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That's because East Asian faces all look the same. Duh.

Would you be able to tell the difference, from superficial looks, between a Persian, an Arab, a Kurd and a Turk? I'm aware that they are all separate cultural and ethnic groups, with separate histories and sometimes a lot of mutual animosity. And I'm sure the GP is aware of all that too. But I'm kind of ashamed to say, that I can't easily spot the differences visually, unless their clothing or something else gives me clues. If they're all in generic western attire, all I get is that they look vaguely "middle eastern".

Maybe that's just a bad mental block on my part though. For example, I know a whole lot more about China, Japan, and Korea, and the cultural differences between them, than I do about anything middle eastern. Heck, I live in San Francisco and have plenty of friends of various Asian persuasions. But if alllooksame were a school quiz; I'd get a solid F. Again, not proud, and not intentional; but maybe I'm just dense at picking up some of those more subtle visual clues.

cya,
john

Its not racist its damn hard to understand people through an accent *especially* if you dont know what you're doing looking for help.

Damn skippy. I am horrible at math (dyslexia related to numbers or something, they just run away from me, I have a hard time adding two three-digit numbers together even when you don't have to carry) and when I took pre-algebra in college, I had some kind of asian guy (sorry, I'm a typical dumb american in this regard) as an instructor and his accent was more or less impenetrable. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and certainly couldn't learn anything from him. I ended up dropping out and to this day I still have never passed a single class in algebra (although I do utilize it in a limited fashion occasionally. I mean even to use ohm's law you need that, unless you want to draw a triangle every time you want to do that.)

When you're talking about something you know well, it's easier to hear through someone's accent because you're more used to the words and concepts being expressed. When you are trying to learn something you don't know jack about, it becomes substantially harder. Most people don't know shit about computers and most tech support employees are no exception, so it's no wonder that many of us have a spectacularly hard time understanding the Indian tech on the other end of the shit phone connection.

I think it's more of a side effect of the complex system of face recognition getting honed down while your young, and not being able to adapt to the subtle differences later in life.

then again all look same is pretty interesting. I had some of my chinese and japanese friends do the test, and it seems that they can't tell the difference either! they scored the same amount of correct recognitions as me, and other european type friends.

See for yourself.

Thank you for bringing up the Fiona Apple album. I was never a fan, but on a whim I downloaded the album* and loved it. It's definitely one of the better bits of music I've listened to recently.

Cheers.

*Link posted not because music should be free, but because this music deserves to be freed.

"then it'll hit this rucky guy's house again"

If this is a feeble attempt at Engrish, it's the Japanese, not the Chinese, that tend to pronounce English 'L's as 'R's.

I'd make fun of you for confusing Chinese and Japanese like a typical American, but I didn't score so good on the test at http://www.alllooksame.com/, so I won't. Let me watch a few more Chinese Kung Fu and Japanese Samurai movies and we'll see how I do then.

Give'r a try, what's your score? http://www.alllooksame.com/

the people have similar appearances (to Western eyes, anyway)

The boundaries of countries are political in nature and usually do not correspond to actual differences in ethnicity. If you think otherwise, try this quiz.

http://www.alllooksame.com/

Ok, this is a common theme with people who don't understand the Japanese, so I'll field it.

You take a generation of children. You make them all dress the same. You emphasize gender differences in clothing, to make sure nobody accidently becomes attracted to members of the same sex. You do this throughout the entire period a person develops genitals, develops sexual feelings, hits puberty, falls in love, enters the most intense period of sexual excitation in their lives, peaks, then slowly eases off that peak. Only then do you let the opposite sex wear whatever they want. I can guarentee you just made a double-digit percentage of that group a fetishist of whatever clothing that opposite sex group wore. Women are lucky (sort of) in this situation because they don't peak until significantly after such a time when their opposite sex group can change clothing, and therefore generally don't develop this fetish.

And, of course now the only people wearing thoes fetishized clothes are age 6-19 year old girls. But it isn't really about the children, it's about the clothes. My mother (japanese) looked like she was 12 until the day she turned 50. If you're attracted to 14 year old japanese girls, chances are you would be every bit as attracted to a 35 year old japanese woman in a schoolgirl outfit. Without falling onto all look same stereotypes, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the two apart.

Schoolgirls in manga isn't about child pornography, it's a deeply rooted schoolgirl uniform fetish. It's one of the more powerful fetishes I've come across (though I don't have it, thankfully), and it is one that we are going to pass onto our children if we persist with these rediculous school uniform rules we have popping up around the country.

Not necessarily. After all, who can tell the difference?

Check out this test.

I got 5 right. Ouch!