farmgineer

I’m on my second gopro (a hero 10). It will overheat in the shade outside in summer. The battery also crapped out quite early, though they did find another one to send me (I bought it new from them directly, but after newer models released). I don’t see myself buying another of their cameras.

Neat! I have a video on the topic in my to-watch list, but hadn’t looked into the details yet so far.

Korean due to it being an alphabe

Technically, it’s not; it’s a syllabary like Japanese katakana and hiragana.

Is it actually that hard while Japanese phonology is considered “easier” to pick up.

Japanese is dead easy for an English speaker so long as they remember that vowel length matters, and the R is not a standard General American R.

Korean has a couple of sounds/features (tense consonants) not in use in General American, but nothing insurmountable. I’d call it more difficult but only very slightly so.

Tone

Korean is actually considered to be undergoing tonogenesis, so that’s kinda neat.

Tone isn’t a huge deal; even if you get it wrong, there’s usually only one thing that makes sense in the context of the sentence. Not a worry in Korean at the moment. Japanese has pitch accent which can cause the same issue (If I’m running through the field plucking はな (hana), you’re not going to think it means ‘nose’ here if I get the pitch accent wrong).

One can pick up reading Korean more quickly than Japanese (if no Kanji/Hanzi/Hanja experience otherwise), though I found bacchim to be annoying. In exchange, Korean tends to have some grammatical features lacking in Japanese, but I never got far enough to learn what those were (outside of some more forms of address/honorific).

Hah, nice! Thanks for the deep-dive. I only ever learnt Plätzchen when I studied German in the early 2000s in the US. At least so far as I can remember 20-something years later.

Well, I went from English (a mess) to japanese (differently a mess), so there is some masochistic aspect in there.

I considered learning Danish, but thought I might start with something a bit more pronounceable (I do not have faith in mastering stød or the various sounds very quickly).

Heh, I was thinking of Norwegian småkake. It’s crazy how much Danish I can read in posts around here now that I’m learning bokmål Norwegian. Well, not that surprising with history, I guess, heh.

In German, it’s diminutive, but it’s not from ‘cake’. I think it means little discs/plates or something, but it’s been a long time.

In some languages, it’s more like ‘cakies’ = little cakes.

It used to be Japan Post (which had hours even for external ATMs) and 7-11 were the only places to take out money with a foreign debit card. I think it’s better now, but I’m not sure (I’ve been living in Japan for over a decade so not usually something I need to consider).

Here ya go: https://maps.app.goo.gl/NfVBSin6aWQhVTsXA

I had never heard of the shop on the 2nd floor and thought it might be easy to find, but found out quickly it was a chain and gave up after checking a few touristy spots around Tokyo. I thought it vibed more western Japan, but didn’t feel like looking. As soon as you said Kyoto, though, found it in about 60 seconds, heh.

Yep. I don’t use them, but my banks do usually provide a withdrawl or two from them without extra fees per month and one of my banks at least lets me deposit cash through their ATMs.

For that, we’d need younger, educated, critical thinkers to actually vote. Usually, the three of those factors don’t exist together. I think voter turnout for youth is still like 50% or less. I know the populist far-right party got some votes recently for being good at social media, different, and offering simple solutions (most of which were “foreigner bad!”), but it didn’t seem to translate as much in the last election making it seem like more of a protest vote if anything.

Bad screens

I mostly like the screen in my Nissan (but it’s a 2018ish one for the Japanese domestic market). The buttons for heat, etc. are still separate but, annoyingly, are flush with the panel and I have to take my eyes off the road to do anything (unlike my old '80s and '90s car where I could adjust anything by feel).

Japan is an insular society that discourages talking out against your superiors in the work environment

Since I see this come up a lot, I will say that this part is changing. Not everywhere and it’s still delicate, but it’s not like it used to be.

I want to buy an EV (unless things in Japan get worse and I have to move around the world again), but I’m not holding out hope that it will be a Japanese domestic one. It sure as hell won’t be a tesla. I’m not sure that will leave a lot when it comes time to buy. However not buying anything domestic leads to all sorts of issues when it comes to maintenance, service, and repairs.

Japan has broader problems which are causing a fall in purchasing powers

Absolutely. It used to make the news when anything went up in price. Sometimes, for the case of a famous piece of candy or something, the president would even appear in a press conference apologizing for a 5-yen increase. Similarly, wages weren’t really increasing for people all that much. Suddenly, Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on energy, and a few other things hit at once. Prices have gone up and up. A lot of companies have not raised wages quickly enough. The yen also devalued against several currencies. These all led to a lower quality-of-life. The median pre-tax salary in Japan is around 5 million yen.

The impression I get is that izakayas are also old fashioned, so I bet they’re run by the very same kind of old fashioned people from humble origins who grew up back when Education was less universal, that run most restaurants in Portugal.

This can vary a lot. There are chains as well as mom-and-pop places. Some offer very high-tech environments with tablets for ordering and robots to delivery and take empties. This can cut some costs (many just have the tablets), but it only goes so far. This does also allow them to support English (and often Chinese, Korean, and sometimes others) for core menu items, but specials aren’t always there. Others are still very traditional. There are probably a couple of izakaya that do cater to tourists, but not a lot. They also aren’t generally what tourists are going for so I’m not sure that would be worth trying.

by pushing up house prices and the cost of living more broadly,

We have that in the big cities, particularly with AirBnB-like accommodations. Laws had to be made about them but enforcement is still poor. There are many operating illegally. It’s made the news when an investor would buy an old building to turn it into one and raised rents on everyone to ridiculous levels to get them to move. This forces locals making those above-mentioned Japanese salaries (and many of whom are pensioners) into worse situations or prices them out of their areas entirely.

Home ownership in Japan is weird. In many places (outside of Tokyo and a couple other metros), housing is a depreciating asset where it’s only down to the land value after 20 years and that land will go down in price in most of the country most of the time. Some people will buy condos instead of houses on their own land, but that comes with its own set of issues as well. We do have that as well, though. Some domestic, but a lot Chinese and from other countries as a source of investment income. This is one reason Japan has cracked down a lot on foreigners buying property and such in the last year and change.

Some places want to introduce two-tiered pricing for residents vs tourists. One complaint is that anyone who looks obviously-non-Japanese will likely get the foreigner treatment by default which I would not be looking forward to. Some companies jack up prices for greed, but that’s capitalism I guess. Some do it because their rents get raised and they have less choice. Either way, higher prices price out locals and create more rage toward foreigners (some people forgetting that tourists and foreign residents are not the same thing (mostly racists)). This is even though the majority of foreigners living and working in Japan are making the same wages Japanese folks would which is not a ton (especially for those of us would like to visit our family every once in a while).

It’s a weird and difficult situation. Many Japanese large companies are exporters that want to get paid in USD/EUR and have the JPY be weak when buying inputs. So, for the economy, the weak yen is good to a point. On the other hand, it’s hurting other places (and the future in general, IMO, but that’s just my impression). Japan also has a growing wealth-inequality problem and the weak yen and inflation are hurting people. It’s obvious to people wishing to travel abroad or buy items from other countries, but less so to those who are just paying more for everyday goods that get imported (and/or shipped with imported energy/fuel, using plastics that rely on imported petroleum, etc.).

The government is cracking down on visas (in both good ways (to prevent companies from exploiting people and the system which can drive down wages) and bad (raising costs to be insane compared to the wages here)). They had a business manager visa that had laughably few restrictions and had a lot of people setting up ‘businesses’ but really just using it to live in Japan, but knee-jerked the other direction which has caused people living in Japan for years running their own businesses to come up with an exit plan as they will not meet the new requirements (previous: something like 5 million yen value and some other stuff to now: 30 million yen, requirement to hire full-time a Japanese national, spouse, or PR, and other education/language requirements).

The whole thing is a mess. I don’t have a coherent conclusion to this. There are multiple problems with multiple factors and both good and bad reactions to them and proposed solutions. I guess we’ll see what happens. I’m hoping the xenophobia and racist people and parties fail to show any real results and we can focus on the actual economic and social issues, but I won’t hold my breath. I planned to live here forever. Bought a house, run a small farm in addition to my main job, invested, etc. I’ve been forced to have an exit plan in case things get worse for non-Japanese living here and/or they tank the economy totally.

Japan even failed to learn from Japan judging by everything I see here. Not necessarily as badly as the US mfgs did, but still. Especially for those chasing hydrogen right now and Nissan going through its thing (and I drive a Nissan kei car).

Apple sauce is not a universal replacement for eggs! … huh? Oh, force of habit. Also, the requirements clearly state Apollo-era core rope memory.

I re-arranged some of my post and did not proofread properly. I was specifically thinking about some areas that are stagnant around bayous and swamps in parts of the US south. I definitely didn’t mean to say ‘most of the US’. If a place gets enough wind and airflow naturally, it’s fine.

Depends on the area of the US. In the south, the water table is high enough that it’s usually not worth all the trouble trying to keep it dry. Same for most of Japan here.

Materials like stone in some of the US (I’m specifically thinking places with very little airflow like in parts of the deep swampy south) would be deadly without constant, properly-running mechanical ventilation, for one. In a power outage in the south, people would die without it as stone buildings spend all day getting heat and radiating it back out. That type of house suits some cold climates fine, but is very bad in 35 degrees with 80% humidity. Likewise, in high-humidity environments, mold becomes a real issue without that mechanical ventilation (opening windows does nothing when outside is that humid and particularly when there is no wind).

In earthquake zones, you WANT flexibility; stone and brick are deadly as mortar joints fail and the structure collapses.

I think you underestimate how strong properly-built wooden-construction homes can be. There are also materials and cost issues to building with other things. Finally, as I started with, home construction should be appropriate to the climate in which the house is built with consideration for the local materials and safety.

Here in Japan, we have wood and steel-reinforced concrete. Rarely, you’ll find reinforced block, but I think that was a fad that passed. Anything brick-and-motor now has all kinds of steel bracing added for earthquake protection. The house I’m in is not far from Fukushima and survived the 2011-03-11 earthquake and tsunami with only a minor thing to be fixed (and some cosmetic damage to wallpaper). It’s made of wood.

Edit: fixed an “a lot of the US” that was left from a previous wording and further clarified what I had in mind. A lot of the US was indeed wrong and not what I meant to post.

I also wonder if they’re aware of public drinking/intoxication laws in the US.

As another user mentioned, the Evan Edinger did an interesting video on the transit situation in the last couple weeks