I want to know what Japan is like from people who actually live in Japan especially after seeing some misleading posts online from people who don’t live in Japan & people misunderstanding something resulting in people being misleadingly negative about Japan
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I’m a permanent resident of Japan and am raising a family here. I think you would get better responses if you posed more specific questions, or provided examples of what kind of misunderstandings people have experienced and posted about online.
I find Japan a pleasant place to live, but it is far from perfect, just like any society. The cost of living is quite reasonable compared to many other countries, which makes the lower salaries go further.
People are generally friendly, but you sometimes have to read between the lines, as people tend to be less direct so as to avoid confrontation (“It is a little difficult” is a polite way to say “No!” for example).
Anyway, if you have any other questions I’ll be around.
Yeah, 建前 and 本音 are definitely a thing to get used to, heh. I agree, specific questions are definitely helpful to answer
What is the first word? Google translated it to the pronunciation, but said the second word means “true feelings”
tatemae is the romanisation. It is your public attitude, which may be different to your real attitude (hon’ne).
Thanks! That makes sense, and is what I guessed, but I wanted to confirm
We don’t have subtitles when speaking.
Bullshit I’m reading your subtitles right now.
That’s good. Wouldn’t want the subtitles to be be against a non-contrasting background so I think you’re telling me to eat shit when in fact you’re merely offering me some shitake mushrooms.
Who do you think you’re kidding! Next thing you’re going to tell me not everybody there likes sniffing schoolgirls’ underwear! Preposterous!
I have a lot of plans that need reworked.
A Japanese person is only going to be able to answer “it is normal” unless they’ve lived abroad. Maybe it would be easier to ask them to debunk or confirm those misleading rumors?
Things I can point out from living in japan is:
healthcare is good
streets are clean
every Japanese person has seen at least a few Animes
Basic Japanese TV is 50% food, 30% reactions with facecam, 15% commercials, and once every Friday 1 movie. (Either ghibli, Harry Potter, or home alone).
You don’t really need to know Japanese in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, but in less touristy places it would be good to know how to order stuff, talk to cashiers and understanding basic instructions in Japanese.
Akihabara is dying.
Disney is more popular than Anime, and there are far more women than men and children combined at Disneyland and Disney sea.
People stand in line just to play pachinko.
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
There is a place in japan for every single hobby.
Japanese people like uniforms. If they have a hobby that sometimes has uniforms, more often than not, the Japanese person is going to have the full set of the uniform.
It is not considered rude to eat while walking, or talk while eating.
It is considered rude to blow your nose at the table, to pass food from chopstick to chopstick, to eat or talk on phone while on the train.
Houses and apartments are small, but cheap if you live further away from the center.
Living even an hour away from Tokyo, you’re still going to have giant cities nearby with everything you need, and everything will be cheaper.
What do you mean by Akihabara is dying?
Everytime I go there, major stores have closed down for good. People seem to shop more online nowadays.
It isn’t dead or anything yet, but if this keeps going, it will continue to shrink.
its less bussling and profitable than it used to be pre covid. some gimmick restaurants and several arcades have closed down.
people are just going to shop on yahoo auctions/amazonjp and such for merch. japan also overtime has been opening up to pc gaming in the past few years (basically the only country in asia where consoles, mainly handheld, is significantly more popular than pcs, where its virtually the reverse elsewhere) (both are smaller than mobile gaming market though combined)
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
As in ramen? Have you ever been to Kyushu? These things are regional.
As in knorr broth dice, etc, for cooking. They have chicken and vegetable consomme, and sometimes beef, but never pork. Ramen has a lot of flavoring, but when it comes to cooking food from your native country, even at speciality stores like Kaldi or Seijouishi, you’re lucky to find anything that isn’t already widely popular.
As a Swede, pork broth is the basic of basics in cooking, so it was hard to make dishes for when you’re homesick.
I have been to a few prefectures in Kyushu, and it was a really nice , but I didn’t try the ramen there. I’ll give it a try next time I go.
I see. Yeah, consommé is the most prominent stock in the supermarkets, followed by chicken, and like you said beef. I’ve never used pork broth myself, but I wonder if this is what you’re looking for.
I have no idea if it is any the same, but I’ll give it a try. Thanks.
Akihabara:
Urban shopping area in central Tokyo, Japan. considered by many to be the epicentre of modern Japanese otaku culture, and is a major shopping district for video games, anime, manga, electronics and computer-related goods. Icons from popular anime and manga are displayed prominently on the shops in the area, and numerous maid cafés and some arcades are found throughout the district.Great response! Just a comment, 食べ歩き (eating while walking) is definitely not seen with good eyes in many places in Japan. Some very touristic streets even have signs to forbid it.
I think that’s to prevent littering and people bumping into each other in very crowded places. For example Asakusa does this because it is very crowded, and a lot of the food there comes on sharp sticks, so it might be dangerous, but it isn’t inherently rude or anything. There are spots suitable or even meant for it, and spots less suitable for it. I don’t think culturally it is a problem.
That’s the case for very specific places, but in general, tabearuki is considered 行儀の悪いこと, meaning bad manners, basically.
Take a look at this article, for example. Or this anectode. Or info from a language school. Or this quora answer. They all discuss how eating while walking is bad manners and can bring nuisance to the people around you, even in non crowded places. Of course this is not every Japanese person’s opinion! I’ve even seen people advocating for it.
I think it’s not such bad manner that you would be scolded by a stranger, perhaps by a Japanese partner or close friend, but it’s definetly not seen in good eyes in general.
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.
How expensive is Tokyo compared to the West?
I can only compare it to Sweden, but eating out at restaurants is way cheaper in Japan. Almost cheaper than cooking it yourself.
Groceries depend on where you live, and how local the groceries are. Cooking Japanese food is cheap, and if you can get used to the flavor of Natto (protip, add mustard) you can live dirt cheap. Import goods in general are pricy so you might want to cut down on Nutella.
Rent is cheap, but the hidden fees are annoying. Like renewing your contract, key money, security deposit etc. Moving is expensive.
Hospital fees are at around 330-2000 yen a visit, an MRI scan is around 7000 yen if I remember correctly. Physical Therapy is at 330 yen per visit. With this said, you get treatment fairly fast. (Same day, wait maybe an hour or two).
Children get free treatment, and medicine cost around 30 yen (less than a dollar).
It is easy to spend too much money if you’re not careful, especially with how many entertainment districts there are.
Alcohol is also cheap compared to Sweden, but Sweden has one of the highest taxes on alcohol, so anywhere would be cheaper than Sweden.
The bullet train is pretty expensive. It is cheaper to fly domestic. The subway is cheap if you buy a pass.
Trains in the UK are more expensive than flying as well. They are also slower. They only make finical sense when the journey is too short or you need to be in the centre of the city when arriving.
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So what is with covering the mouth when eating and laughing?
Why would a Japanese person not be able to give a more in depth answer? I’ve only lived in my country all my life yet I could easily talk about the differences from the rest of the world.
They might, but Japanese are in general not too familiar with how life is outside of japan due to the language barrier, and usually on TV the most you’ll see is foreigners reacting to how it is in Japan, but so far the only TV show I know of where they travel abroad is ItteQ, but it focuses more on the comedians.
Oh are Japanese still largely TV driven? Here in Australia most people consume media online.
I would say it is more TV centric, with the aging population and everything.
But even on the internet, besides the major platforms like YouTube, Facebook, X, etc, Japanese tend to visit Japanese websites only. Even on these major sites, the feed is all Japanese, so I definitely think japan is a bit removed from the rest of the world.
レミーは英語圏のサイトを圧倒しているし、日本人の大半は英語ができないから、このサイトを利用しない。だから、実際の日本人からの回答は得られない。
[Lemmy] dominates English-speaking sites, and most Japanese people don’t use this site because they can’t speak English. Therefore, we cannot get answers from actual Japanese people.
translation by Google
How I feel browsing mastodon and it’s not anywhere near as bad as the inverse for other countries.
I can verify that google translate got some things right but I don’t know all the kana & kanji in that scentence yet to be able to read it
Don’t use Google translate because it will get Japanese / 日本語 wrong
I only understood a some words in that scentence because I haven’t yet learned enough Japanese to read that fully
I haven’t learned that big of a wordset yet as I’m primarily focusing on learning grammer at the moment before continuing to learn vocabulary
Many parts of Japan are stunningly beatiful. The largest cities are some of the most overwhelming places I’ve ever been, but everything works much better than you might expect.
The people are generally respectful and kind if you are the same. I found people to be generally tolerant of unintended rudeness from a foreigner, especially if you apologize. Jokes and humility go a long way.
There’s a TON of Japanese people there. Like, they’re freaking EVERYWHERE.
To this point, the Tokyo skytree may be the most entertaining place I’ve ever been. You can see so much life happening all around, you can see how far Tokyo sprawls, you can see how large the breadth of humanity can be. If you intensely focus on one small spot of the city, you see a myopic little section, but then you raise up, and see the entirety of “Civilization”. It’s super impressive. I expected that it would be fun to see, and maybe spend 20 minutes up there looking around. I spent almost 3 hours just examining life.
I’m sure places like this exist elsewhere, Tokyo seems like the perfect place for it though.
Highly recommend sitting in a cafe in Montmartre Paris. Especially one looking down those spindly small roads. Excellent place to watch humanity on a micro scale.
There’s a Japanese YouTuber my japanese learning friend would watch called “that Japanese man Yuta” who goes into this
I know about yuta because I am learning Japanese but I don’t think I have seen their other videos outside of learning Japanese
Right now I’m slowly working my way through grammer at a pace that works for me
Check out Mrs Eats on youtube
Do the videos help? I tried Duolingo with learning languages and nothing stuck from them.
If you’re trying to learn Japanese, wanikani for kanji and bunpro for grammar have been the best resources I’ve found. People recommend to just use anki but I don’t have the time to customize decks and mine sentences for hours on end. Wanikani and bunpro set up a structure that’s easy to follow and understand. I’ve loved using them over the past year.
You could try kanji garden
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.ky.kanjigarden
It is anki like in the way it uses spaced repition but is specifically for kanji though if I remember correctly you can’t customise it like an anki deck
Doesn’t work on foldables for whatever reason. Actually the only app I’ve come across that I can’t install lol. Thanks for the recommendation though
With Duolingo, it really helps if you’ve got someone else to practice with who’s working on the same language (or already knows it).
With duolingo and apps like them I don’t actually use them because they don’t allow you to structure your learning to best help you learn
Yeah they help but I mainly use them as supplementary information now because hearing the same information explained differently from other sources does help me understand something that may be explained in a way I don’t understand in a specific source
I mainly use the resources from: https://morg.systems/58465ab9
And I also created a github page that lists the other resources that I use though I don’t update it that often:
https://github.com/njosey/Japanese-Learning-Resources/blob/main/README.md
I’ve even living in Japan for almost a decade (probably closer if you count times I visited for months before living here). If you have specific questions, I’m happy to answer them.
Are everyone’s dicks really pixelated?
Having been to many a hot spring, yes (but only in my head).
Edit: seriously, though, sitting in an outdoor bath in the mountains as snow slowly falls is one of life’s great simple pleasures
How could you check yourself for std’s if it is all pixelated?
Omfg 😆
I’ve often thought about taking a vacation in Japan, so I have a few genuine questions.
- What should a visitor see or do that isn’t too expensive?
- I’m a little over 190 cm tall. Are there any popular tourist activities that my height would make more difficult?
- My ability to communicate in Japanese would consist entirely of using Google Translate on my phone. Would language be a significant barrier to a good visit?
Thanks for making yourself available for this.
For your first question, maybe take a look at the youtube channel Abroad in Japan.
Usually highlights not so well known locations in various places around japan.According to some bilingual JP youtube colleagues he is well received in the japanese community.
I think maybe older abroad in Japan might be fine. Rachael and Jun is another one I used to watch. I consume that type of content less the longer I live here. If you’re into outdoorsy stuff Go North Japan is really nice
- 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
You might have to get used to ducking more than usual. And showers in AirBnBs might be too short to wash your shoulders and head. Hotels in the cities are fine in my experience.
Almost every shower I’ve seen in Japan has it on a movable hose rather than fixed, so at least there’s that. I forgot when I went back to the US for a visit for the first time in ~6 years and was super annoyed, heh.
I’ve heard the work culture in Japan, like many Asian countries, can be quite oppressive and sometimes even toxic when compared to its Western counterparts.
Obviously this is highly specific to the workplace in question, and the framing of this statement has inherent biases.
That said, could you offer any insights into the veracity or lack thereof to these claims?
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.
Thanks so much for your detailed response! I found the latter part regarding returning to the office after the lifting of quarantine to be particularly interesting, as it hadn’t occurred to me the ways working from home and then going back to the office might play out differently in other cultures.
I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer my query.
When’s the best time to visit mount midoriami ?
Midoriyama (mount green mountain, heh). They do Sasuke once a year usually, but you’d need a translator to participate. I don’t think they really have an audience open to the public (it seems they’re all related to the contestants in some way), but I’m not sure about that
I’m not japanese but I want to travel there. We’ve discovered Takeshii from Japan on YouTube a while ago and I think he is doing a good job in capturing some opinions around different aspects of living in Japan. I’d say it’s worth checking.
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “I’m not japanese but…”
“…here’s someone on YouTube who lives in Japan that does a good job of showing what living in Japan is really like.”
Seriously, what was wrong with that?
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “…”
wow that’s so much better than people trying to help!
TIL you can only know things about Japan if you’re Japanese
I don’t know of any Japanese who really know of Lemmy and I’ve never seen it mentioned online (though mastadon is at least somewhat known, but not by the average japanese). Also asking in English is going to limit the pool of respondants quite a bit. I’m not japanese but I’ve been living here since 2015 and speak japanese on a daily basis with my wife and family.
I have seen them posting on mastodon and pixelfed
But you do have to find them through Japanese specific tags which is easier when learning Japanese (日本語)
You can search for “日本” which is the native name of Japan on mastodon or pixelfed that should give you some results
I feel like Americans or Europeans would find the answers from the perspective of an American/European living in Japan more useful.
I do watch him but I need to watch more of his videos as I’ve only seen a select few that intrest me so far
I’d like to expand to more channels like his as well
I had honestly forgotten about his channel when posting this question but it’s good to make this post because it does expand the scope of information on this subject to make it broader
These people have been living there since like 2011 or something. I don’t think it’s clickbait style stuff, and they give breakdowns on how some stuff works (like they bought a house last year)
I’m subscribed to them because I saw their Japanese fridge video when searching for Japanese fridges on YouTube but haven’t yet watched the rest of their videos
Thank you for reminding me of them
In one sentence or less.
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