What Readers Write

It’s not worth digging into the details with you, because nothing would or could possibly disturb your world-view, much in the same way that nothing would disturb the world-view of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, with whom you share much more than you’d ever care to admit.
– Richard Hendy trying to pass himself off as someone named pachiguy

Your aptitude for cognitive dissonance is not merely amazing, it is almost commendable.
– Tony

When you castigate western media articles for their willful ignorance in comments about japan I can agree with you. However, in the past year that I have been reading your blog I can say without any reserve that you drink from the same racist juice that they do.
– Relepast

You’re a racial tourist who has the gall to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. You couldn’t hack it over here it America so you chose to go to a place you thought would coddle your stupid social awkwardness. AND THEN you have the gall to talk about racial birthrates like it’s pure Anglo people’s* responsibility to fight off the brown nigger horde. You’re such a pathetic cunt.
*WHO YOU COULDN’T EVEN FIT IN WITH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
– fuck you nigger (sic)

What a moron.
– SF

I’m guessing you’re a white guy English teacher who creeps around Roppongi trying desperately to get laid.
– Jeff “Gawker” Neumann

I’ve tried whale — now with 40% more mercury — back when it was legal, and it is no fucking delicacy. Japan has to force this wartime famine-era “cuisine” on a wider population, beyond those with a vested interest in the poaching-endangered-species-for-profit-in-the-name-of-tradition industry and nationalists who will swallow anything old-school Japan Inc sells them — and pathetic, entombed-in-amber nihonjinronist exiles like Amponton, who perversely revels in embracing the indefensible side of Nippon and really needs to get out of his village a bit more.
– Slim

He is – as far as I know – the only English language exponent of the virulent Japanese nationalism that initially gained power with the Meiji Restoration
– John Hempton, the man whom even Japanese hookers don’t want to bonk

Clearly your personal standards don’t extend to accuracy and realism.
– Geddy

Ampontan is such a fucking wapanese douche of the first caliber. He’s got Hirohito’s nutsack lodged so far down his throat its amazing he hasn’t asphyxiated himself long since. In between pointless postings about obscure government sponsored cultural festivals that I’m sure most Japanese don’t give two shits about and ranting about the perfidity and inferiority of Japan’s closest neighbors its amazing he has time to be an even bigger cunt than I had him pegged for.
– Jing

Japan-o-phile koushitsu apologist specious drivel from a sake-laced Kool-aid drinking iconoclastic expat.
– John M. Andresen

Your analogy is offensive and rude.
– Steve “Toadface” Barber

Your missives are the source of much merriment at the FCCJ bar … once we’ve finished tlking (sic) about the weather and the price of rice.
– Justin McCurry of The Guardian

It seems to fill some gap in your manhood – hey, those are your issues, not mine, so don’t try to explain them away with some form of projectionist thought.
– Mike

I am quite honestly stupefied at your utter lack of intelligence on both a molecular and philosophic level.
– Socrates, AKA youdonthaveacluemarte

I wonder if you’ve ever sat down and talked with any Chinese people without feeling that tired old Western alarmism biling up inside….Enjoy being informed by ignorance…Are you still in Japan? If so, please leave. As much as you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you’re giving us Japan “as it is”, you really aren’t, and the last thing we need is another self-righteous Japanophile itching to rant distortions and antagonize other countries on some insignificant blog.
– Dorian

Ampontan’s position presents itself as modern informed and rational objectivity, but in fact conceals a virulent Japanese nationalism…
– Cadastralbob

the revisionist and smarmy flailing over supposed tropes of Korean philistinism/recklessness and Japanese gentility/emasculation that typifies this blog… Can you say ‘phallus envy?’
– Ethnocentric Doggerel

…you guys are incredibly rude and ungentlemanly.dont be mad about having pencil dicks..lmao….BOOORRRRRINNNNG-You guys have noo clue about the world.
– Susie

…clearly every country has its retards (yourself for example).
– Karl

How old are you ampotan, 5?…Unfortunately there are also cretins out there (the youtube vid maker and yourself).
– hoju_saram

…just because you’ve been brainwashed into believing this nonsense, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world does too.
– Memomachine

…the ‘yarashii’ blogger
– Tobias Harris, AKA Toby the Japan Finger

I never thought of you as being bright. Now that’s confirmed, ya little prick.
– Pawikirogi

This is racist.
– Plunge

I merely saw an extreme right-wing current flowing on this page.
– Cristobal

His usual small-hearted rhetoric.
– Edith Cavell

Denier of Japan’s less than glorious Imperial history.
– Edith Cavell

Ampan-man…You must be one of those Sankei Shimbun readers.
– Bill Underwood

…the audience for this piece is a couple of kids in junior high school…
– Ken

Are you a lobbyist? One really has to wonder.
– Garrett

You really really really don’t want to get it.
– Albion

An odious half truth
– Dan

AMPONTAN: Est. January 2007 by an American expat in Kyushu. He parrots Japanese reactionary conservative websites and viewpoints. His choice of topics and timing are suspiciously close to one that a PR professional may choose who was speaking for MOFA. Also posts travelogue-type descriptions of charming Japanese festivals. Ampontan is a misspelling of Anpontan, Japanese for a simpleton.
– Asia Policy Point

I hope living in Japan for so long isn’t what turned you into a self-loathing racist.
– Paul

…a broken record…
– John K

…ludicrous, outrageous and biased…
– John K

OK, I call horsehit. Ponta emails Bill then holds from commenting until Bill makes his comment, which is not amused, but angry, and ends by focusing on the issue of disagreement. Are we to believe that this idea of DeOrio somehow not being able to accept that Japanese people disagreeing with him stemmed from one email from Ponta? And all in a couple of hours at the absolute most?
Furthermore, Ponta returns to the fray no more than four minutes after Bill makes his comment?! And says nothing about it?
And Ponta and Bill “amPONTAn” just happen to know each other well enough to email each other over this kind of thing?
And always agree?
And Ponta appears on Bill’s blog to kiss his ass on a regular basis?
And Ponta, despite irregular misspellings and grammatical errors, makes those mistakes within complex grammatical structures that rarely interfere with meaning?
We’re into my area of expertise now. Ponta is not a Japanese person with good English, he’s an English-speaker attempting to sound Japanese, but who hasn’t ever made a careful study of HOW language learners actually speak and write.
Bill, you and Ponta have the same unusual idiosyncracies of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You even make the same common typos. (I’m a regular readerof both TPR and Ampontan.)
Beyond that, Bill, you and Ponta argue in the same unusual way – the selective ignoring of points made, the repetition and rephrasing, the coming down on the same side of almost every issue. The fact that Ponta tends to pester and disrupt everywhere except for Ampontan.
Dude, give me a break. Bill-in-Ponta-character, as DeOrio always winds up complaining, you just don’t know how to make a reasoned argument. You clog up comment threads with epic nonsense. Knock it off.
DeOrio, I’m sorry, but you egg him on. You respond, you bite, you can’t let it go. Make a decision. Allow it and let it stand or just bar him, but don’t trade epic explanations for epic nonsense and scare away other commenters and readers. Knock it off.
Bill, grow up, be a man. If you want to kiss your own backside with fictional characters on your own blog go ahead, but be man enough to use your real f**king name and stand by your words – as you say you do.
Enough of this. You gum up Japan Probe, you gum up TPR. And now you can’t resist the chance to go one step too far in your charade.
It’s over. Cut it out.
All of you. This has f**king jack-s**t to do with Japan joining the UN.
– Steve Schapiro (presumably his real name), losing it after his tin foil hat slips on Trans-Pacific Radio