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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#431

Post by Aeolun »

petodo wrote: post #159
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).

Who the heck downvotes this and think it's normal for person LIVING in country for years not being allowed to return to their home and family, just because they don't live there long enough to gain citizenship yet? It's extremely xenophobic/racist approach (which should not really come as surprise in Japan).

I’d be one thing if I hadn’t lived here long enough to get citizenship yet, but after 10 years?!

Like, it’s clear whoever wrote that law didn’t deliberately exclude foreign residents, he just didn’t consider them a thing at all. Like ‘Japanese Nationals’ should comprehensively cover everyone in Japan.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#432

Post by Aeolun »

timr wrote: post #166
astrange wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I assume you mean that Australia wouldn't let her back in. Japan never closed the borders to citizens. They did make it annoying to come back, however. Several different friends had to do long quarantines in not-great facilities.

Doing a return quarantaine a little while later convinced me I would not do well in prison.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#433

Post by robjan »

toyg wrote: post #371
robjan wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't check citizenship lists but you must show proof of renouncing the citizenship attached to the passport you used to enter the country.

I'd expect them to ask for this only to the non-Japanese-looking, or people who acquired citizenship after birth so might be in some particular database. I have a friend who goes back to Japan fairly regularly and afaik they were never asked as such when entering with her Japanese passport.

This is my point. Japanese people can have multiple citizenships but in order for a foreigner to gain Japanese citizenship, they must renounce at least one of their other citizenships to fulfil the "single citizenship" criteria.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#434

Post by Tainnor »

fomine3 wrote: post #428
Tainnor wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would work fine. Japanese people can read Kana-only text - foreigners often can't because they aren't as used to it, but Japanese children read books mostly in Hiragana and they know what things sound like because they speak the language long before they know how to read it.

can read, inefficiently

It's inefficient because it's somewhat unusual, and because when we read our brains are trained to recognise larger patterns instead of just single characters, so of course if you've spent all your like reading 東京 instead of とうきょう, the first would be recognisable much more quickly.

But that's true as much of modern Japanese as it was of Korean before they dropped Chinese characters, or of Chinese before the simplification of Hanzi.

Eventually, people would just get used to a new way of writing things and be able to absorb that quickly and efficiently.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#435

Post by thaumasiotes »

bobthepanda wrote: post #401
thaumasiotes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the same way large numbers of South Korean and Chinese students try and opt out of their similarly hard exams. Chinese university entrance exams can be hard or easy, but in either case it doesn't really matter because admissions are done on a quota system. When I was looking at score data a few years ago, the threshold for being admitted to a second-tier (二本) university was around the 40th percentile, which is to s…

The difficulty is not necessarily just the test but its structure. Gaokao et. al. are held once a year, if you want to retry you need to wait a full calendar year, and the single-time test covers all subjects simultaneously. To compare to SATs, those can be retaken multiple times a year, and the non-core subjects are separate, so any individual sitting is much lower stakes. It is not exactly a secret that a big push…

> Gaokao et. al. are held once a year, if you want to retry you need to wait a full calendar year, and the single-time test covers all subjects simultaneously. To compare to SATs, those can be retaken multiple times a year, and the non-core subjects are separate, so any individual sitting is much lower stakes.

You don't get to know your gaokao score when you apply to schools.

But you do know what your score is likely to be; that's how people choose what school to apply to. It's not very difficult to predict your score in advance of taking the test.

Given that, why do we think the annual frequency makes the test "high-stakes"? The normal case is that you go in expecting a certain score and get something close to it. If you wanted to take it again the same year, you'd expect a similar score. If you wanted to spread it out over several days... you'd expect a similar score. There just isn't a large population of people who perform one way on practice gaokaos that are very similar to the real gaokao, and markedly differently on real gaokaos that are very similar to practice ones.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#436

Post by petodo »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #392
petodo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me introduce you to wild idea that language is just tool and has nothing to do really with the country/culture. I may loved China (at least first few years) where I lived for years without loving their politicians and learning language (beyond few useful phrase and numbers), same goes actually for many countries I travelled. My kid is citizen of country A, was born in country B and lives in country C speaking lan…

I would be very surprised if in the case you all stayed in C, your kid wouldn't adopt at least some of the culture/ethnicity/values of C, which would be through the language of C (or possibly a C-derived subculture/creole).

sure, that's expected, but it won't be thanks to language, but because of the enviroment regardless of language

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#437

Post by petodo »

Tainnor wrote: post #420
petodo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are working with assumption people don't live in their bubbles even when living in home country speaking mother tongue and that not breaking bubble is something bad. Many people voluntarily choose to live in bubbles which overlap with other bubbles. For instance I live in bubble where in general I avoid having conversation with obese people, since these people have complete lack of self control. It would be also…

> since that shows ignorance to learn basic necessity to exist in present world and lack of education and world views (I mean how the heck can you learn anything about the world not speaking English just from limited local sources). My parents' generation learned Latin and French instead of English, and there's an argument to be made that you also can't really understand a lot of the world without at least some passi…

That's not really an excuse, my retired father learned Latin, German (to the level he was translator) and Russian and he still late in his age learned also at least basic English.

Meanwhile my ignorant low educated mother learned just very basic German needed in shop to be able to communicate with German speaking customers.

I can cut you some slack if you are above 50 and know at least some other languages, but honestly you should still know at least very basic English even without formal education. I also learned at least very basic Spanish without any formal education. There is no excuse for anyone below 50 to not speak English even if they speak Latin or German.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#438

Post by petodo »

lmm wrote: post #430
petodo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're working full time in Japanese you could absolutely get conversational Japanese within half a year. I fail to imagine scenario where Japanese company hire non-japanese speaker who will then be working full time in Japanese language to learn it.

Happens all the time with menial or physical jobs where they're desperate for labour - construction, fishing, forestry, that sort of thing. You can't get a work visa for that kind of job, but if you have a visa for other reasons (spouse, child of Japanese national, etc.) they'll take you.

Yeah, but I assume in that case you don't talk much during the job and don't have really time to talk to practice the language, so it's complete circle - can't learn it in job which doesn't require the language, because there is no reason to use there language. Sure you could learn few phrases or at least improve your comprehension I guess, but I don't think you could get fluent after half year of such (hard) work.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#439

Post by bobthepanda »

samtp wrote: post #424
bobthepanda wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The depopulation is not even. You can’t really abandon a few people in a neighborhood without services ethically or legally, and the last holdouts may not move for anything. Similar issues occurred in Detroit and other Rust Belt areas, and those had extreme population declines but could not abandon services and infrastructure.

> the last holdouts may not move for anything I mean eminent domain has been used for centuries (even pretty regularly today) for this exact purpose.

Which requires compensation at fair market values.

If your entity needs to save money by closing up shop they probably can’t pay for eminent domain (which is what we saw in the Rust Belt)

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#440

Post by petodo »

meowfly wrote: post #426
petodo wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep. I went to China with intention to stay there one year to save some money and continue travelling. Then after less than a year I met my future wife. > Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someo…

I share a bit of that experience when trying to make Chinese friends. The first place I lived was with a family who had a son around my age. He was solely interested in practicing English but he had virtually no life outside of school. I moved into a foreign students dorm and most of my classmates were Korean and Japanese, but I spoke to them in Chinese. The friend I hung out with the most was Korean and I didn't fee…

I don't think understanding the country and not speaking the language are mutually exclusive. I've met my fair share of foreign students who studied Chinese at home, then stayed in China for a year to not overstay their honeymoon period and yet their understanding of China was completely shallow and they were clueless about China as much as they were when they came, because all their life was dorm parties and clubbing or shagging CN girls and enjoying their student bubble, while speaking local language. Meanwhile I worked for multiple companies over years, talked with plenty of Chinese coworkers whether they were interns or fulltime, dealt with apartment hunt seeing at least hundred of apartments in person, tons of various paperwork with various offices, dealth with hospitals because of wife's pregnancy and visited places that hardly seen any foreigners. You can still understand China even without speaking the language and not understand it while speaking the language.

But I agree western MSM is heavily biased against China and their "journalists" living in their foreign bubble are joke, especially if it's older unmarried men, where you can clearly see what they are doing with their spare time.

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