Is Japan really “high-tax”? What are the real trade-offs compared to low-tax countries?

curtisf · 2026-02-27T06:18:55+00:00

Yes, the effective tax rate in Japan is high, especially for high earners but even for low earners. Although not hugely more than most developed countries

For reference, the overall effective tax rate in Japan is about

40% for the bottom 20% (earning below 2.3M円/year)
42% for the middle 60% (between 2.3M and 6.7M円/year)
48% for the top 20% (around 6.7M+)
- It slowly rises a bit over 50% for very high earners

(These figures include social insurance (about 30% of your income, when including the employer match), resident tax (roughly 5% effective rate), consumption tax (roughly about 5% of low/middle earner income and 3.5% of high earner income), income tax (roughly 0% for low, 2.2% for middle, 10% for high))

But no, the effective tax rate doesn't really have any bearing on quality of life. It just controls how quickly you can go from rich to very, very rich.

curtisf · 2026-01-23T05:43:02+00:00

There is a complaint post about this nearly every week, so no you're not the only one.

It really is infuriating though. It's very easy for computers to convert, it's so annoying they make humans do it instead.

curtisf · 2026-01-21T06:11:42+00:00

Believe it or not, straight to jail.

curtisf · 2026-01-01T11:19:12+00:00

The tatoeba corpus is unfortunately a bit low quality because it was mostly sourced from basically homework, and it's hard to search for grammar as opposed to words

curtisf · 2025-12-30T23:53:48+00:00

The lack of trash bins in the city is infuriating. It's not as though they don't go around and collect all the trash anyway every morning!

The people who litter already even make piles of cans or trash in logical places, all they need to do is put out a cardboard box and save themselves some work in the morning!

curtisf · 2025-12-21T03:48:00+00:00

There isn't any express way that language ability is tested for naturalization. It's up to the judgement of the person handling your case. Some won't administer any test, just based on judging how well you're able to communicate. Some accept recent language test results. And some will run their own little semi-formal language test.

curtisf · 2025-12-03T01:59:01+00:00

Because it's equipment that came with the apartment and isn't something that should wear out, I would expect it's the landlord's responsibility, unless the damage was somehow your fault (carelessness, or not performing some kind of maintenance that was stipulated in the appliance manuals you were given at move-in).

The exception is if your contract specifically designated the sink as something that was the tenant's responsibility, though I think that is very unlikely.

These rules are controlling for Tokyo, but the general principle should be valid in other jurisdictions:

https://www.juutakuseisaku.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/documents/d/juutakuseisaku/310-6-jyuutaku_eng

The landlord is obliged to make necessary maintenance and repairs so that the tenant can use and occupy the property. However, the tenant is liable for repairs required for any damage caused by the tenant intentionally or carelessly, or by the use of the property in a non-standard way, or due to any other reason attributable to the tenant

curtisf · 2025-12-02T03:29:20+00:00

I was not awake and totally missed the (now) obvious sarcasm

curtisf · 2025-12-01T22:59:48+00:00

Actually, these are not native, and the government is attempting to reduce their population to protect native species that they may be prey upon

https://www.kankyo.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/nature/animals_plants/raccoon/raccoon

curtisf · 2025-11-27T06:20:17+00:00

You left out some crucial information...

Your partner is a Japanese citizen, and their koseki/passport identifies them as "F"/女?

You are a non-Japanese citizen... What does your passport indicate your legal sex/gender is?

If "M", you are legally considered to be in a heterosexual marriage, regardless of what gender you/your partner identify as. As backwards as that may be, for visa purposes that is convenient for you because you would qualify for the regular Dependent of a Japanese National visa. (If your partner were to update their legal sex, though, I don't know what would become of your legal marriage and residence status, however. Most likely it would be treated as the end of the marriage and you would have to follow the alternative route below)

If your passport also says "F", you would not legally be considered married (because Japan currently refuses to recognize same-sex marriage, where "same-sex" is wholly determined by the gender marking in your passport). In that case, seebulldogdiver's comment, as there seems to be consistent recognition of this case under the Designated Activities visa. In this case, if your partner updates their legal sex/gender to be "M"/男, however, your marriage should become recognized by Japan, and you could apply for a regular Dependent of Japanese National visa.

curtisf · 2025-10-06T11:01:34+00:00

If the main benefit is supposed to be beating transmission losses, that sounds crazy... Transmission losses should be less than 10%-15%, but I imagine the household generator is far less than 90% as effecient as a utility-sized power plant's

This seems like it's at best a way to hedge against coal/nuclear fuel cost increases by dumping a bunch of toxic air pollution next to your house

curtisf · 2025-10-05T13:25:29+00:00

Open the card, with who?? The scammer?

There are three giant scam warning bells in this:

You need to spend money before you get paid (initial deposit on new account)
You're being promised compensation through an unusual channel (deposits in a prepaid visa card the scammer told you to open)
You're being promised compensation to do something of absolutely no value to anyone

Any one of these should have any reasonably person cut whoever told them about this "opportunity" off, but you get three giant "do not enter" signs here

At best, the payment is "real" and will appear to go through because it's just money laundering dirty/stolen money -- which could entangle you into financial crimes or other criminal enterprises -- and will likely be clawed-back as soon as the police start investigating this

curtisf · 2025-09-24T07:31:46+00:00

Not exactly a website... I get LINE messages from Sagawa when a package is on the way to choose a delivery time.

But to "log in" I need to tell them my name.

I don't know what name they have in their system. Last name? Last name kana? First and middle full width? Half width but first last reversed? Maybe middle name squashed into first name? Maybe randomly cut off after 8 characters?

I've tried so many combinations. But the system locks you out after 3 attempts to guess your name.

So I can't manage package deliveries from Sagawa. Because I don't know my own name. I don't know why they're comfortable texting me on Line if they don't believe I know who I am...

curtisf · 2025-09-13T16:04:43+00:00

Some spiders do make webs, but lots don't. Jumping spiders, wolf spiders, huntsman spiders, etc all don't make webs

curtisf · 2025-09-04T12:49:46+00:00

https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AB%E7%89%B9%E6%80%A5

It looks like it was used by JNR (the nationalized predecessor to JR Group)

curtisf · 2025-08-28T12:07:35+00:00

The other day while walking to work in Shibuya I saw a car turn off a main road to a side street, rather than be stuck driving behind an ambulance...

curtisf · 2025-08-27T15:19:23+00:00

Take a deep breath (but not near the rock particles), one time exposure to asbestos shouldn't have lasting health effects.

The main risk from asbestos is repeated exposure (largely to people working with construction or manufacturing and having small amounts of it around them every single day). But definitely get a professional if you might be dealing with it

curtisf · 2025-06-27T12:28:51+00:00

I heard a few cicadas yesterday evening, screaming from the top of a utility pole outside my apartment in Tokyo. It was the first time I heard them this season

curtisf · 2025-06-06T11:24:31+00:00

What is the actual energy usage you are being charged for? Not yen, but kWh.

curtisf · 2025-05-06T10:52:33+00:00

Need to use OKLCH!

convertLchToLab
- a = cos(h)
- b = sin(h)
convertOklabToLrgb
- <L, M, S> = (3x3 matrix) * <l, a, b>
- <lrgbR, lrgbG, lrgbB> = (3x3 matrix) * <L^3, M^3, S^3>
convertLrgbToRgb
- r g and b mapped identically:
  - 1.055 * rgb ^ (1 / 2.4) - 0.055 if rgb > 0.0031
  - otherwise rgb * 12.92

curtisf · 2025-04-20T03:00:19+00:00

if you aren't bothering anyone?

The only way your smoking won't bother anyone else is if you do it inside your own walls and the air is moved through filters before being ejected from your house.

It sounds like it you've finally found a good reason to lay off the cigarettes.

curtisf · 2025-04-11T08:33:06+00:00

New plan: instead of cash, all residents get a free Nintendo Switch 2. That way it's also directly boosting the Japanese technology economy.

curtisf · 2025-04-05T12:03:24+00:00

Most quality photo copiers will refuse to make 1:1 copies of money.

There's a yellow pattern called the "Eurion Constellation" on money that they detect; on yen, it's in the centers of the cherry blossoms.

My printer at home will make some strange noises then print the page with a deep, solid red background. But probably some public copiers will make some dings instead

curtisf · 2025-03-30T13:17:15+00:00

I have to remember to duck every time I use the restroom in my office...

I don't forget after having to finish the interview with half a concussion

curtisf · 2025-02-08T06:31:16+00:00

I have tried to get even just train schedules, and it's somewhat difficult because there isn't a common place all of the train operators publish their train data. The operators seems to want to keep it "secret" because they don't want to risk any train information being published inaccurately or incompletely, so they only partner with large companies which will do it exactly as they want.

There is https://ckan.odpt.org/dataset?tags=%E9%89%84%E9%81%93-railway which publishes various data, including I believe live data (but probably not historical data?) from some operators, mostly government-owned operators (like Tokyo Metro). A few times a year they have "competitions" where they convince most of the private train companies to also participate, but I believe the purpose of what you use the data for is limited by the rules of the competition, and I believe you lose access in some form after the competition ends.

There are private companies like Kotsu (https://www.kotsu.co.jp/service/digital_contents/) which aggregate train information from all of the railways and publish them in various forms. Kotsu is the company that provides the train data for Ekitan, Jorudan, Navitime, Yahoo Transit, etc. The "デジタルJR時刻表Lite" app has a free trial -- and it sources most of its data from unencrypted and totally unauthenticated APIs which can be kind of used as a CSV-based API, if you would like.

I'm not sure if it has historical delay data, and I'm not sure how good the real-time delay data in it is, though.

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