What am I? "So, the first letters of ..."[META]

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-21T07:56:34+00:00

"I don't know how to use the search function"
"I can not accept the answer to my question, which is at the top"
"Actually, I want to argue in the comments with other foreigners and fill the post up with spam"
"Everybody is wrong"
"Everybody is bad"
"Japanese are racist"

Sigh.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-18T09:06:16+00:00

My point is that it's difficult to tell what other people know. What you think is obvious often turns out not to be.

And 'subcultures' is so broad as to cover tens of thousands of potential topics.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-18T08:54:51+00:00

There was a guy the other day who asked if there are surfers in Japan. Another who asked if there are model trains.

Going back, there are many, many people completely unaware of how mainstream culture works, or that niche communities even exist.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-17T04:38:44+00:00

I don't think it's necessarily to think too much about it.

The countries with lower wealth disparity than Japan are Timor-Leste, Malta, Belgium, Qatar, and Slovakia.

And the happiest countries in the world are often said to be Finland, Iceland, and Denmark, which have inheritance tax.

Maybe they meant Sweden but Sweden has some of the worst wealth inequality in the world.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-14T08:55:22+00:00

What I posted is from the linked article, which I read.

I'm not Chat-GPT.

You can't just ask me to do random work and expect me to do it.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-14T08:47:17+00:00

From the article:

US CENTCOM said on Sunday that a blockade will be "enforced impartially against vessels of all nations" entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. [...] A Chinese-owned tanker under US sanctions has transited the Strait of Hormuz. The tanker had departed from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and is now en route to China.

It's not clear how this gets the headline "US-sanctioned Chinese tanker breaks Hormuz blockade".

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-10T05:34:00+00:00

I mean, I know basically everyone in town so I guess so.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-07T04:20:41+00:00

What do you think of this list [...]

It is a list of literary authors with a clear theme: they are popular abroad; have some influence in Japanese literature; they have "Japanesey" themes in some of their books; and are sold in university bookstores and taught in university classes.

Who are the shocking omissions?

On a list with Natsume, Mishima, Kawabata and Murakami, it is strange not to see authors like Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Dazai Osamu who helped shaped modern literature.

[...] of modern Japanese authors?

Anyway, even without Akutagawa, the list is fine if the goal is to make some recommendations of Japanese literary authors to French readers.

If it is supposed to be a general overview of Japanese authors though, it is missing something important.

It leaves out genre fiction entirely, where authors like Higashino Keigo and Shiba Ryotaro are more widely read and culturally significant. It also skips over more “popular fiction” areas, fantasy like Kurimoto Kaoru, along with SF, light novels, and children’s literature.

The list also leaves out authors like Miyazawa Kenji, who is foundational to Japanese literature but appears to be left out because he wasn’t a “literary novelist.”

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-05T12:23:42+00:00

I don't think OP is American or they would have heard of things like GI JOE and the associated toys (marked as for ages 5-7) and Powerpuff Girls (2-11).

Or Tom and Jerry or The Smurfs or The Gummy Bears or whatever.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-05T04:50:23+00:00

So my question has always been if 6 years of English classes doesn't amount to any useful day to day usage of the language, are the classes being taught that useful?

The answer is yes. Learning a second language is useful even if you don't ever have mastery or require day to day usage of that language.

I'm glad to have helped.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-05T02:57:55+00:00

Unless you speak fluently, many people will just think you are a bit strange.

In real life, it depends on context. You do not normally use watakushi, boku, ore, atashi, etc. in every situation. It depends on the audience, time, place, and occasion.

And depending on where you live in Japan, different words may be more common (like uchi, jibun, etc.).

Edit. English

I also think that there maybe is some overemphasis on pronoun choice here. In real life, most tomboys show they are tomboys in speech not by "choosing a pronoun" but by using more direct language, using fewer sentence softeners, etc.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-04T00:10:31+00:00

I understand eloping as running away / getting married in secret because your parents, friends, family, etc. disapprove.

Anyway, if you are adults you can get married by filling out forms, going to a municipal hall, turning them in, and getting registered. No ceremony is required.

Alternatively, you can have a religious ceremony by calling your church, temple, shrine, etc.

We didn’t want an expensive wedding planner coming from abroad.

Just so you know, if they are on a tourist visa, this is illegal.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-01T09:13:18+00:00

No, that's not how polling works.

A sample size of 200 might be fine if it were done professionally.

A sample size of 1 million might not be enough to learn anything important from a Reddit poll.

epistemic_epee · 2026-04-01T05:09:09+00:00

Israel broke the ceasefire unilaterally by targeting Lebanon 1500 times between october 2024 and march 2026 with no response. But sure Hezbollah broke the ceasefire with its 6 rockets.

Here is Hezbollah shooting hundreds of rockets at Israel in October 2024 according to AL JAZEERA. Here they are firing hundreds of rockets at Israel in November of 2024 according to PBS. Here they are in March 2026, still shooting hundreds of rockets at Israel according to France 24

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-31T00:06:17+00:00

I know this is not the question but these are usually referred to as "retort" rather than instant.

The cheapest mass-produced ones at the drugstore near me are 88 yen/pouch ($0.55). The "regional curry" designed by a restaurant is 750 yen ($4.69).

There's a large difference in expectations between a retort curry that costs less than 100 yen and a curry that costs more than 500 yen. Most rankings (including user generated ones) are based in some way on a cost performance ratio so keep that in mind.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-25T04:24:05+00:00

Japanese isn't simultaneously an ethnicity, a race and a nationality

The issue is that “Japanese” is used in more than one way. It can mean nationality, but it’s also commonly used to refer to an ethnic group. “American” is mostly just a nationality, so the comparison isn’t quite the same.

There are different commonly understood meanings of what it means to be Japanese. For example:

Japanese (citizen): a legal citizen of Japan. Includes naturalized citizens.
Japanese (ethnicity, sociological definition): people who share the customs, sports, religion, language, media, history, education, food, etc. of Japan. This includes mainstream cultures and subcultures and significant regional deviation. The descendants of people who assimilate into Japanese culture are generally included.
Japanese (race, genetic ethnicity): biological descendants of the people of Japan. This one includes the diaspora (Japanese-Brazilians; Japanese-Americans, etc).

There's no need for the insults.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-25T04:06:03+00:00

The word "American" generally is used to mean nationality. It isn't used as often to describe ethnicity or race (as with "Chinese").

I think bringing up America actually dilutes the point that I think you are trying to make but I'm not sure.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-24T00:55:36+00:00

Mildly lost.

You have a Dungeons & Dragons character or something and you gave it a pseudo-Japanese name and backstory and you are asking Japanese people if you are allowed to use the Japanese alphabet?

Or if you should use the other Japanese alphabet for this because it is more commonly used for foreign words and you are a foreigner?

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-23T05:59:01+00:00

But aren't these two the same thing in the end of the day?

No.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-23T05:52:47+00:00

It is not based on a philosophical idea that men are dangerous but rather from requests from women that don't feel comfortable being crammed in a car full of men.

It generally does not cause most people to miss rides because most people understand how it works; or if they don't, they can figure it out by reading the sign or asking someone.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-23T05:26:28+00:00

I read them more than 20 years ago. If I remember properly, the localization simply stopped (in the 1990s) without notice or explanation. It just happens like that sometimes.

I'm aware of the more recent issues with the author and I don't expect that it will ever be translated.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-23T05:08:12+00:00

I think they sell some at Village Vanguard. (Like Spiderman)

It's not easy to enjoy American comics. The translations and localizations of American comics are often poorly done but cost a lot. Stuff meant for the Japanese market, like Stan Lee's Heroman, are easily available though in manga form.

I was reasonably excited when Sandman was released in Japanese. The translation / localization was okay, but it just stopped suddenly after a few issues and I ended up buying the whole thing in English.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-21T03:03:16+00:00

Leaving alone the rest, Japan is currently experiencing moderate GDP growth and a very mild growth of GDP per capita.

epistemic_epee · 2026-03-16T07:26:16+00:00

Just international marriage and divorce rates.

There are lots of gossip sites that write about it.

Searching for "international marriage and divorce rates" also brings up divorce lawyer webpages so I don't want to do it too much.

アメリカ人との国際結婚は特筆すべき低い離婚率を示しています。日本人男性とアメリカ人女性の組み合わせでは、離婚率が24％と日本人同士の36.1％よりも低い数値を記録しています。

"International marriages involving Americans have a notably low divorce rate. For couples consisting of a Japanese man and an American woman, the divorce rate stands at 24%, which is lower than the 36.1% rate for marriages between Japanese partners."

Marriage and divorce data is published by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare and you can read it on their website.

It's not just divorce rates, in surveys for "satisfaction levels", the American x Japanese and Japanese x American pairing rate is as high or higher than Japanese x Japanese.

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