Japan has changed in important and visible ways • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#111

Post by vasco » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:05 AM UTC

hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

So if you live in 4 countries over four decades in your adult life you will learn 4 new languages?

I don't think you must've lived more than one place abroad, or somewhere with good English. For example I speak 4 languages, understand another 2, but don't speak the language of the country I've lived in for the last 3.5 years, and I'm not even learning. At some point it's just absolutely not worth it and I'm just gonna occupy memory that will be more useful for work or life.

This is the most common take you hear from people that never lived abroad, only speak one language, or lived abroad in a single place where they learn their first ever new language. Then judge someone who'd be learning their 4th or 5th. It's absolutely not the same thing for a native english speaker to learn one single foreign language when they move once and compare it under the same light.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#112

Post by astrange » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:05 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #12

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

> I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try. Did they substantiate this claim at all? All available public information is that the vast majority of those who try succeed. People largely don't apply for citizenship, in part because Japan requires them to renounce other citizenships to do so, and in part becaus…

I've heard the driver's license test in Japan is quite hard and fails people on the first try just to teach them humility. Maybe they were thinking of that? (whether or not it's true…)

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#113

Post by astrange » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:08 AM UTC

zztop44 wrote: post #70

Aeolun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it kinda sucked when they wouldn’t let the permanent residents into the country during the first year of COVID, so you were essentially unable to visit family (or worse, unable to return to your life, home and work after such a visit).

At least they let their citizens in, unlike Australia!

There's a popular Japanese streamer who had a whole mental breakdown character arc since she was studying abroad in Australia and couldn't go home for a year or two because they wouldn't let her back in if she did.

And being in Melbourne she couldn't leave the house for some of that either.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#114

Post by digianarchist » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:08 AM UTC

Cloudef wrote: post #68

willbudd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, naturalization only involves a basic language test at around the level of N3; which should be very easy if you picked up any Japanese at all during the years spent living in the country. The reason so few people acquire Japanese citizenship is not because of the difficulty doing so, but because it offers little in terms of tangible benefits beyond those already acquired by virtue of having permanent…

Dual citizenship is kind of gray area in Japan. As long as you don't talk about it, nobody really cares. (And this attitude kind of sums japan as a whole)

Don't authorities require evidence that you have given up your previous citizenship? Singapore does.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#115

Post by randomluck040 » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:08 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #109

hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

> Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. I'm German, living in Berlin, and have wonderful friends who fit that description. They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead. People should learn languages if they feel a reason t…

In my opinion there are lots of external factors to it. I’m also German and we probably both know that especially lots of years back we could’ve set things up differently in terms of integration (which to some degree included learning the language).

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#116

Post by rippercushions » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

wk_end wrote: post #99

rippercushions wrote: post #28

> Shopping centers, bars, clubs, and glittering zakkyo buildings (the ones with all the signs) continue to multiply. How could you live in Tokyo for a decade and miss all that? Emphasis on Tokyo, which was basically the only place in Japan that's still growing, until it too started shrinking during COVID. Go to any second-tier city, or even much of suburban Tokyo, and you'll see urban collapse in action: emptied-out…

> Emphasis on Tokyo, which was basically the only place in Japan that's still growing, until it too started shrinking during COVID. A few days ago I commented the opposite of this: most of Japan's major cities ("Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and more"), per Wikipedia, have been growing. The inaka is shrinking, but that's part of the same migration away from rural areas that's happening…

In Japan the inaka is shrinking, but the cities are shrinking too. In 2021 every single prefecture except Okinawa saw net population loss: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01310/

Here are the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research's latest projections: https://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-shicyoson/e/shicyoson18/t-page.asp

Virtually all municipalities in Japan, large or small, are already shrinking or will go into negative growth by 2025-2030. These 2018 projections predate COVID though, which has sped up the decline.

And yes, there are a few exceptions, but they're mostly things like ski area Niseko, which boomed on foreign tourism investment, and a few towns in Fukushima that grew because people were evacuated from the reactor zone.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#117

Post by breput » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

gkanai wrote: post #95

breput wrote: post #41

An interesting view of Japan, outside of the big cities, is blog written by Richard Hendy (an English ex-pat) back in the early 2010s called Spike Japan[0]. He focuses on areas such as Hokkaido where there are glimpses of past prosperity but due to an aging population and the younger people moving to the cities, the communities that remain are crumbling, but in a very Japanese way. Hendy has a great sense of humor an…

Spike Japan is great. He needed an editor though. It's a great reminder of the collapse of rural Japan- that's still ongoing today. Those parts of rural Japan should never have had the development that they did have during the 80s/90s bubble years.

Ironically his last blog post was a commissioned article[0] from The Guardian and he complained[1] about editorialization. But yes, he liked his words, but I also wish he would revisit some of these places now.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/aug/15/yubari-japan-...

[1] https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-withering...

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#118

Post by rmrhz » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

rippercushions wrote: post #83

throwawaaay129 wrote: post #51

Ironically both articles come from a very typically western patronizing perspective A lot of expats come to asia and get frustrated with many small cultural details. It's especially prominent when the person doesn't speak the local language (as this BBC corespondent... shocking). The general reaction is "why can't you just be more like the us/europe/etc." It's really miopic. There is always a larger broader cultural…

> People are a lot less stressed at work Are we talking about the same Japan here? Karoshi (death from overwork), black companies etc is not just a Western news trope, and all the Japanese salarymen I know hate the work culture.

We're talking about an arubaito not the shain setting.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#119

Post by astrange » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:11 AM UTC

danielscrubs wrote: post #54

> Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan, and it’s a big reason why Japanese people earn such low and stagnant wages. Median wealth in Japan is 119,999 USD whilst in USA it is 93,271 USD. I see way more misery in American cities than I ever seen here. I also had an ex (with a masters degree mind you) who was a cleaning lady for a short while, and they worked her to the bone, 12 hour shifts, and s…

> Median wealth in Japan is 119,999 USD whilst in USA it is 93,271 USD.

Median Japanese person is 10 years older than median US person (48 vs 38).

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#120

Post by midoridensha » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:11 AM UTC

inciampati wrote: post #17

YouMeWeThem wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception. The reason you don't hear more about English-speaking westerners gaining Japanese citizenship is because they don't recognize dual citizenship. Renouncing your non-Japanese citizenships is a prerequisite to gaining Japanese citizenship, which is understandably too big a hurdle for many.

The only dual nationals I know with Japanese citizenship are operating under the argument that they were born with both citizenships and the non Japanese one is legally impossible to remove by coercion. So they claim that the Japanese state is doing the coercion and don't mention it to the authorities. This would be an interesting case in international in law, but I hope it's never a problem for them.

People who were born with dual citizenship because of their parentage are a special case. They're supposed to make a choice by age 22 IIRC, but in reality you're allowed to defer it for a while because you're "considering it". So people in this situation just keep doing this indefinitely. Not really legal, but it's not really enforced much AFAICT.

For someone who gained JP citizenship through naturalization, it's a different matter. From what I've read, they will check to make sure you renounced your old citizenship, and will revoke your new JP citizenship if you don't (which probably also means no visa eligibility).