Canadian-American software developer living in Japan since 2015. Into gardening, DIY, permaculture, etc.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Disney is more popular than Anime

    I don’t know that I agree with that, necessarily, but I suppose it might be how you define “popular”. Tons of people are going to Puroland and stuff (Sanrio/Hello Kitty) if we’re talking about theme parks. Every Japanese kid I know still talks about Anpanman, etc., though all my nieces and nephews definitely do know some Disney (Frozen in particular for the gals at least).

    Japan doesn’t have pork broth

    I’d generalize that to liquid stock that isn’t dashi. I can at least find chicken stock at Costco, but that’s about it.



  • I’ve only worked at two Japanese companies. My wife has worked at several in her life (and loves her current company and job). I’ve also read stories of people in bad places asking for advice. I’ll answer based on that, but realize that it is not a huge sample size.

    “black companies” are very much a thing and take advantage of those that either can’t (or feel that they can’t) find other work. Recent years have seen laws to reform the number of hours worked and against various forms of “power harassment” (you can google that for what it is, but basically managers/superiors cannot do certain things). My first company in Japan kinda waffled between a company with a ton of overtime, got quite nice, and then went back the opposite direction.

    Some of it is just social pressure, which is a big thing in Japan. People don’t want to rock the boat, so they will, for example, clock out but keep working, not leave before the boss, etc. Corona causing a lot of people to work from home has changed things, though, and a lot of people who have gone back to the office have a much better understanding of how much useless BS there is and how many hours of their lives they’re missing out on. We’ll see how it plays out in the future.






    • really depends upon what you’re into and where you want to go. English ability can drop pretty rapidly outside of the cities, but I got by with and handful of words and gestures when I started visiting
    • not really. Some old building are tough, but you can duck. I have a buddy who’s 194cm (I think) and he’s fine (born and raised in Japan)
    • not really. I did fine as mentioned it point 1 with some very basic words and I’ve met plenty of people who knows zero and enjoy their visits