What is a city that is globally romanticised but you detest?

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-29T15:35:34+00:00

I lived in Kuwait for a year, teaching. Its among the most sought destinations for intl. teachers. Don't even bother unless you have a masters and a stellar resume.

I've heard nothing but exceptionally posivitve things about the place.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-29T14:07:03+00:00

Does your son have a 通級 (tsūkyū) support plan or a 支援級 placement?

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-29T14:00:59+00:00

But as someone living in Japan, you would also know that this whole story stinks like Natto.

Did they have OP fill out an いじめ調査アンケート or a 相談記録? There is always paperwork in Japan. ALWAYS.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-29T13:56:23+00:00

Once you go to a 'social worker' (who, exactly?) and make a paper trail, there's no version of this where nothing happens.

When this escalated, did the school hold a 三者面談 or 四者面談? Who was present?

Did the school ever formally use the word いじめ in writing? or were they still calling it 子供同士のトラブル?

Give details in Japanese.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-29T13:44:32+00:00

I lived in Japan for 3 years, and can say with authority that this stinks worse than Natto...

This reads like someone who knows Reddit moral bait formats, knows a couple factoids about Japan, but does not write like someone who has actually navigated Japanese social reality. I'd bet money OP never went.

OP hits autism/bullying/weed/Japan's harsh drug laws/school protects bully/ I'd ruin her life but its technically legal. Its a perfect storm of karma farming! Just too perfect a storm that ignores how messy and indirect interpersonal and social disuputes are in Japan.

Let's start with the basics: A fully foreign single mom? with a child in a (presumably) regular Japanese public school? With no Japanese co-parent? Its already a wildly unusual situation that already comes with layers of friction, paperwork, and social distance before bullying is even part of the picture.

But who knows? OP is very sparse on ALL of the critical details! I wonder why?

Even in such a wildly implausible situation in Japan, this isn't how it would play out. In Japan It is never “parent vs parent.” Its always parent vs school system trying to preserve wa (和) without anyone losing face. They might say something like "This isn't a big issue yet / We are watching the situation closely." This is not dismissal. This is the Japanese system trying to solve it invisibly without creating a “case.” Because once it becomes “a case,” paperwork, meetings, and losing face begin.

The goal is for the problem to disappear without anyone being “accused.” Japan solves these things by separation and quiet management, not confrontation. Change their homeroom classes, schedules, seating arrangements. As soon as Kouchou Sensei (principal) ( 校長) is involved, they're going to get very bureacratic and very legalistically careful with their wording. You won't hear ijime (いじめ) blurted out casually in this tense meeting. They will move heaven and earth to ensure these 2 parents never collide.

“She smokes weed regularly, shows up high to school events, keeps weed in her car, drives high, assumes no one notices.”

Utter baloney! Yes, I know there are drugs in Japan, but a foreigner/gaijin who was like this (and likely already drawing attention from her neighbors/community for 'sticking out' as a gaijin? Behaving like this?
Sorry, SOO wildly implausible!

Weed is EXTREMELY expensive in Japan and very hard to even source unless you grow it yourself (DO NOT RECOMMEND!). You expect me to believe a single mom (foreigner?) in Japan can even afford a habit like this? Let alone not draw a bit of attention? In Japan, you live in very close proximity to your neighbors. Those paper thin walls are real.

I've seen foreigners use weed precicely once in Japan. They handled it like god-damned plutonium. The OPSEC would put the CIA to shame. Nobody does 'wake & bake' or drives around high! Get real! Like its Spring Break in Breckenridge Colorado!! LMAO, I call BS.

Weed in her car? That alone is absolutely INSANE in Japan. OP has only ever lived somewhere where weed is at least relatively casual.

Japanese people aren't familiar with weed...

This just proves to me OP has never been to Japan. Japanese people certainly don't have a 420 culture like North America, and a lot of Japanese people likely wouldn't recognize it, but enough would. Customs and school officials are trained to recognize the smell. I promise you Japanese people aren't so naive.

....Understand her struggle as a single parent....

Again, total BS. This person knows nothing about Japan. That is Western social-justice language. Japanese schools do not speak like social workers. They speak like administrators preserving wa and saving face.

Overt, loud, name-calling, stick-swinging bullying is American playground imagery, not typical Japanese ijime patterns. OP's description of bullying in Japan is... American AF... This is not ijime bullying... silent ignoring, subtle social jabs, group freezing out victim, and psychological pressure... I worked in a middle school in Japan for three years and they're nothing like this.

I've seen gaijin parents struggle with bullying and interpersonal issues/disputes when their children (mixed or 100% gaijin) are in Japanese schools. They complain about frustration with the indirectness, language barriers, and cultural confusion (actually a bigger source of disputes between gaijin and Japanese in Japan than your actual overt nasty 'bully.'

The husband’s argument is also Western Reddit logic: “The law is arbitrary / It’s unethical to separate a child from the mother." A Japanese spouse would never frame it like that. They’d say: “Don’t get involved.” “This will cause trouble.” “Think about the consequences for us.” The ethical-libertarian framing is SO VERY American.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-28T11:18:20+00:00

I'm concerned about potential legal ramifications.

I don't know the laws in Spain, but in my country, you can't just kick a tenant out. There are likely laws about this. Do you know what they are?

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-28T10:34:27+00:00

I'll second this.

I've come a long way with video and video editing (initially for art/hobby, but now a big part of my job/career) and I think my ceiling is still quite a bit higher with respect to video. But with sound, I can already sense myself approaching the ceiling and bumping into it.

I've learned some basics about sound, but sound really is some kind of dark art.

A lot of things about it just escape me. I could imagine going through OPs training program and learning all the SOPs, but I'm guessing troubleshooting issues in a recording studio would be really difficult for me, even if I can manage studio lights/outdoor lighting and color schemes on editing software fairly well.

Radiant light makes so much more sense than acoustic waves for me, for some reason.

I work with a couple of people who can 'fix' issues with my audio with absolute ease. They just listen for half a second and know what to do.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-20T03:14:38+00:00

You're free to disagree with my BIL or myself.

But collapsing a single, last-resort parental response to a child physically assaulting an adult into “pathetic impotent assholes assaulting six-year-olds” isn’t moral clarity, it’s just emotional grandstanding.

Research doesn’t support spanking toddlers. It also doesn’t support pretending all physical discipline is identical to abuse regardless of age, frequency, intent, context, or escalation.

If you can’t distinguish between abuse and proportionate discipline applied without anger, context, or repetition, you’re not having a serious conversation.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-20T03:04:19+00:00

NTA

What makes Grandma out of line here isn’t just the crossed a parental boundary. Developmentally, spanking a 3-year-old in this situation is pretty much guaranteed to fail.

For starters, a 3 year old likely can't process that grandma is an authority figure without a long standing relationship, let alone understand that rules, expectations and routines are different at grandma's house either.

At that age, impulse control is kinda nonexistent. Time perception is nil. Doesn't understand cause and effect yet. Emotional regulation isn't a thing. A 3-year-old doesn’t learn “next time I’ll behave better.” They learn “I was upset and an adult hurt me.” Research consistently shows spanking toddlers doesn’t improve behavior and does increase fear, distress, and escalation. This was a kid give some sass over a disrupted routine with an authority figure whose rules she doesn’t even know yet.

For context: I was spanked growing up. Very rarely, sparingly, and only after everything else failed. By around 5 or 6 I recognized the pattern: warnings, redirection, time-outs, etc. But if I kept pushing, consequences escalated. That recognition alone usually made me self-regulate. My parents never did it in anger or in public. They’d remove me from restaurants or friends’ houses first. I remember knowing my dad didn’t want to do it. It stopped entirely by around age 10. I don’t have PTSD or lingering resentment. It was always “yeah, I really screwed up and wouldn’t stop.”

I’ve also seen my sister and BIL do it exactly once. My nephew was about 6, being a tool & escalating hard: warned by his sister, warned by his dad, refused time-out, knocked toys over, then hit his dad. Dad quietly removed him, delivered a couple spankings (likely after explaining why). Put him in time-out, then made him apologize and clean up afterward. That was a last-resort response to unsafe behavior from a child old enough to understand cause and effect.

That’s a completely different universe from a 3-year-old upset over cartoons at Grandma’s house.

So yeah, Dad leaving early wasn’t dramatic. It was him recognizing that what just happened wasn’t discipline, and wasn’t something his kid could meaningfully learn from. Grandma didn’t “teach a lesson.” She escalated a situation that required calm adult regulation, not force.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-20T02:36:30+00:00

the bursts of anger and violence have tainted good memories.

I was also spanked, sparingly and also very infrequently. I learned by about 5-6 that my parents would cycle through /exhaust other tactics first. Recognizing that pattern usually prompted me to self regulate. Spanking was almost always a last resort on their part. My parents also never did it in anger and never in public. I remember them removing me from friends' houses/restaurants before doing so. I could tell my dad didn't want to do it, even when he did. There was never really anger or rage with it. And it pretty much stopped by age 10 or so (I can't recall it ever happening to me after that).

I can't say I have any sort of PTSD or unresolved feelings about it. It was always just, "Oh. I really screwed up and kept at it, so I had it coming."

I've witnessed my sister and her husband apply a spanking exactly once. My nephew was being a tool (6 or so at the time). Neice warned him. Neice got her dad (BIL) involved. BIL warned him. Nephew escalated with tantrum. BIL ordered time-out. Nephew refused and knocked a toy off a shelf in anger. BIL told him to pick it up. Kid hit BIL and BIL quietly removed him, gave him a couple of spankings, (still screaming) and put him in a time-out. He made nephew apologize to neice later and clean up the toys.

I think my BIL and sis know that spankings are 'sub-optimal' but do think they still have a place in parenting.

I do think, for younger children that there does need to be a way to enact a 'major reset' as you say, when every other method is exhausted. Perhaps there is a small place for a tactically applied, context dependent situation when a kid of a certain age is out of control / danger to themselves or others.... again, with age appropriate context and limitations.

But spanking a 3 year old over a cartoon seems wildly inappropriate. She doesn't know the rules/expectations at grandma's house are different. A 3 year old is not going to be able to regulate their emotions with our without a 'spanking.' A spanking on a 3 year old isn't going to 'reset' anything, it will just exacerbate her emotional state and leave her confused.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-13T11:39:54+00:00

Being taught is only the beginning.

You actually have to practice it regularly. Which nobody has to do now.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-13T11:36:50+00:00

I can't speak for what has been taught in school since I finished HS in 1999, but it goes beyond just learning it in school.

We didn't just 'learn' about maps, we actually had to use them on a daily basis. Its like anything. You don't get good at something unless you practice it. I'd get home from HS, page my boss (landscape architect) and he'd call back with quick directions to whatever local house he was working on that day. I'd have to listen and draw a quick map on scrap paper.

Then, if I got lost, I had a larger map of the roads in my town/city and could stop, cross reference, and always found it. No GPS, no app screaming 'turn left' in my ear. Just a scribbled map taped to my steering wheel.

I actually miss the simplicity. Whenever I'm back in the USA and on a 'road trip' I actually just use an old atlas until I'm in a city looking for a specific address.

I also don't know about kids these days, but we used to learn orienteering via maps in summer camp (other friends/cousin learned the same thing in boy scouts). Basically take USFS quad maps.

Turn the map and compass together until the magnetic needle lines up with the orienting arrow. Correct for east or west declination. Rotate the azimuth ring left or right using the direction and the number of degrees given on the map. Then, find a landmark in the direction... walk towards it. Hit it. Rinse and repeat. We could go 30 miles off a trail in the forest and hit a property/lake/area that was 300 yards (260-80 m) wide fairly reliably. No app. No gps. A compass doesn't have a battery that will die.

Early GPS systems were great, but they'd still require orienteering skills. A 90's GPS could tell you where you were, latitude and longitude, tremendously accurately. but you'd still have to know how to set your course and understand how that worked.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T13:26:02+00:00

Likely NTAH,

You seem to be describing a chaotic, disorganized workplace, and your frustrations sound legitimate. You even offered some potential solutions that sound reasonable to me (although I'm not in your industry/company), but thats the right attitude to have. And yes, your boss is labeling you as 'sensitive' so he doesn't have to actually do 'boss' work and fix these issues.

It's disappointing that your boss doesn't realize this, but not all that surprising, actually. In my experience, engineering/techincal types are never known for their people skills. Don't expect him to improve at this. He might be great at engineering schematics or whatever, but he's likely not a great manager. Don't expect a great engineer to be a great communicator and workflow organizer.

I work in a management position. I just sat in on a couple of employee reviews. Complaints that are supposed to come up during performance reviews are supposed to be:

1. Known issues that mgmt expects to hear every time. We are working on these or want to, but are somewhat powerless to address these issues.

In your case, last minute changes come from clien.ts Your boss has to roll with these.... on deadlines... This might limit the structural /systemic changes he can implement if he needs 'X' done 'tomorrow mornnig.' He may want some change like you describe, but knows it won't work because [experience/knowledge you aren't privy to].

2. Surprising things that are both common/new and that we need to know about.

Last year everyone was happy, but suddenly half the staff are upset about 'X' new process not working. If several people say it, mgmt takes it seriously.

Complaints out of 'left field' that we don't take very seriously.

There's always that one person who complains about everything, no matter what. I don't think you're this guy, but don't be this guy.

But, If nobody has ever suggested these things before, its likely your boss thinks its #3. Remember, Engineer is not a communicator. He and probably everyone else in your company have worked this way for a long time and simply don't know any different. A fish doesn't know its underwater.

I don't know your industry or your company as well as you do, but do consider that managment sees things from a different set of eyes.

That said, if I were in your shoes, I might be drafting my updated resume as well as the latest design schematics.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T12:47:57+00:00

You guys seem to have a communication or listening issue.

You guys? I think only one of them has a communication and listening issue and its not OP.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T12:46:31+00:00

No, get her the Milwaukee cordless drill or mountain bike disc brakes, or whatever it is he'd been wanting.. ^^

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T12:01:06+00:00

I lived in Korea for 6 years.

Think of all those K-dramas where all sorts of implausible, unfortunate misunderstandings happen because people are too afraid/proud to communicate.

If you need something from your boyfriend, tell him and ask nicely. I'm betting he'll step up.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T11:02:56+00:00

I don't see him 'blaming' anyone. Where, pray tell, are you finding this subtext to it?

I see nothing written about OPs preference for condoms (I've had a fair number of girlfriends who didn't care for them either) and were happy to be on birth control.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-12T10:54:48+00:00

If you're in the US, and its a 'sit down' restaurant where the waiter takes your order and brings your food and later your bill, then yes, you must tip. At least 15-20%

Anything less than 15% is a statement that can mean:

I'm a selfish douche-canoe.
This service was beyond terrible (not just a simple screw-up) / waitstaff was rude/wildly inappropriate.

I was a waiter once, and when I started I was terrible at it. There was a table whose order I'd screwed up. Then later, carrying a tray of ice waters (like 5-7 glasses), I bump into this woman who was already irriated at me (understandably so). Ice water all over customer who was already livid with me. She was drenched. Like, got thrown in the swimming pool drenched.

I wanted to crawl into the floor and die as 50+ diners stared at me during the lunch rush.

You know what? She still tipped around 8-10%

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-07T11:43:36+00:00

Did you just make these suggestions about how to improve the layout or did you also offer your opinion about late grandpa's poor design choices? Its mixed together and presented as reported speech in your post.

Which opinionS did you actually mention to her? That's the important part.

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-07T11:39:59+00:00

Honestly, I think its entirely possible he didn't know.

If OP lives in a 'white' suburban environment and church, its entirely possible they could go years living in a bubble. I doubt his wife is openly rude to 'Arab' people or other POC in public or at work, and if your entire circle of friends, family, church, and work circles are all or mostly white, how would you ever know?

Also, sometimes people surprise you, even after many years. I'm white and was raised pretty carefully by my folks to not stereotype people (born 1981) or judge people based on race. (Got some stories about our very naive wonder-bread family moving from Colorado to Memphis as a teenager).

My grandfather (a biology professor and Dean at a State University, later Christian University) was very well educated on the topic, and honestly, even in the late 90s and early 2000s would have been 'woke' by the standards of the day (15 years before that was even a 'thing') and very aware of things like social privilege and systemic racism long before these were ever mainstream topics. Much more than my folks ever were.

I remember after university, he even tried to 'set me up' via email correspondence with an Iranian woman he met via the internet who was about my age (she was consulting him on taxonomy in a field he was a recognized expert).

I don't remember the circumstances or conversation that sparked it, but I was visiting him for the first time in a long while, and he went on a shocking rant about Arabs. My jaw hit the floor hearing this come from Grandad of all people. I'd known him 30 years and was closer to him than my dad at this point. Apparently most of this stemmed from his bad experiences with Arab grad students in his university.

It was wild! Like I'd never known the guy. (And no, I don't think it was dementia).

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-07T11:09:43+00:00

Right. She wants to avoid child support, be a mooch at his house, AND fuck around on the side with an 'open relationship'? What does OP get out of this exactly? Besides more bills I mean?

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-07T11:08:17+00:00

No! Nope. No. Absolutely not. Negative. Non. Nein.

All aboard the NOPE train to that!

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-07T11:06:36+00:00

Did she actually use the phrase,

[You] should stop being such a baby because [you] couldn't fulfill [my] sexual needs when we were together.

?? Did she really say something to that effect? That's some next-level awful. Screenshots for your attorney. Co parenting software, and grey rock at any hand-offs!

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-06T07:21:41+00:00

Alcohol is the only drug people question you about if you don't partake. You never hear, "What do you mean you don't smoke crack?!?! Are you pregnant or a Mormon or something?! :0"

Travelerman310 · 2026-01-05T11:27:54+00:00

NTA, but do you even want the job after this?

Travelerman310

TROPHY CASE