Really, what's makes Kanji so complex compared to Mandarin that it originated from?
Chinese is second most complicated. Japanese has all the Chinese characters, and hiragana and katakana in addition.
This is not true at all. Japanese Kanji comprise only a few thousand characters (~2000 being considered sufficient for functional literacy). Chinese has well over 50000 characters.
>I've traveled a fair bit, and every part of Japan that I've been to feels like I've timed-traveled 20 years into a better future That's strange. To me traveling Japan feels like entering an alternative history where the 80s never ended.
Japan seemed to me a case study in hiding sociocultural problems with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition and specifically some sort of perverse derivative of Confucianism. Korea has the same problem. It's a dead-end culture: China and Vietnam finally threw off the shackles in the 20th century at great cost, but Northeast Asia's sociocultural and political economies are apparently still largely running…
China's behavior in their Western provinces doesn't convince me they have really dropped their shackles last century
I've traveled a fair bit, and every part of Japan that I've been to feels like I've timed-traveled 20 years into a better future [compared to anywhere else I've been]. Yet there seems to be a fairly constant negative economic narrative about Japan (and this narrative seems to be decades old). What's the deal? Are my observations superficial, or are economists just annoyed that Japan doesn't fit their world-view (low…
What about Japan seems like the future? Maybe you should try Singapore or many of the big cities in China. Singapore's architecture looks far more in the future than anything in Japan at this point. So do many other more modern Asian cities. China has lots of poverty but the big cities are far further along in their switch to digital than Japan.
It was a big deal during lockdown that so much of Japan's government runs on paper documents that have to be stamped with official personal seals (hanko). The new prime minister has claimed it's one of this top priorities because Japan is so far behind.
>I've traveled a fair bit, and every part of Japan that I've been to feels like I've timed-traveled 20 years into a better future That's strange. To me traveling Japan feels like entering an alternative history where the 80s never ended.
Japan seemed to me a case study in hiding sociocultural problems with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition and specifically some sort of perverse derivative of Confucianism. Korea has the same problem. It's a dead-end culture: China and Vietnam finally threw off the shackles in the 20th century at great cost, but Northeast Asia's sociocultural and political economies are apparently still largely running…
I think you'll have to be a lot more concrete to make this claim particularly strong. What is a 'dead end' culture? How does that contrast with the problems in the West (and yes, especially those in the US)? How did China 'throw off' their shackles in a way different to Japan post WW2? What are the actual 5th century ideas in play?
Does Japan really have a ‘lost generation of jobless’ if their unemployment rate is only 2.29%? That seems incredibly low to me. Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/unemployment...
Do they count people as unemployed only if they are actively looking for work? If it was the case, there could be many people without a job and not looking for one, which could explain the discrepancy
A friend of mine works at Amazon Japan. She's working 10-12 hrs a day, 6 days week. She gets paid no overtime. AFAIK that's illegal in Japan but here Amazon is doing it.
Companies demanding unpaid overtime and long workweeks is common enough that Japanese literature has a term for them: Black Companies.
When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.
Recently I have began to wish we still used them, and I say that as a consumer and a UI designer, as I think about all the designs I have made and discarded that could have easily been solved with pen and paper. It may not scale for an Amazon-sized business, but it totally works for small restaurant.
What do you mean? You can still print at the other end if you really needed certain designs to be somewhere on paper, no?
Presuming this will undermine birth rates (read: low or no population growth) Japan might be stuck in the cycle for years to come. That said, many First World economies have leaded on immigration to back fill the gap of low birth-rates. For examples: In the USA, that's been a noticeable growth in Spanish-speaking residents. In Germany and France, there's been growth in the Middle Eastern (mainly Muslim) residents. Ne…
In France it's more North and Sub-Saharan Africa than Middle/Near-East
When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.
Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?
Faxes don't work. What are you supposed to do with them? Stick them a filing cabinet and then go look them up there when needed? Faxes were better than snail mail but they suck compared to anything modern. Even the Japanese know this.
That's not how economy works. There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". "The economy" is the sum of goods and services produced and consumed. Everyone who lives consumes, and could easily consume more. The economy is generally limited by the ability to produce, and is generally limited by the number of working-age people to do the producing. Unemployment can be result of production being…
Like others having lived there for a short period of time, I agree with this observation. The cultural premium on risk, that may merely inconvenience someone, is unreasonably high (by my standard, anyway). Ever have to pay a bribe to a landlord to rent an apartment as a matter of accepted business protocol? Look up "reikin". Then you'll realize why some think it's totally reasonable to live out of an internet cafe.
It's not a bribe. That's your negative spin. The positive spin is it's just 2/26th pre-payment of the rent for 2 years. You then pay 1/26th every month for 2 years, repeat when you renew your contract. Do I like having to pay 2/26th up front (2 months rent?) no. But I also would prefer not to have to put down payments on cars/houses.