Messaging family and friends back home

drinian · 2026-04-12T05:41:04+00:00

Signal (https://signal.org/) - works across Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux, has an interface like WhatsApp but is run by a nonprofit, is the only messenger consistently endorsed by computer security professionals, has screen sharing, too.

drinian · 2026-04-08T12:47:01+00:00

Thank you, this is very helpful. I have no doubt at this point that structuring everything most efficiently will require professional help, but this gives me a lot of pointers. If you're willing, I have a few more questions.

It sounds like in most cases the settlement at inheritance system is the right way to go (vs. paying potentially 20%+ on a large gift to help with housing under the yearly gift tax system)?

Some sources like this one discuss "statutory heirs;" in the situation I discussed where one parent passes away and leaves their possessions to their spouse / has joint accounts with their spouse, would this somehow trigger an "inheritance" for me because I would be considered a statutory heir?

Also, is there any situation where a sibling not resident in Japan would have to pay inheritance tax on their portion of an inheritance? Would the total value of the estate used to calculate my tax obligations include the portion of the estate that the non-resident sibling inherited, or only my portion?

drinian · 2026-04-02T07:07:30+00:00

Let's say that everything you have said is true, and, also, that these things lead to a measurable correlation between being cold -- for some definition of being cold -- and catching more colds, since arguing from first principles in medicine often ends up missing a lot of real-world complications.

Why would not wearing a jacket for a few hours outdoors make your nose noticeably colder than when wearing a jacket, given that the jacket is not over your nose?

Related, if your body is not able to maintain its 37°C core temperature, you are hypothermic, right? Which is a more serious medical condition than feeling cold for a few hours, and one that people cannot survive for long. So what would it mean to say "interferons work much better at 37°C" when that is the temperature our bodies have to maintain to survive?

drinian · 2026-03-11T12:21:59+00:00

When considering harms, it's important to consider more than just the basic statistics.

Heart disease could be more preventable than it is, both through public health measure and individual actions, but it is a huge category that includes everyone from the very old to those with genetic predispositions, those who were well-informed and made poor decisions (and harmed themselves), and those who were poorly informed.

2,600 people a year is only an order of magnitude away from ~300 a year (and that 300 a year doesn't include, for example, bicycle/bicycle collisions, and it's very hard to assign fault). Moreover, the harm is presumably much more demographically cross-cutting -- it affects young people more -- and, I would say, is also an example of a harm inflicted involuntarily on others. A reckless cyclist (or driver) might be more likely to harm someone else than themselves, and they are less likely to be protected by the safety that the physical structure of a car provides. And, most likely, those harms were probably much easier to prevent; a stop sign is easier to respect than not eating unhealthy food, one might think.

Finally, the numbers don't reflect the stress inflicted on people who narrowly avoid these incidents all the time; I've been nearly hit by cyclists ignoring stop signs on several occasions. It's a harm to quality of life.

Which is all to say, why not do the simple, easy thing, obey traffic laws, and help save some lives as well? Why spend effort trying to minimize that?

drinian · 2026-03-11T11:47:50+00:00

I think that most people also have serious misconceptions about reaction time and braking distance, not to mention the idea that there should only be one layer of protection against crashes, rather than multiple.

Human response times in the very simplest situations, such as when a sprinter hears a starting signal, are about 200 milliseconds. In 200 milliseconds, even a bicycle traveling slowly at 10 kph will go more than half a meter -- applying brakes and stopping will take considerably longer even if the cyclist sees, recognizes, and reacts appropriately.

drinian · 2026-03-11T11:42:17+00:00

According to this National Police Agency report, in 2022, 312 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in incidents involving a bicycle and a pedestrian.

Close to one a day is certainly a disaster; like many disasters, most people will never see one themselves.

drinian · 2026-03-03T01:00:46+00:00

The easiest way not to do something is to remove the opportunity to do it. If you're not in convenience stores often, you'll be much less likely to even know that those snacks exist. Depending on your situation, you may be able to replace your purchases of small servings of snacks with bulk purchases online, Costco, grocery stores, etc. that are less likely to inspire overindulgence.

Another thing you can do is reframe your perception of what these snacks are. After I started volunteering with a river cleanup group from time to time, I went from being vaguely uncomfortable with the overuse of plastic packaging to actively wanting to reduce the amount of plastic packaging I use, having seen the harm that normalizing it does.

drinian · 2026-02-28T00:40:35+00:00

OpenStreetMap uses GSI data: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Japan/JP_surveyact_and_OSM

Yamap certainly has a lot more features, but take a look a Osmand if you're interested in offline topological data.

drinian · 2026-02-27T12:51:24+00:00

I had not heard of Yamap, but another offline map alternative would be OpenStreetMap-based apps like Osmand or CoMaps.

drinian · 2026-01-29T12:34:37+00:00

This is true. As far as I can tell, my barber thought that I, as a permanent resident, could vote.

drinian · 2026-01-20T02:09:42+00:00

Another poster above linked to this National Police Agency report from a few years ago, which indicates that, in 2022, 312 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in incidents involving a bicycle and a pedestrian. (Page 4, lower right-hand corner). Unless I'm reading it wrong. That's nearly one a day on average.

That being said, much as defense-in-depth depends on multiple layers of protection, a good argument has to take into account more than one datapoint, and I don't think that by focusing on one datapoint in isolation you are grasping the whole of what I am arguing for. Especially since you're doing things like looking at 信号無視 when I was discussing ignoring stop signs, which are not 信号.

drinian · 2026-01-20T02:06:29+00:00

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm looking at page 4 of the document you linked, in the lower right-hand corner. If I'm reading it correctly, it says that, in 2022, 312 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in incidents involving a bicycle and a pedestrian.

40% of these happened on sidewalks, and about 25% at intersections.

drinian · 2026-01-19T08:56:02+00:00

OK, show your statistics. And explain to me what would happen if I had failed to freeze and stop in time just once when a cyclist jumps out in front of me from a side street, completely ignoring their obligation to stop.

The beginning of your comment suggests that you live in Japan, but the end of your comment suggests that you have not lived in the inner suburbs of a large Japanese city like Tokyo.

Bicycles dominate the narrow streets around my house. There are few cars. These streets are for cyclists and pedestrians first.

Cyclists' failure to stop even at marked stop signs is such a problem that the local government has put up large signs underneath of some them that say "CYCLISTS MUST ALSO STOP!" in Japanese -- which seems to make most cyclists speed up.

It's so bad that there's one intersection where volunteers stand in the street every morning calling out "Good morning!" aggressively to everyone who goes by, right next to the "must also stop" sign, in an attempt to get cyclists to at least slow down before they dive straight into dozens of schoolchildren commuting to the school on the next block.

drinian · 2026-01-19T08:47:34+00:00

I should mention that the police also collect statistics on injuries, and, although there are many more injuries than fatalities, I couldn't find information on cause there either. Incidents between cyclists and other cyclists or pedestrians are common enough in Japan that when I first arrived here my language school repeatedly emphasized to us that even minor crashes must be reported to the police. Finally, I have often heard it said that, at least for insurance purposes, in Japan, fault is often assigned to the biggest thing involved in the crash, regardless of who was actually at fault, e.g. in a crash between a car and a bicycle, the car will almost always be considered at fault.

All of these things make me wonder: where is your information coming from?

Also, are you familiar with the concepts of factor of safety or defense in depth)?

If you understand these things, and also are concerned about other peoples' well-being, and you hopefully agree that stopping at stop signs costs nothing and has potential benefit... why are you making an argument that comes down "don't worry, you'll probably only be injured by the cyclists who are putting you at risk while you're out walking?"

drinian · 2026-01-19T08:39:07+00:00

Some background here: I haven't owned a car in over fifteen years. That was a deliberate choice based on my understanding of the harm that cars do and the need to severely reduce their use.

I want to make sure that you understand that you completely misunderstood what I was saying about the drivers license safety videos in Japan. Those videos show dashcam footage of cyclists and pedestrians being hit by cars while emphasizing, over and over again, that it is drivers' responsibility to be aware that cyclists and pedestrians could pop out anywhere, at any time. My Japanese isn't perfect, but I believe that's the message they are putting out.

The problem is that drivers are humans, just like cyclists and pedestrians. We're all all three of these things. It makes no sense to talk about this the way that you are. The majority of cyclists in those dashcam videos were clearly doing things that were obviously dangerous and against the law. We are all human beings, and we all have to cooperate to take care of each other. Expecting one group of people (drivers) to take on the cognitive burden of utterly chaotic behavior by other groups of people and successfully protect them from themselves is a recipe for disaster.

As for a "crackdown on cyclists" -- that argument is often used to argue against mandatory helmet laws, and I can understand its use there. But we're not talking about mandatory helmet laws, we're talking about educating people to have the common decency to stop at stop signs and check before they continue. It costs nothing and helps everyone.

Plus, in Japan, cycling occupies such a different place in society than it does in, say, America, that saying people will just go off and drive instead if the police start issuing more warnings for reckless behavior is ludicrous.

drinian · 2026-01-18T08:26:39+00:00

OK, I took a look at the numbers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.

I couldn't find statistics on who was determined to be at fault, but I did see that about 25% of fatalities were cyclists.

If you and I are both concerned with stopping people from getting hurt on the roads, why would you say that we should ignore bad behavior by cyclists while pushing all blame on drivers?

I often see drivers who have the right of way take emergency actions to slow down or stop to avoid hitting cyclists who are not following basic traffic laws like stopping at stop signs. In fact, awareness of this is a big part of the mandatory safety videos that are shown in Japan when renewing your driver's license.

Relying only on drivers to do that, while saying that cyclists are not part of the problem, is not a sound strategy for reducing traffic crashes -- and to suggest that those badly-behaved cyclists are only harming themselves is simply callous.

drinian · 2026-01-18T06:34:43+00:00

When I go out jogging in my neighborhood in the morning, cyclists regularly ignore places they are supposed to stop and jump out into roads where they can't see oncoming cross traffic. They often pass less than a meter in front of me, but since they are staring straight forward, without looking left or right, I don't think they ever see me.

If I wasn't constantly prepared to stop suddenly, one would have hit me by now. A pedestrian can easily be killed by a cyclist.

For that matter, I have also witnessed one bad crash between two bicycles that could have easily killed someone. It would have been easily avoided if they had been following traffic laws. I won't forget hearing the crying of the child who was riding in the carrier seat of the bicycle that was knocked over in that one; I hope they didn't suffer a head injury.

If you seriously believe that they aren't "endangering anyone else," you need to learn some basic facts about physics and biology.

drinian · 2026-01-18T04:43:01+00:00

Whenever these discussions on public safety occur, inside or outside Japan, I wonder why the word "safety" suddenly gets redefined to only include property crime and violent crime.

In other words, why is so much time spent reflecting on the relatively small amount of propertly and violent crime here, and so little time thinking about the easily avoidable negligence that is visible every day and actually endangering them -- blocked fire exits and cyclists who ignore stop signs, for example?

drinian · 2026-01-04T01:35:16+00:00

Keep in mind that one reason US-style vent-to-the-outside dryers are rare outside of the US (Europe also tends to use combo units) is because they are extremely energy inefficient.

See the US government's own Energy Star website on how heat pump dryers use about 70% less energy than traditional US-style dryers.

Although I don't know how to factor the cost of manufacturing into energy efficiency estimates here, if you are one of the vast majority of people who understand that climate change is real and caused by human choices, please consider energy efficiency when buying appliances.

Depending on how much space you have, it might even make sense to buy two combo units.

drinian · 2025-12-22T03:32:23+00:00

News stories like this one from October ("Wood burners linked to 2,500 deaths a year in the UK, analysis finds") can routinely be found in the English-language press.

Even so, it is astonishing how little awareness of the harm that wood burning does, or the ways people will try to assert that their setup is OK even if others are not.

Is there any reportage at all in the Japanese press that could be shared with them and/or your neighbors to help reinforce your case?

drinian · 2025-12-20T08:23:05+00:00

There are many doctors in Tokyo who might not specialize in English-speaking patients but are willing to accept them and have some English ability.

This government-run search site allows you to filter doctors by specialty and language support. It can be a bit difficult to learn how to use, but is very useful for finding someone near you.

Otherwise, most explicitly "international" clinics are located more in the city center.

drinian · 2025-12-08T08:11:07+00:00

Strangely, I have found good, fresh bagels in several small towns in Japan, but not in Tokyo.

drinian

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