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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#191

Post by moltar »

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…

What if a country has two official languages (Canada) or three (Switzerland) or eleven (South Africa)?

Do you need to learn them all, as a foreigner? What about as a naturalized citizen? What about as a born citizen?

What if a country has adopted English as another official language (Hong Kong, Malaysia). Do you still need to learn the other languages?

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#192

Post by danielscrubs »

somenameforme wrote: post #164
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…

Here [1] is a graph of the Japanese markets. Keep in mind the logarithmic scale. Japan's economy was substantially healthier 30 years ago, and that's not cherry picking COVID stuff since it had nothing to do with that. Similarly, they've also seen their population start to die off by the millions. [2] That makes it impossible to really compare US and Japan on many things. 30 years of economic stagnation/decline paire…

Your chart kind of drives the point home. Who wants to own Japanese stocks when those companies are giving money to the employees? Compare to owning amazon stock where the employees are treated inhumanly to drive the stock valuation up.

You need to check what the common man has in the wallet instead.

Let US be US and Japan be Japan is all Im saying.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#193

Post by nly »

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)

It's the same in China from what I've heard. Dual British Chinese citizens often just don't tell China that they've become British citizens.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#194

Post by mantas »

Thorrez wrote: post #97
csdvrx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe the welfare state is no longer suited to the country population profile, and each person show be saving for their own retirement and children?

You can save money but what are you going to do with it? If there aren't enough young people providing the goods and services the retired people need in retirement, the prices of those goods and services will skyrocket and many who saved won't be able to afford the goods and services.

Automation will help with that. Growing salaries for those fewer young people would help too. For example to buy real estate that'd get cheaper.

There's always someone else on the other end of „afford the goods and services“.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#195

Post by DerSaidin »

onethought wrote: post #167
defrost wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English speakers are notorious for not bothering to learn local languages, eg: Migrants failing to assimilate, 200-year-study finds Migrants to Australia have displayed an inability to assimilate with local values and refuse to speak anything but their native tongue, a study covering the last 200 years has found. The study confirms a popularly-held belief in parts of the country that migrants simply refuse to fit in.…

This is about non English speakers not learning English. I’m missing some sarcasm?

theshovel.com.au is satire

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#196

Post by havill »

idiocrat wrote: post #19
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…

> the overall culture is extremely hostile to granting citizenship to non-native people Sorry, I need to disagree with you. The process is fairly straightforward and formal. You need to fit very few and fair formal criteria, but if you do, then there is nothing special about the process. For a sincere applicant, there should be severe reasons why citizenship is not granted. There are statistics by nationality. I thin…

And for those that prefer to watch a 10 minute video:

https://youtu.be/PkO8lwHrLZE

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#197

Post by mantas »

wnscooke wrote: post #168

In my own experience, being a foreigner who (seemingly) doesn't speak a local language actually does open doors to unique insights - the people who do speak English are quite ready to tell all the ins and outs, pros and cons, ups and downs, subtleties, gripes, concerns, cultural tidbits exactly because they think I won't go around talking about what they said.

And then you end up as a subculture relying on the host culture, but at the same time staying away with it. Coming from ex-Soviet country, that gives sad vibes of our infamous russian-speaking soviet-era settlers who never bothered to integrate. Nor their kids and grandchildren. In the end it creates a lot of friction and that friction brings very fringe political views. E.g. subscribing to Moscow viewpoints while living cushy life in rotten West. I've seen very similar patterns in english-speaking bubbles in Japan :/

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#198

Post by Bayart »

lmm wrote: post #82
Fordec wrote: post #16

A fertility rate of 1.3 is still a demographic crisis. Just because the neighbors degraded to the same level also isn't supposed to be a point of pride. Japan at 1.3 and China at 1.2 are both far below replacement rate of 2.1 and both are heavily detrimental to a nations economic and demographic outlook and on par with only the European with the worst outlooks like Spain, Italy and Ukraine.

Sure, but the people saying Japan needs to become more like western Europe, or like non-Japan countries generally, to solve its demographic crisis, are barking up the wrong tree.

"Non-Japan countries", also known as the rest of the world. Despite the beliefs of Japanese nationalists and Japan fetichists, it's not a special country and there's no special solution for it.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#199

Post by [deleted] »

deepGem wrote: post #43
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…

So Indians are on the top of the emigration food chain and I wonder why Japan is not one of our top destinations. There are like 50K Indians in Japan, mostly Tokyo. This is a surprisingly low number. Sure there is the language barrier but that barrier holds true for Germany also which has a lot more Indians. My hunch is education - Japan does not have too many universities to attract young talent, as compared to Germ…

[deleted]

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#200

Post by havill »

idiocrat wrote: post #31
idiocrat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the overall culture is extremely hostile to granting citizenship to non-native people Sorry, I need to disagree with you. The process is fairly straightforward and formal. You need to fit very few and fair formal criteria, but if you do, then there is nothing special about the process. For a sincere applicant, there should be severe reasons why citizenship is not granted. There are statistics by nationality. I thin…

https://www.turning-japanese.info/2021/06/naturalization-sto... Excerpt: [...] the seven requirements [...] . 1) Have continuously lived in Japan for 5 years or more? 2) Be 20 years of age or above, and be a legal adult in my home country? 3) Be of upright conduct? [///] 4) Have a way of supporting myself and my family? 5) Be willing to give up my other nationality/ies upon acquisition of Japanese nationality? 6) Hav…

The "Japanese language requirement" is technically part of requirement 4... the rational being that if you can't understand Japanese and you aren't wealthy enough to support yourself without working for the rest of your life, you are too dependent on English language workplaces. While they exist, they are a tiny niche of Japanese society in the bigger scheme of things.
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