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All this has gone a long way to make me feel better about not keeping up my Japanese language skills after university. My youthful deep reverence for Japan and

• ninetyninenine 2y ago
  I kinda want to go there and purchase a 10k house in a village and chill. It’s basically a place where you can retire. I know a bunch of white people who have already done this. Just like how Japan isn’t characterized fully by anime it’s not fully characterized by corporate culture either.
  • vr46 2y ago
    Yeah, I think brown people are less welcome, although I still want to spend a month just wandering around record shops listening to Japanese jazz-funk and slurping noodles
  • astrange 2y ago
    The main issue for foreigners is that the pay is low. The culture can be bad (especially around tech) but it's not that bad. If you're really good, as I'd hope the people on here are, you can get into a foreign company and get paid… more than the average native.
    • adastra22 2y ago
      The pay is low, but the cost of living is also surprisingly low. It doesn’t take much to get by, so long as you’re not living in the most desirable areas in Tokyo.
      • astrange 2y ago
        Sure, but unless you're going to stay forever you have more reason to care about costs wherever you came from. Might want to buy a house back there, or pay off student loans.
  • mc3301 2y ago
    Do you actually know many people (not through social media) that did this? I live here, and I know a few but they mostly fall into one of two camps. 1) Moving into and maintaining the house/land/community relationships is a labor of love, which involves a lot of work or 2) They don't last long once they realize the physical labor, the mental load of the language/culture/isolation. I'm in the process of buying a house here. I have helped other with the process, too.
    • ninetyninenine 2y ago
      I Airbnbed in the place of one guy who did it. And I know one more. The rest are on social media like you said. I think if a bunch of people just go into town and do it together it will be less isolating.
      • ujikoluk 2y ago
        I don't think building an island is the answer. It will make it even difficult to integrate into the culture. And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place?
        • shiroiushi 2y ago
          >And if you don't want to integrate into the culture, why are you there in the first place? A lot of immigrants leave their home countries not because they love the culture of their new country, but because they found living in their old country unbearable for some reason. Or just for economic reasons. Not everyone actually wants to integrate into a new culture; many don't. Just look at how many people in the US don't speak English, even though that's obviously the dominant culture.
  • pezezin 2y ago
    I actually live in the Japanese countryside, so let me tell you that there are two reasons why those houses are so cheap: 1. The construction quality of the average Japanese house is absolute garbage. Most likely you will need to demolish it and rebuild from scratch. 2. Outside of the big cities, Japan sucks hard. The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. Many Japanese people want to move to the big cities just to enjoy proper services and some excitement in their lives. So if you move here I hope that you enjoy staying alone at home, because there is not much else to do.
    • shiroiushi 2y ago
      >The average small city or village is just a bunch of big box stores and houses scattered everywhere. This sounds much like rural America. Houses scattered everywhere, and a super Walmart. The big difference I've noticed here in Japan (I live in Tokyo), at least from my window on the train going through rural areas, is that the houses tend to be clustered together much more closely. In rural America, everyone wants many acres of land to themselves, but in rural Japan, the land is usually used for farming and the houses are quite close together in a hamlet.
      • pezezin 2y ago
        I understand what you mean, and perhaps "a collection of hamlets" is a more accurate description. In my experience, your perception depends heavily on your personal background. The city where I live (Misawa) hosts an American military base, and when talking with them nobody ever complaints about the urban sprawl, I guess it is normal for them. However, I am from Spain, a country where even small villages are very compact (we prefer to build all the houses together, and keep the farms outside), so for me Japanese villages feel very sparse. Another big difference is that in Spain we value public areas (the third space), and here public spaces range between infrequent and not-existent.
• ivanbalepin 2y ago
  i wouldn't go that far, it's still a very fun language and a rich culture.
  • shiroiushi 2y ago
    It's also a lot nicer living here, in my experience, than in America in the last 8 years. Sure, there's some bad companies, but that's true everywhere.
    • adastra22 2y ago
      What has changed in America the last 8 years?
  • vr46 2y ago
    Oh, I still love it, just not in a rose-tinted goggles way, like I did when I was 18. I did work a few stints at a Japanese company in London and saw the slight clash of corporate cultures up close.
• peterlk 2y ago
  Totally unrelated… I’m really excited to see VR46 as a username, especially since the championship was today
  • vr46 2y ago
    A good season, with the front runners doing something really special at times. Conflicted fan of the sprints and so many races due to the pressure to squeeze money from the sport, but enjoying the extra racing.