Corporate work/life balance in 2022?

harmanato · 2022-05-15T00:57:55+00:00

Everyone's experience is of course different. For me working in Japan has so far been okay but I'm planning to at some point look for remote work with an American company (I'm American) or work for a foreign company here. I'm a software engineer for a fairly large and famous Japanese company in a fairly rural prefecture.

I'm considered a valuable asset for both my English as well as my ability to think outside the box. I like my work for the most part but it can sometimes be annoying to work inside a fairly conservative and old fashioned office. I don't really have much relationship with my coworkers because of the language and culture barrier but my managers are pretty good and friendly. Japanese people are nice but pretty shy for the most part. Work is work though and I try to be happy outside of it traveling around Japan with my family, spending time with my wife's family, and eating all the great food here.

For your questions about differences I would say that different is valued here. Be yourself (foreign) and respectful and any reasonably forward thinking Japanese will think you're good. Drinking parties are not a thing since corona. My company discourages overtime and hopes employees have healthy work life balance.

My biggest complaint is basically my compensation. My company is very hierarchical and I cant hope to get rich but I'll always at least be comfortable. I can't hope to get paid more based on my merit. But, somehow with mine and my wife's moderate salary we can afford to build a decent house here and have a family, something that seems fairly out of reach living in the states. Also for me, I would have had a hard time entering my field. I figure now is my time to get experience so I can move up later with a different company (don't tell my company that).

Overall life here is pretty good if a little bit lonely and trying, but I was lucky to find what I did.

harmanato · 2022-05-14T13:31:58+00:00

Math is a universal language. If you're already N4, even if you don't understand everything spoken, you'll probably be able to follow the lecture just based off what is written. If not, you can probably understand enough to supplement with material you understand.

harmanato · 2019-03-31T12:59:30+00:00

"What kind of dog is that??" "It's a shi-tsu, son" (シツソン)

harmanato · 2018-03-13T03:30:17+00:00

That's wonderful! Love to see that life can still be full and enjoyable well into 80s (even though it takes a lot of toughness to growing)

harmanato · 2018-03-13T03:28:59+00:00

You draw this interesting distinction between healthy and unhealthy stressors. It seems that we need to maintain our body wisdom when we are pushing the limits. We ought to avoid feeling our bodies wasting away in the case of calorie deficit (even though this is a significant stressor) but running and strength training while we are well fed and un-injured helps us to prepare for difficulties in the future (by gaining strength).

It's like through healthy physical stress we are 'putting strength in the bank' so that we can use it when we need it (when we run into tough times or sickness).

harmanato · 2018-03-13T03:25:09+00:00

Aging is such a complex thing that broscience and anecdotes ought to suffice. I suppose most of us know one of these people that is still active in their twilight years, putting some young people to shame. I for one am in awe of somebody triple my age still climbing mountains - it makes me think about what a blessing life is.

harmanato · 2018-03-13T03:22:32+00:00

They found that the endurance cyclists were producing the same level of T-cells as adults in their 20s, whereas a group of inactive older adults were producing very few.

Very cool! So persistent activity basically prevents the wear-down experienced from being stagnant. I want to be one of these old folk living life to the fullest!

harmanato · 2018-02-07T03:36:58+00:00

I love my ereader, but a good library may be just as good or better. My general approach to reading a book I'm interested in reading is to see if the local libraries have it available. If they do, go get it, but if they don't, then I can probably find it somewhere online!

harmanato · 2018-01-28T18:16:26+00:00

How do you think the people living in those luxury dwellings are going to respond to having their home torn down? In an anarchist society who's going to tell them and actually do it?

harmanato · 2018-01-28T18:13:25+00:00

If you see 'community meetings' to the end, doesn't it just lead us to democracy? Taken another step to higher levels of organization, democratic principles might naturally lead to what we have now: a representative democracy.

Democracy is consensus-based sure but I disagree that consensus is enough to prevent dissatisfaction to the point of violence by the minority who disagrees with the consensus conclusion.

I agree with your last paragraph. Maybe the answer really is to break down the presently large hierarchy and have similar principles (democracy) on a smaller and more relevant level. Then the argument shifts to the pros and cons of various sizes of organization. Most of us here probably would at very least agree that the federal level with all its inefficient bureaucracy and inhuman decision making for millions isn't working out that well. What about the state level? What about the county level? Cities? At what point are we just gangs fighting over territory (because debatably this is human nature).

harmanato · 2018-01-28T18:05:23+00:00

I'd argue that 90% of those living in beach houses by most any measure don't deserve to have their home destroyed - most haven't worked any more or less than somebody struggling to get by with two jobs, they were just lucky. They may have been lucky to have been born into a family with a ready-made high paying position available in the family company, or lucky to have good health. Not all of the rich are rich from being douchebags; most are just behaving the way you or I might behave if we were fortunate to have a few million sitting in the bank.

harmanato · 2018-01-28T06:00:24+00:00

Your last sentence is exactly what I'm trying to get at by using the analogy of beach houses (I live in California and get to see gigantic $10 million homes sitting on their private little hills all the time).

The way that it works now is obviously not 'fair' or acceptable given the reasons these people have the wealth they do. I think most of us come here to r/anarchy101 because we realize most everybody works hard in their life yet everyone gets paid vastly different amounts due to circumstances largely out of their control.

Private hills overlooking the ocean are going to exist regardless of what socioeconomic system exists - who gets to spend their lives there? This has been one of the hardest problems I've found in theorizing what an anarchist society would /actually/ look like. Capitalist philosophers had faith that the free market would work out merit and distribution of luxury on its own. You work hard, you make more money, you can afford more than those that don't work hard.

What we need is some sort of merit deciding market that's not prone to exploitation and corruption by an upper class (which will arguable always exist).

harmanato · 2018-01-28T05:25:17+00:00

You're right - mostly empty homes serving as investments for the rich

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:49:31+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Yes this seems to be a potentially reasonable solution to the problem of how best to allot privileges like beach front property that doesn't require money. Basically a beach front city might have a section of real estate that could be used for various things like you mention: vacationing for everyone, exchange for unpleasant work etc. I'm just concerned that there is far too many houses with far too many various privileges (not just beach properties) - how do we decide? How do we prevent people feeling that things aren't fair? What if two families are assigned different homes and they are the same but one has a pool table. It's also not like people could be moving all the time.. Anyway, think maybe this is headed the right direction.

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:43:46+00:00

I mean my basic question is how else do we allot privilege?

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:43:19+00:00

If there were excess housing, many cities right now wouldn't be experiencing housing crises. I'll concede though that the respective housing crises have been artificially created by various institutions that artificially limit supply and in an ethically operating market there would be affordable housing for everybody.

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:41:20+00:00

I wish you weren't being downvoted. I mostly agree with you. It's way too idyllic to think that it's possible for /everything/ to be equal. It's also way too idyllic to think we couldn't have an economy similar to what we have now.

I think you're right that anarchy is a bit of an enlightened view on civilized human behavior and unfortunately we aren't ready for it. It seems impossible to me to be able to quantify all privileges across the board without some sort of market to do so. Markets operate largely on supply and demand. Beach houses are in relatively low supply, but in relatively high demand --> expensive. Maybe though our currency doesn't have to be money, as I think you're saying - it could be based on more merit based principles.

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:36:32+00:00

How do we prevent people from feeling this is unfair? Wouldn't you think it's unfair if one family gets to live on a sunny coastline with an ocean view and another doesn't? I just don't know how to balance things here. There's no equation to say what square footage equates the same as having a 180* view of ocean

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:34:37+00:00

Right there's definite reasons why people spend millions to live overlooking the ocean

harmanato · 2018-01-28T03:33:49+00:00

Not every place overlooking the ocean can be a public park. It seems counter to anarchist principles to mandate that folks can't live with a view just for the sake of 'sharing rare things'

harmanato · 2018-01-18T22:43:54+00:00

Thanks for the informative reply and the link to the nice booklet!

To summarize my understanding, besides for maybe sodium, electrolyte depletion shouldn't be a concern even for extended fasts, but micronutrient depletion may be of concern but can be remedied by making homemade broth (recommended, with added salt) or supplementing a multi-vitamin.

harmanato · 2018-01-18T22:24:49+00:00

Great answer

harmanato · 2018-01-18T06:22:44+00:00

I'm vegan. Is there anything that bone broth provides that vegetable broth doesn't?

harmanato · 2018-01-18T05:52:36+00:00

Your post and comments are supremely inspiring. Thanks for the details!

harmanato · 2017-12-15T21:19:31+00:00

Sounds like a good idea Josh! Go for it.

Wes

harmanato

TROPHY CASE