Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#71

Post by philliphaydon » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #40

philliphaydon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never want to work in japan. Doing business with japan is hard enough. You could create the most amazing service in the world. And it’s still inferior to a Japanese business on the grounds that it’s not owned by the Japanese. I love the country the culture the people. But working with Japan is the most difficult thing I’ve encounter in my career.

Yeah a few people I know who have worked there enjoyed it but the sort of mechanics about how you have to work, traditions.... they love that in the US they can break so many "rules" and it's thought of as innovative, not the end times.

It's not even about the freedoms you get working in other countries. Once had a Japan client change some settings in their account which cause a different workflow to occur. I had to write an incident report for the issue.

It's like "if you change A to B, B will happen instead of A... If you want A to happen, select A..."

Another job we were processing the POS system records and tracking sales / inventory. The dates were converted from JST to UTC. Oneday the client rang and was raging on the phone because all the dates were wrong. Turns out they changed their setting from JST to some other time zone, so we converted from UTC to this other time zone. Incident report about why we store in UTC and why the values displayed wrong etc. Threats to drop us as a business because we "obviously don't know what we are doing"...

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#72

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

jlawson wrote: post #6

So sad. Another ancient unique culture to be blended and homogenized into the global mass of undifferentiated Starbucks society. At least the megacorporations will get the cheap labor and undifferentiated consumers they want.

[deleted]

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#73

Post by sanxiyn » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #71

duxup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a few people I know who have worked there enjoyed it but the sort of mechanics about how you have to work, traditions.... they love that in the US they can break so many "rules" and it's thought of as innovative, not the end times.

It's not even about the freedoms you get working in other countries. Once had a Japan client change some settings in their account which cause a different workflow to occur. I had to write an incident report for the issue. It's like "if you change A to B, B will happen instead of A... If you want A to happen, select A..." Another job we were processing the POS system records and tracking sales / inventory. The dates…

This sounds normal and not specific to Japan.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#74

Post by philliphaydon » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #73

philliphaydon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even about the freedoms you get working in other countries. Once had a Japan client change some settings in their account which cause a different workflow to occur. I had to write an incident report for the issue. It's like "if you change A to B, B will happen instead of A... If you want A to happen, select A..." Another job we were processing the POS system records and tracking sales / inventory. The dates…

This sounds normal and not specific to Japan.

14 years in this career and Japan is the only country I've had to do this with.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#75

Post by mistermann » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

CptFribble wrote: post #63

slang800 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If successful people are having fewer kids than unsuccessful people then haven't we created a dysgenic system?

This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich. Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it…

Impressive unpacking of a low detail, fairly innocuous comment, into a high detail, somewhat sinister assertion. What mechanism do you use to add specific details where none existed before?

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#76

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #61

duxup wrote: post #24

It will be interesting to see how Japan deals with it culturally. From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.

>From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders. I spend a fair amount of time in Tokyo for work, and I'd say this is accurate. My 日本語 is far from fluent, but it's frequently better than the English being spoken by random people on the street... yet it will take a good 20-30 seconds of me replying in Japanese before they'll switch away…

[deleted]

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#77

Post by kalleboo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

ioltas wrote: post #36

laurieg wrote: post #10

I thought it might be useful to add a comment mentioning what the changes are in layman's terms. Prior to the recent change, everyone working in Japan was a "skilled" worker. There was no language requirement and essentially anyone with a degree was eligible. This didn't cover manual labour jobs etc. But at the same time, many young people were out working in convenience stores, fast food restaurants etc. Turns out t…

> This is true. In fact, by far the fastest route to permanent residence in Japan is marriage. You can get PR in 3 years if you are married to a Japanese national vs 10 years if you aren't. More details on that. Getting a wedding visa the first time gives 1 year. At the second application one year later, one gets once again 1 year. At the third application one year later, you get 3 three. At this point, you could ask…

> Getting a wedding visa the first time gives 1 year. At the second application one year later, one gets once again 1 year. At the third application one year later, you get 3 three

This is case-by-case. I went 1y-3y-5y. I've met people who got 3y on their first.

> but after that there is no need to go to the immigration office

You still need to renew your physical card every 7 years (new photo etc), but at least you no longer need to prepare all the paperwork.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#78

Post by kalleboo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:41 AM UTC

GreaterFool wrote: post #18

> but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! > it will inevitably introduce social strains Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.

> I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner!

I live in Kagoshima which has one of the lowest rates of foreigners in the country and nearly every time I go into the city centre I spot a foreigner. My daughter's (standard) daycare has at least 2 other foreign kids. Convenience stores have Chinese students working part time.

99% homogeneous still sounds about right though.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#79

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #75

CptFribble wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich. Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it…

Impressive unpacking of a low detail, fairly innocuous comment, into a high detail, somewhat sinister assertion. What mechanism do you use to add specific details where none existed before?

The very use of the word "dysgenic" wrt human populations is a form of virtue signaling that is far from unknown to internet circles such as HN. The comment might have been overzealous about rebutting a perceived narrative, but that statement is a basis for that narrative.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#80

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 23, 2019, 5:59 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #37

duxup wrote: post #24

It will be interesting to see how Japan deals with it culturally. From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.

I would never want to work in japan. Doing business with japan is hard enough. You could create the most amazing service in the world. And it’s still inferior to a Japanese business on the grounds that it’s not owned by the Japanese. I love the country the culture the people. But working with Japan is the most difficult thing I’ve encounter in my career.

[deleted]