Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like ?
Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like ?
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
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.
116We don't have subtitles when speaking.
92Bullshit I'm reading your subtitles right now.
28That'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.
12Who do you think you're kidding! Next thing you're going to tell me not everybody there likes sniffing schoolgirls' underwear! Preposterous!
7I have a lot of plans that need reworked.
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76What do you mean by Akihabara is dying?
14Everytime 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.
18its 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)
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Japan doesn't have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
As in ramen? Have you ever been to Kyushu? These things are regional.
8As 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.
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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.6Great 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.
4I 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.
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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.
3So what is with covering the mouth when eating and laughing?
1Why 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.
-1They 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.
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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。
34[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
30How I feel browsing mastodon and it's not anywhere near as bad as the inverse for other countries.
3Don't use Google translate because it will get Japanese / 日本語 wrong
1I 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
1
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
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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.
31To 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.
13Highly 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.
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There's a Japanese YouTuber my japanese learning friend would watch called "that Japanese man Yuta" who goes into this
22I 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
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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.
10Are everyone's dicks really pixelated?
34Having 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
31Omfg 😆
1How could you check yourself for std's if it is all pixelated?
1
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.
10- 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
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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?
4I'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.
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When’s the best time to visit mount midoriami ?
3Midoriyama (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
6
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.
5"Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?" "I'm not japanese but..."
11"...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?
28I 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.
6I feel like Americans or Europeans would find the answers from the perspective of an American/European living in Japan more useful.
2
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
2These 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)
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In one sentence or less.
3たまたまこの投稿を見つけたので返信してみます（日本語ですまん）
私はおそらく非常に一般的な日本人で英語を話すことが出来ません。
もちろん教育は受けていますがすごく力を入れているわけではないのでほとんどの人は習得せずに学校を卒業してしまいます。ちょっとした単語すらわからない人も多いので
日本に住んでみたい方は必ず言葉の壁に当たると思います。
日本人は親切などはあまり期待しないほうがいいです。
基本的に日本人は余計なことに関わりたくないと思ってます。
それでも困っている人は放っておけないので自分から話しかけてきた人には何かしら手助けをしてくれる可能性はあります。
ただ、これはどこの国でも多分一緒ですよね？
（私はオーストラリアに行ったことがありますが、英語が分からなくても皆親切得でしたよ）
実際に他の国に住んだことがないのであまりたくさん答えることは出来ないですけど、過度な期待はしないほうがいいです。 新宿の通りは汚いし、変な人もいるので治安が悪いところもある。
一番いいのは実際に日本に来てみて短期間観光客が行かないところに行ってみることかもしれません。
あとは住んでいる人の動画を見てみるとか？（宣伝ではないですが私のお気に入りです）
https://www.youtube.com/@LIJ
関係ない話。
他の人も指摘していましたが日本人はほとんどLemmyを使っていません。
使っているのは元々海外のコミュニティが好きで英語ができるような人たちでしょう。純粋な日本人向けのインスタンスも2,3個しかなく私の運営しているMAU4人のところが最大規模なくらいです。
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