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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  • I will continue not using it. I was interested in Oculus until they sold to FB and then I nope’d right out of that. I really did think VR was neat, but various things kept me from pulling the trigger. If it becomes the only way to use chunks of the internet, I just won’t use them; I grew up still in the analog world (though we did have BBS and very early dial-up in the '80s), and I could go back to it. I’d honestly miss educational content more than anything else, but I can get books. In my lifetime, that strategy would probably still work fine.



  • Japan does not grant citizenship to those born here. There are multiple ways to acquire Japanese citizenship, most of which are based on the most recent couple generations of parents/grandparents. Multiple citizenship technically isn’t allowed, either. Anyone naturalizing to Japanese citizenship must relinquish their existing citizenship(s) unless the other country does not allow relinquishing. If found out, the Japanese government can take action to revoke citizenship (or at least parts of it; there are actually court cases about this).





  • 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.