J-Pop? God help me...

It has been said that the reason Japan is [stereotypically] a racist country is that it's so closed off from the rest of the world geographically. Before the conveniences of modern travel--if you can call running through an airport like a maniac trying to find the damn gate and being given the fifth degree by people with no senses of humor "convenient"--pretty much the only people in Japan were Japanese and life was happy and nice. Then the gaijins came with their greasy food and strange languages and large bodies.

In speaking with my students I've found that a lot of the Japanese people are still very closed off... When asking what kind of food they like, most of them say, "Japanese." When asking whether they think Mexicans work harder than Japanese, they say, "Japanese work harder." [Incidentally, their argument there was that the cost of living is higher in Japan therefore they've got to work harder, which means they work a lot of overtime... In Mexico everything is cheap, therefore they don't have to work hard and it's easy. I think I was successful in keeping my shock and utter disbelief that I was actually hearing this bullshit hidden from the students...] When asking what kind of music they like, most of them say, "Japanese pop."

I had successfully avoided J-Pop, dodging offers from students to let me borrow their CDs & tuning it out when it's playing in commercials, TV shows and shops. However, one morning, when I was least suspecting it, the horror that is J-Pop found its way into my own home. My neighbor was blaring something that was so awful, so painful, so truly traumatizing that I couldn't help but listen as if in some bizarre trance. The more I listened, the more I thought about Ricky Martin. Is it a coincidence that J-Pop sounds exactly like Ricky Martin music? Could it be true that bad music around the world sounds exactly the same?