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Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

bloomberg.com

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Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#111

Post by phonon »

gsk22 wrote: post #71
mrob wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters

JIS X 0213 has 11,233 characters across multiple alphabets that gets mixed together in the same sentence, plus the issue of horizontal and vertical typesetting, ruby text, and having to use Unicode Ideographic Variation Sequences to handle things like writing people's names correctly.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#112

Post by teawrecks »

eru wrote: post #52
asdasdasdas5453 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN when people discuss CS/privacy/programming the conversation is very thorough and interesting. When the discussion is about economics (the topic I have studied at uni) most comments are just plain wrong and show a complete ignorance about the topic. If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 "Using data from the Current Pop…

> If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 Or you can just point out that, well, if there are too many people, just (virtually) split the country down the middle: voila, fewer people in the country. A more sophisticated argument brings up density. But it's usually the sparsely populated parts of a country that are poorer.

Ah the "snap" strategy.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#113

Post by watwut »

brazzy wrote: post #103
watwut wrote: post #50

The American obsession over living or not with parents sounds almost pathological to me. Being jobless is issue. Long term inability to find partner is issue. But, if you don't have partner, what exactly is the reason for moving to live alone and why is focus specifically on "omg someone lives with parents"? I mean, multigenerational households were historical norm. It is not something super special that happened jus…

Living with their parents is a symptom of not being able to afford living on their own.

I could afford to move out sooner, but it would be waste of money. Instead I gave parents something out of what I earned to cover what I eat and some. It just was not an issue in any way. What exactly would I gained if I moved elsewhere to live alone or with roommate?

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#114

Post by [deleted] »

kiliancs wrote: post #106
jhanschoo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A partial answer: Googling 'japan fax' would give you many articles attesting that faxes are still a stable for communication in offices. e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-ja... > Japan’s health ministry has said it will allow health centres to report new coronavirus cases online, instead of by handwritten faxes, after a doctor lambasted the legal requirement. Another very externally visi…

I appreciate this is a partial answer, but by those standards the US is also similarly behind. For example, still commonly use checks and they are nowhere near transitioning to the metric system.

[deleted]

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#115

Post by seehafer »

decafninja wrote: post #109
brazzy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living with their parents is a symptom of not being able to afford living on their own.

Outside of Western society, or maybe just outside of American society, this is completely untrue. In parts of Asia, and even in Asian enclaves in the US, you can even see high earning people (say...hedge fundies, or FAANG SWEs) living with their parents. In these cultures, marriage is typically the point where you move out, not graduating college.

Small nuclear family domiciles (as opposed to multigenerational family domiciles) are a particular feature of Anglo-Saxon-influenced cultures. So it's more common to see this in Mediterranean Europe (e.g. the Italian 'mammone') https://www.thelocal.it/20180619/italy-mammone-living-at-hom... as well.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#116

Post by hindsightbias »

roenxi wrote: post #2

The things that stand out to me about Japan: * 3rd largest economy. * 11th largest population (top 10 until recently, they basically tie with Mexico). * If you look at a table of countries by area, they are there. Even in the top half, thanks to places like Tuvalu. I think there is a very strong on-the-face-of-it argument that they just have too many people and not enough for them to do, economically speaking. If the…

I watch NHK US a bit. Every night they have some show with a westerner riding some train line or riding a bike around and the landscape - which is pretty thin on people. Train lines manned by retired workers just to keep them going. Cyclist stops at at famous peach or strawberry orchards and there is some 90 year old on their knees weeding, kids are all in the city. Of course, it will all become industrial agro-farming once they're gone, but is that the best cultural, social, economic solution?

It reminds me of western Ireland. Hiking around for hours through the country and not seeing a living soul. Expensive (holiday I assume) houses with slate roofs on a couple of hectares and empty.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#117

Post by bobloblaw45 »

gfxgirl wrote: post #69

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.

Isn't it like a cultural thing over there where you're expected to work overtime and essentially kill yourself for your company? Might be dated info but I remember someone saying nobody even thinks about going home before the boss regardless of when they got in so the boss never has the chance to see them leave.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#118

Post by JohnBooty »

Saint_Genet wrote: post #49

I went to university in the same city I grew up in, and made the mistake of living with my with my parents for the first two years. Let me tell you, you don't really become an adult until you move out.

I agree. Could perhaps even take it a step farther and amend that to, "You don't really become an adult until you move out and there's no longer an option for you to move back home"

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#119

Post by cco »

hindsightbias wrote: post #116
roenxi wrote: post #2

The things that stand out to me about Japan: * 3rd largest economy. * 11th largest population (top 10 until recently, they basically tie with Mexico). * If you look at a table of countries by area, they are there. Even in the top half, thanks to places like Tuvalu. I think there is a very strong on-the-face-of-it argument that they just have too many people and not enough for them to do, economically speaking. If the…

I watch NHK US a bit. Every night they have some show with a westerner riding some train line or riding a bike around and the landscape - which is pretty thin on people. Train lines manned by retired workers just to keep them going. Cyclist stops at at famous peach or strawberry orchards and there is some 90 year old on their knees weeding, kids are all in the city. Of course, it will all become industrial agro-farmi…

This sounds interesting, I'd love to watch it, could you link to one of those videos? I see lots of video results for NHK US, but a lot don't seem to be of the type that you're talking about.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#120

Post by x87678r »

latch wrote: post #94
eru wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Japan is a decade ahead of Singapore as well? If anything, I always have the impression Singapore is ahead of the rest of the world in many respects. (Not in all respect. Not in cycling or craft beer.)

Yes. And I love Singapore. I'd like to think that cities / countries of the future have lower inequality and are more self sustainable (not too much Singapore can do here, but it might become increasingly important). I don't want to speak too much subjectively. Because I've lived in Singapore and I've only visited Japan. So maybe I just haven't seen Japan's dirty side - which was kind of what I was asking in my origi…

Doesn't Singapore run on $1/hr workers from other countries? It has much higher inequality than Japan.
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