the racism that a lot of people say exists over there, and if the local people really are as image obsessed as the internet says they are, and if my accommodation dorm gets nuked by Kim Jong Un, then I might come back with a different opinion on the country.

I think you'll be having too much fun and too busy learning new things to fall firmly either direction tbh, Richard. The culture shock will be the thing to consider the most, so I suggest to bring momentos or things that smell like home with you for your room . If it's less than a year, you'll probably be fine. I think most people start having problems after 12mos... it'll probably take you just about 6 months or so just to pick up the language to a fairly decent level and for you to become immersed with it...

[Brillopad]

Given their obsession with germs and wearing masks maybe sex is too ‘unclean’for them now.