tiredofsametab

Can he put in a good word for me? The world needs a Bond that’s an overweight but otherwise average-looking guy with an American accent, right?

I think the herb garden is a good idea.

I’m not sure. I love the wood and I think the plant above the cupboards helps, but it’s a huge open space and kinda sterile with the white everywhere in my opinion. Hrm.

People didn’t find what they wanted and/or went back to what was stable and familiar. I still am avoiding using reddit for anything except the subs related to people living in Japan (the community didn’t move over; a couple did but there were basically no posts very quickly) and when it shows up in some search result and nothing else has worked.

The existing rail network is already pretty jammed on a lot of lines. Cargo does run at night (mostly) on other rail lines, but night is when maintenance is also done (we don’t really have any 24-hour trains here except on special occasions and I think none of those even since corona). The safety record here does come with a cost in that sense; the checks, maintenance, and construction all occur at night with freight running around that.

If they are adding this in the middle of the expressways, the land is already acquired. It probably takes less infrastructure to do this than putting in rails would involved. I also doubt it would be to code for rails since there needs to be room to get passengers off in the case of emergency, etc. Zooming in on 35.698190871019335, 139.75230458261458 in Tokyo does show there isn’t even really any room between lanes, though, and it’s not different up where I live a few hundred KM north so I’m not exactly sure what the play is. All expressways are paid today and the tolls were supposed to go away eventually, but they never will if the construction never ends (and it never ends).

I think it does have some cargo space, but not enough to matter in any significant way. IIRC it’s mostly just mail and parcels, but I might be mis-remembering.

I’ve always liked boot styles of the 20s and 30s. Upper-left has some nifty boots.

You should be glad we raped, plundered, murdered, and enslaved you!

Imagine if someone in government said this about Japan and Korea, Manchuria, etc. (and this is something that some far-right Japanese groups believe and say and is met with predictable reprehension domestically and abroad).

I can try to answer. I’ve lived in Japan for almost a decade (this is my 10th year).

It’s the verb meaning to be wrong, so, contextually, I think the person made the classic l/r switch mistake, saw the reaction, and asked if what they wrote was incorrect.

Yeah, some is specific to Japan, though there will be similar hurdles anywhere the US has an agreement (and that the target country’s institutions actually follow it, I suppose).

I have a couple of retirement accounts in the US that I contributed to before (I moved overseas in my early 30s) that I basically can’t touch for a number of reasons right now. Just wanted to throw it out there.

iirc, they did use a damaged wheel to try to figure out a situation where a rover was stuck, though I don’t remember any details about it.

This is true (edit: for fairly recent history; going back more we have women’s suffrage times and the civil war times), but I also don’t know that it’s great. When we see people having their rights denied or, worse, taken away, standing complicity by or with the people working to deny or strip those rights does not work for me. I have cut people out of my life and am even low-contact with some of my family because they want to hurt people I love and that’s not OK with me.

Further, not doing so could impact things like voter registration depending upon the state. The whole system of US voting is a mess since it’s all at the state level.

However, since you don’t pay taxes on that money, it can impact which kinds of retirement accounts you can use based in the US, if any. Also, trying to invest as a US citizen outside the US can suck because of all the agreements with US banks. Many Japanese platforms, for instance, won’t touch me because of US reporting requirements. I also can’t functionally use the tax-advantaged retirement accounts here because many amount to what are called PFICs by the IRS which requires paperwork and are taxed punitively more than wiping out any advantage the retirement accounts would have.

You’re also going to have a rough time getting a US investment account if you don’t have one already. Then you have to figure out how to have a US phone number because two-factor auth basically requires it for any bank or anything that will touch you.

There are other “fun” things about being a US citizen living abroad.

Definitely. That’s just something we really wanted to do (wife is really into fossils, particularly amolites)

Eh… Unless you are actually Japanese, you’re probably going to be hanging out with other ex-pats, or just very lonely.

I disagree here. Learn the language and hang out where Japanese hang out.

Japan is an extremely conservative and insular country. They don’t really mind people visiting for the most part, but they don’t really think highly of people actually immigrating there.

The “they” here is doing a lot of work. Certainly, a number of people are anti-immigration as they see an erosion of their tradition and some, the I suspect it an ever-shrinking minority, Others are mostly fine with immigration if it’s “the right kind/race of immigrants”. I have a loving family here in my in-laws with whom I am often involved (grandpa loves writing letters). As for immigration itself, in the ~10 years I’ve been here, they’ve added new visas with quicker paths to permanent resident status. One can apply for citizenship after 5 years (though it requires renouncing all others which is why I don’t do it – I do wish they’d change that).

There are ethnic Koreans who have lived in communities in Japan for hundreds of years who are still considered outsiders and are treated like second class citizens.

I don’t know exactly what you’re referencing here. There are zainichi Koreans who are in a weird spot. There is more racism to people from the neighboring countries than perhaps others, but that’s also not universal. A lot of Koreans that are here because their homes/families were in the north don’t take Japanese citizenship and, often, don’t really feel Japanese either; they feel their identity is north korean, but don’t move their either for obvious reasons. As such, they don’t take Japanese citizenship and are basically waiting to “go home”. I used to hang out with one and my wife knew a couple and they are in an interesting spot. They often also go schools run by nork-friendly institutions and some (many? all?) do at least visit pyongyang once, but they’re well aware of how much they are taught and shown is carefully curated and not typical. Anyway, the not taking citizenship and not going home does rub some (especially the far right) the wrong way and they’d rather they GTFO. Edit: a lot of the families were brought over, often involuntarily, during Japan’s colonization of Korea and WWII.

Racism is definitely something that I think is shrinking over time, but definitely still too high and a problem to be addressed.

Japan’s economic policy always has been weird, but lately things just keep appearing to get worse with like 30 years worth of shrinkflation happening all at once and wages not raising with inflation at all. The yen has slid against the dollar to pretty terrible rates. While it sucks for me personally wanting to do things like visit family overseas, it also plays a role in imports. Especially post 3-11 when they started turning off nuclear, a lot of fuel for everything, including keeping the lights on, must be imported. The low JPY basically just benefits the export markets.

More progressive, basically. The person who came second for PM wants to continued forced unified surnames (at least when both people getting married are Japanese) and has a bunch of positions on things like LGBTQI that drag progress backward. It also reads like she would revoke broadcasting licenses for news channels whose politics she doesn’t like. We already legally have to pay a yearly fee (kinda like a UK license fee, I think) for owning anything capable of receiving a TV signal. This was initially done (at least in part) to fund NHK (Japan’s BBC or PBS or whatever) outside of the government. They still have self-censored and at times aired wildly bullshit, racist things (particularly around corona). The position is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanae_Takaichi and, if another PM election which is not unlikely soon, I suspect she might win.

Hah, we were actually thinking Queensland for the dinosaur museums and fossils. I love the water, but wife isn’t such a big fan.

I don’t use salt but rather soy sauce and/or fish sauce which is salt + umami. Smoked paprika also adds a nice smokiness if you’re not using any kind of smoked chilis.