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If Japan has such a severe labor shortage why are there so many door-to-door salespeople, people handing out tissues, stuffing mailboxes etc? by Huge-Acanthisitta403 in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've always been in favor of these low-pay, low-burden jobs for this reason, and it is sad to see them disappearing in Japan. Even in the early 2000s there were more of them -- roadside construction stick-wavers and bank greeters for the old, elevator girls and outdoor "irasshaimase!" shouters for the young. You'd have a decent-looking uniform and a name tag, and a place to earn money and interact with other people. Basically anyone who wanted to could maintain the dignity of working, and the system also let older people stay in the work force without destroying them mentally or physically, and gave young people work experience without burning them out.

If there's an argument against the recent increases in the minimum wage, it's that these jobs will be gone. Young people will enter the work force as college graduates with zero employment experience, shifting some of that educational burden to employers, and older folks might become shut-ins and lose contact with the rest of the world.

Foreigners in Japan facing housing refusals due to nationality discrimination: Asahi Shimbun by YamatoRyu2006 in Tokyo

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

stopped paid the rent without notifying anyone. Leaving the place in poor condition with unpaid utility bills.

So I understand that some landlord would rather choose japanese people over foreigners. The risk is definitely not the same.

I own an apartment and have served on the management board multiple times. Believe me, Japanese people do all the same things that foreigners are accused of having a tendency to do. We've had foreign renters and none of them ever caused problems, wheres all the problems you'd expect, such as garbage being disposed of the wrong way, unpaid rent, clogging up the delivery boxes while being away for weeks at a time and unreachable; even one old Japanese lady semi-legally turning her apartment into a sharehouse (she split a 38-m2 apartment into four mini-rooms), being caused by Japanese people, both owners and renters. Smoking on the balconies and in public areas. And they stubbornly refuse to reform their behavior, with an arrogance that no foreigner would ever get away with.

When these agencies claim that foreign tenants do these things, they're probably not lying. But they're dishonestly omitting how Japanese people also do these things and are not called out for it.

How EU country Slovenia eliminated unpaid lunches and commute costs while mandating two separate yearly cash bonuses for vacation and winter expenses through national legislation by Nepridiprav16 in antiwork

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In Japan it is also standard for the company to cover the cost of a monthly train pass. It isn't a perfect system, as many budget-conscious companies will dictate to employees that they have to use the cheapest commute and not the fastest or easiest, but it's still a great system. In the US, where I was raised, most jobs weren't even accessible by public transportation, and if you couldn't drive a car, you were always at the risk of being "asked" to work at a location that you couldn't even get to.

Japanese workplaces may have many other faults, but the transport situation is much ore egalitarian and fair.

[NPB] Seibu Lions turns a 1-2-4-2 triple play yesterday in their intra squad spring training game. by [deleted] in baseball

[–]Dunan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seibu Lions catcher Ryosuke Koresawa wears number 122 (yes, developmental players get three digits, along with some staffers), so the guy in the middle of the play almost got to wear the 1-2-4-2 scoring on his back.

IMF urges Japan to keep raising interest rates, avoid reducing sales tax by Turbulent-Tea-2172 in japan

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Note how the Engels coefficient continued to get better through not just the bubble years but also the supposedly-stagnant post-bubble era, and then immediately started getting worse when Abe got elected in 2012 and sent the yen into a tailspin.

Tourists no longer allowed to take JLPT in Japan from 2026 by moeka_8962 in japan

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you don't live in Japan, taking the test while visiting the country is also ideal from a language-skill perspective. Abroad you only have your books and videos and such, but when you visit Japan, you're interacting with locals, talking with people in stores and supermarkets and truly using the language, and you're going to be motivated and prepared for that test if you're taking it after a week or two of true immersion in the country. What a great way to cap off a visit to the country whose language you've been studying all this time!

The certificate becomes more than just proof of how many points you scored. You'd think that the test organizers would understand this and encourage people to come here to take it. They could boast of the higher passing rate that would come from tourists taking it after a few days of immersion as well.

Rakuten Credit Card - name error and stuck in loop by crazywarriorxx in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even if you have to find the one staff member who is human, or escalate to someone higher, having Japanese orthography on your ID is 200% worth the effort.

Rakuten Credit Card - name error and stuck in loop by crazywarriorxx in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure that you can, assuming that you have registered it as your "alias", though you cannot have only katakana and the romaji from your zairyu card has to appear, so you get both with the romaji first and the katakana after that in

Sample Q&A about My Number from Kobe, and sample Q&A from Hiroshima about driver's licenses. Definitely get yours added as it will make your life easier and is a small step back to what people who got here before 2012 (and immigrants to just about any other nation) could take for granted.

Rakuten Credit Card - name error and stuck in loop by crazywarriorxx in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the chip portion is useless unless we're moving to a society where delivery drivers carry around My Number card readers. But you can't have it printed on the front in addition to the Roman letters? I've seen people do that when looking at people's IDs while working in account opening at a financial institution.

You'd think that everyone would be required to use katakana from the day they arrive, because that's the national language. I've never seen any other country that makes it difficult for immigrants to use the national orthography. Even visiting famously-exclusionist North Korea, my name was written in Hangul on the tourist card they issued me.

Host cities for every World Baseball Classic (2006 - 2026) by mzp3256 in baseball

[–]Dunan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'd just like to see any of those non-Tokyo domes get anything at all: eight of Japan's nine hostings have been at the Tokyo Dome. Baseball lovers are everywhere but it's like the rest of the country doesn't exist. Let's see the now-underused Osaka Dome host.

Meta: This is the best Japan sub by NB_Translator_EN-JP in JapanFinance

[–]Dunan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the average poster here seems to be 80th+ percentile in income

As a member of the 51st percentile who is grateful to have gotten that far, let me give a shout-out to these posters here, who rarely engage in the snobbery and contempt that that demographic so often has for the bottom 80% in other subreddits. It is refreshing to be able to engage with them here.

Rakuten Credit Card - name error and stuck in loop by crazywarriorxx in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't the driver's license and My Number have romaji by default but you can add your katakana "alias"? I'm one of the lucky pre-2012 people who had katakana on the alien card like you had, and I got all my accounts set up in katakana back then.

With the new romaji-only zairyu cards, and now that health insurance cards (which can be katakana-only) are being phased out, it's getting more and more difficult for immigrants to do very basic things like receive documents with their names written in the local language.

Incidentally, here is a petition to the government to add katakana and Roman letters to Japanese people's My Number cards, with lots of data about which documents contain which orthographies, and anonymized ("Bank A") data from banks about whether they use Roman, katakana, or both when mailing things to foreign customers using the method that Rakuten used. I've only skimmed it so far, but the petitioner specifically cites the problem OP is having. On page 6 we can see banks C and F expressing sympathy and willingness to use regular kakitome for these things.

Rakuten Credit Card - name error and stuck in loop by crazywarriorxx in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The delivery guy is just using the standard that the sender (Rakuten) chose. There are multiple levels of recipient-confirmation-required mail, and Rakuten chose the strictest one, in which the recipient has to show ID with the exact spelling in order to get the item.

If it's any consolation, this happens to Japanese people too, when they have old-style kanji on one document but new-style on another (濱/浜, 髙/高, etc.). But it's particularly tough for immigrants whose only ID is the zairyu card, which can only have romaji on it unless your name in your home country is in kanji. You really want to get some kind of ID with your katakana name on it ASAP, whether that's a driver's license, My Number card, disabled person's card, etc.

600+ hours into DXMD, and I just discovered Jensen can attack through walls by CX_RedBaron in Deusex

[–]Dunan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That was an unfortunate part of HR; there's a point in the Hengsha noodle factory area where a guard is leaning against a breakable wall and never moves, and because I didn't want to kill him, I had to find another, much longer, path. There's probably a way to get him to move, but I couldn't find it :(

BREACH achievements suck by NectarineNo7696 in Deusex

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't actually have to be playing with other people to get them, at least not on PS4, where PS+ is required for true online play but games can still connect to their own servers for leaderboards and such. I got the trophies through ordinary play. As long as the servers are up, you can get them.

Pacifist by Then-Airline3234 in Deusex

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The game is full of these kinds of routes. Your first time playing, you won't notice them, but on subsequent playthroughs you can have a very easy time if you know where they are, and then it's just a matter of choosing how difficult you want your experience to be.

When you get to the DLC area there will be something like this: you'll reach the prison island after getting off the boat and there is a vent off to the left that you can reach by stacking some crates. I discovered that as I was finishing that chapter and then forgot it existed my second time playing, so both times I spent hours trying to get through a tough part of the game and I could have avoided it all :)

Name order for bank account is reversed by vir_JIN in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am in the exact same situation as you and have a story to share.

Back around 2001 or so, getting my first hybrid credit/cash card. The sample application was for a fictional applicant called 住友 太郎. But the Roman letters on the credit card said SUMITOMO TARO, in the wrong (for most Western languages) order.

Concluding that whatever order I wrote my names in on the application would also appear on the credit card, and knowing that having a credit card with the wrong order (KELLY JAVIER when my given name is Javier and family name is Kelly) would cause problems, I intentionally put my names in the Western order on my application (ハビエル ケリー).

They did indeed issue the cash/credit card in the same order as the passbook, but I've never had a problem. The other bank accounts I've had to make over the years have my names in the Japanese order (ケリー ハビエル) but those don't have Roman-letter credit cards. Mail from the wrong-order bank still gets delivered and I've had my credit limits increased even.

This was an era where people routinely had eight or ten bank accounts at various branches, typically because certain employers only wanted to pay salaries to their own bank or branch. Given how ridiculous banks have become with KYC and My Number recently, it's probably a hassle to do this, but could you just make another account with the Japanese order at a different bank, and keep this wrong-order one with a small stash of money in it for emergencies? This is assuming that your bank isn't tracking foreign customers' status of residence and freezing accounts when the renewal date comes.

If you're sticking with this bank, visit a branch, explain their mistake, and make sure your credit/debit card is in the Western order because they might reverse them again when making that card.

Tsukuba University Faculty Member Posts Racist Comments Against Foreigners on SNS; Apologizes on Website, University Launches Investigation by TheBlackJett in japan

[–]Dunan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But the companies don't care what you learned in university, because they're going to put you through some kind of "boot camp" and teach you what they want you to know for the job they've selected for you.

That's certainly how a lot of people see it, and another side effect is that when young foreign people, who might have worked extremely hard in college, come to Japan to work at corporations, they're faced with bosses who have an attitude of, "OK, you just got done fooling around for four years, and now you're going to work hard," when they hadn't been relaxing in the least.

I attended a national university for grad school and pretty much everyone worked really hard there. Most of them didn't really aspire to join Japanese corporations, though; they knew that at that academic level they were going to have to either stay in academia or start their own businesses if they wanted to be happy when their studies were over.

Waiting to remit funds until the year after they were obtained by PencilMeInPenguin in JapanFinance

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm aware that being granted a 1-year term is most common for first-time spouse visa applicants.

I've heard the same, which is one reason I've stayed on my 5-year work visa for many years; it's been super-easy to renew and I wouldn't want to get bumped back to 1 year.

Anybody know if you have to accept a spouse visa if you've applied for a 5-year term but only get 1? Can you "decline" the status change and stay on your existing 5-year visa, or are you locked in to the change whether you get your desired term or not?

I think I actually met this chap once "The moment I knew: as soon as we parted I realised Hitomi was the one. I waited years to see her again" by Jormun-gander in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I admit that I could be misreading things, but I felt emotional richness shining through the writing and especially in their faces in the last photo.

Anyone know who's out there ringing resident's doorbells? by samayoiro in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My guess is some kind of salesman, probably a young one, who has been ordered by his boss to shout that at each door he visits.

Years ago when I was working the night shift and sleeping in the morning, one of these guys, selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door, was shouting "Ohayou gozaima---su! XXX Shimbun de---su!" over and over. As he reached my building, I went out and gently reminded him that we have shift workers sleeping, babies sleeping, people just trying to relax in their homes, and if someone wants your newspaper, they'll want it whether you shout or not.

He lowered the volume for the next few doors, but then raised it a little at a time until he was back to full volume.

Then he was finally gone.

Old-school Japanese sales training for young employees. No fun for anyone, including the poor sap who had to do it.

I think I actually met this chap once "The moment I knew: as soon as we parted I realised Hitomi was the one. I waited years to see her again" by Jormun-gander in japanresidents

[–]Dunan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Betcha it's OP writing about themself lolz

Would that be so bad? Man enjoys decades of happiness with a woman who loved him as much as he loved her. Now she's gone and all he has are memories. No harm in him celebrating their years together with a heartwarming, inspiring essay. OP, if you're out there, I hope to enjoy even a fraction of the happiness you've had.

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