I want to know what Japan is like from people who actually live in Japan especially after seeing some misleading posts online from people who don’t live in Japan & people misunderstanding something resulting in people being misleadingly negative about Japan
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We don’t have subtitles when speaking.
That’s good. Wouldn’t want the subtitles to be be against a non-contrasting background so I think you’re telling me to eat shit when in fact you’re merely offering me some shitake mushrooms.
Who do you think you’re kidding! Next thing you’re going to tell me not everybody there likes sniffing schoolgirls’ underwear! Preposterous!
Bullshit I’m reading your subtitles right now.
I have a lot of plans that need reworked.
I’m a permanent resident of Japan and am raising a family here. I think you would get better responses if you posed more specific questions, or provided examples of what kind of misunderstandings people have experienced and posted about online.
I find Japan a pleasant place to live, but it is far from perfect, just like any society. The cost of living is quite reasonable compared to many other countries, which makes the lower salaries go further.
People are generally friendly, but you sometimes have to read between the lines, as people tend to be less direct so as to avoid confrontation (“It is a little difficult” is a polite way to say “No!” for example).
Anyway, if you have any other questions I’ll be around.
Yeah, 建前 and 本音 are definitely a thing to get used to, heh. I agree, specific questions are definitely helpful to answer
What is the first word? Google translated it to the pronunciation, but said the second word means “true feelings”
tatemae is the romanisation. It is your public attitude, which may be different to your real attitude (hon’ne).
A Japanese person is only going to be able to answer “it is normal” unless they’ve lived abroad. Maybe it would be easier to ask them to debunk or confirm those misleading rumors?
Things I can point out from living in japan is:
healthcare is good
streets are clean
every Japanese person has seen at least a few Animes
Basic Japanese TV is 50% food, 30% reactions with facecam, 15% commercials, and once every Friday 1 movie. (Either ghibli, Harry Potter, or home alone).
You don’t really need to know Japanese in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, but in less touristy places it would be good to know how to order stuff, talk to cashiers and understanding basic instructions in Japanese.
Akihabara is dying.
Disney is more popular than Anime, and there are far more women than men and children combined at Disneyland and Disney sea.
People stand in line just to play pachinko.
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
There is a place in japan for every single hobby.
Japanese people like uniforms. If they have a hobby that sometimes has uniforms, more often than not, the Japanese person is going to have the full set of the uniform.
It is not considered rude to eat while walking, or talk while eating.
It is considered rude to blow your nose at the table, to pass food from chopstick to chopstick, to eat or talk on phone while on the train.
Houses and apartments are small, but cheap if you live further away from the center.
Living even an hour away from Tokyo, you’re still going to have giant cities nearby with everything you need, and everything will be cheaper.
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
As in ramen? Have you ever been to Kyushu? These things are regional.
As in knorr broth dice, etc, for cooking. They have chicken and vegetable consomme, and sometimes beef, but never pork. Ramen has a lot of flavoring, but when it comes to cooking food from your native country, even at speciality stores like Kaldi or Seijouishi, you’re lucky to find anything that isn’t already widely popular.
As a Swede, pork broth is the basic of basics in cooking, so it was hard to make dishes for when you’re homesick.
I have been to a few prefectures in Kyushu, and it was a really nice , but I didn’t try the ramen there. I’ll give it a try next time I go.
I see. Yeah, consommé is the most prominent stock in the supermarkets, followed by chicken, and like you said beef. I’ve never used pork broth myself, but I wonder if this is what you’re looking for.
I have no idea if it is any the same, but I’ll give it a try. Thanks.
How expensive is Tokyo compared to the West?
I can only compare it to Sweden, but eating out at restaurants is way cheaper in Japan. Almost cheaper than cooking it yourself.
Groceries depend on where you live, and how local the groceries are. Cooking Japanese food is cheap, and if you can get used to the flavor of Natto (protip, add mustard) you can live dirt cheap. Import goods in general are pricy so you might want to cut down on Nutella.
Rent is cheap, but the hidden fees are annoying. Like renewing your contract, key money, security deposit etc. Moving is expensive.
Hospital fees are at around 330-2000 yen a visit, an MRI scan is around 7000 yen if I remember correctly. Physical Therapy is at 330 yen per visit. With this said, you get treatment fairly fast. (Same day, wait maybe an hour or two).
Children get free treatment, and medicine cost around 30 yen (less than a dollar).
It is easy to spend too much money if you’re not careful, especially with how many entertainment districts there are.
Alcohol is also cheap compared to Sweden, but Sweden has one of the highest taxes on alcohol, so anywhere would be cheaper than Sweden.
The bullet train is pretty expensive. It is cheaper to fly domestic. The subway is cheap if you buy a pass.
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What do you mean by Akihabara is dying?
Why would a Japanese person not be able to give a more in depth answer? I’ve only lived in my country all my life yet I could easily talk about the differences from the rest of the world.
They might, but Japanese are in general not too familiar with how life is outside of japan due to the language barrier, and usually on TV the most you’ll see is foreigners reacting to how it is in Japan, but so far the only TV show I know of where they travel abroad is ItteQ, but it focuses more on the comedians.
Oh are Japanese still largely TV driven? Here in Australia most people consume media online.
There’s a Japanese YouTuber my japanese learning friend would watch called “that Japanese man Yuta” who goes into this
I know about yuta because I am learning Japanese but I don’t think I have seen their other videos outside of learning Japanese
Right now I’m slowly working my way through grammer at a pace that works for me
Check out Mrs Eats on youtube
Do the videos help? I tried Duolingo with learning languages and nothing stuck from them.
With Duolingo, it really helps if you’ve got someone else to practice with who’s working on the same language (or already knows it).
Yeah they help but I mainly use them as supplementary information now because hearing the same information explained differently from other sources does help me understand something that may be explained in a way I don’t understand in a specific source
I mainly use the resources from: https://morg.systems/58465ab9
And I also created a github page that lists the other resources that I use though I don’t update it that often:
https://github.com/njosey/Japanese-Learning-Resources/blob/main/README.md
With duolingo and apps like them I don’t actually use them because they don’t allow you to structure your learning to best help you learn
I’ve even living in Japan for almost a decade (probably closer if you count times I visited for months before living here). If you have specific questions, I’m happy to answer them.
Are everyone’s dicks really pixelated?
Having been to many a hot spring, yes (but only in my head).
Edit: seriously, though, sitting in an outdoor bath in the mountains as snow slowly falls is one of life’s great simple pleasures
Omfg 😆
I’ve often thought about taking a vacation in Japan, so I have a few genuine questions.
- What should a visitor see or do that isn’t too expensive?
- I’m a little over 190 cm tall. Are there any popular tourist activities that my height would make more difficult?
- My ability to communicate in Japanese would consist entirely of using Google Translate on my phone. Would language be a significant barrier to a good visit?
Thanks for making yourself available for this.
- really depends upon what you’re into and where you want to go. English ability can drop pretty rapidly outside of the cities, but I got by with and handful of words and gestures when I started visiting
- not really. Some old building are tough, but you can duck. I have a buddy who’s 194cm (I think) and he’s fine (born and raised in Japan)
- not really. I did fine as mentioned it point 1 with some very basic words and I’ve met plenty of people who knows zero and enjoy their visits
For your first question, maybe take a look at the youtube channel Abroad in Japan.
Usually highlights not so well known locations in various places around japan.According to some bilingual JP youtube colleagues he is well received in the japanese community.
I think maybe older abroad in Japan might be fine. Rachael and Jun is another one I used to watch. I consume that type of content less the longer I live here. If you’re into outdoorsy stuff Go North Japan is really nice
You might have to get used to ducking more than usual. And showers in AirBnBs might be too short to wash your shoulders and head. Hotels in the cities are fine in my experience.
Almost every shower I’ve seen in Japan has it on a movable hose rather than fixed, so at least there’s that. I forgot when I went back to the US for a visit for the first time in ~6 years and was super annoyed, heh.
When’s the best time to visit mount midoriami ?
Midoriyama (mount green mountain, heh). They do Sasuke once a year usually, but you’d need a translator to participate. I don’t think they really have an audience open to the public (it seems they’re all related to the contestants in some way), but I’m not sure about that
I’ve heard the work culture in Japan, like many Asian countries, can be quite oppressive and sometimes even toxic when compared to its Western counterparts.
Obviously this is highly specific to the workplace in question, and the framing of this statement has inherent biases.
That said, could you offer any insights into the veracity or lack thereof to these claims?
In one sentence or less.
I’m not japanese but I want to travel there. We’ve discovered Takeshii from Japan on YouTube a while ago and I think he is doing a good job in capturing some opinions around different aspects of living in Japan. I’d say it’s worth checking.
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “I’m not japanese but…”
“…here’s someone on YouTube who lives in Japan that does a good job of showing what living in Japan is really like.”
Seriously, what was wrong with that?
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “…”
wow that’s so much better than people trying to help!
TIL you can only know things about Japan if you’re Japanese
I don’t know of any Japanese who really know of Lemmy and I’ve never seen it mentioned online (though mastadon is at least somewhat known, but not by the average japanese). Also asking in English is going to limit the pool of respondants quite a bit. I’m not japanese but I’ve been living here since 2015 and speak japanese on a daily basis with my wife and family.
I have seen them posting on mastodon and pixelfed
But you do have to find them through Japanese specific tags which is easier when learning Japanese (日本語)
You can search for “日本” which is the native name of Japan on mastodon or pixelfed that should give you some results
I do watch him but I need to watch more of his videos as I’ve only seen a select few that intrest me so far
I’d like to expand to more channels like his as well
I had honestly forgotten about his channel when posting this question but it’s good to make this post because it does expand the scope of information on this subject to make it broader
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Many parts of Japan are stunningly beatiful. The largest cities are some of the most overwhelming places I’ve ever been, but everything works much better than you might expect.
The people are generally respectful and kind if you are the same. I found people to be generally tolerant of unintended rudeness from a foreigner, especially if you apologize. Jokes and humility go a long way.
There’s a TON of Japanese people there. Like, they’re freaking EVERYWHERE.
To this point, the Tokyo skytree may be the most entertaining place I’ve ever been. You can see so much life happening all around, you can see how far Tokyo sprawls, you can see how large the breadth of humanity can be. If you intensely focus on one small spot of the city, you see a myopic little section, but then you raise up, and see the entirety of “Civilization”. It’s super impressive. I expected that it would be fun to see, and maybe spend 20 minutes up there looking around. I spent almost 3 hours just examining life.
I’m sure places like this exist elsewhere, Tokyo seems like the perfect place for it though.
レミーは英語圏のサイトを圧倒しているし、日本人の大半は英語ができないから、このサイトを利用しない。だから、実際の日本人からの回答は得られない。
[Lemmy] dominates English-speaking sites, and most Japanese people don’t use this site because they can’t speak English. Therefore, we cannot get answers from actual Japanese people.
translation by Google
