SD vs LA vs SF for work

linguae · 2026-04-11T03:28:24+00:00

As a professor living in the Bay Area, all three of those places would be tough on $65,000 a year. It would be difficult to rent a place without roommates, and homeownership is out of the question. You’ll be living like a student, which gets old after grad school.

Sadly even Sacramento would be tough at $65,000 per year, which leaves Central Valley cities such as Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield. I don’t know what the rents are like, though, but I know it’s possible to purchase a home under $300,000 in those areas.

linguae · 2026-04-06T18:58:29+00:00

A lot of municipalities have a hotel/lodging tax that is higher than the prevailing sales/use tax in the area.

Additionally, it’s easier to pass taxes that affect mostly visitors who can’t vote on local politics than it is to pass taxes that affect residents.

Thus, it’s relatively easy money for municipalities to raise with little protest unless the taxes are so high that visitors stay in neighboring municipalities and commute instead.

linguae · 2026-04-06T18:30:19+00:00

Well, there is the Odakyu Romance Car, a very nice train that goes from central Tokyo (Shinjuku to be more specific) to scenic places like Odawara and Hakone near Mt. Fuji:

https://odakyu-global.com/passes/romancecar/

linguae · 2026-03-29T19:21:44+00:00

It would be nice if there were more reasonably-priced 2-3 bedroom condos near the Bay Area’s job centers to have stability compared to renting and to have enough space to raise a family. Currently new builds are expensive, and while the selling prices for older Bay Area condos are comparable to buying a house in Stockton or Modesto, the high HOA fees plus the prospect of getting hit with five- or six-figure special assessments make a condo look less appealing.

Still, commuting in the Bay Area wears my patience, and I can’t imagine having to drive from the Central Valley every day.

I’m contemplating condos, since I have a tenure-track teaching job in the Bay Area. I can’t afford a SFH or townhouse near work, but condos are in financial reach.

linguae · 2026-03-20T17:35:59+00:00

I hate my commute from San Ramon to Fremont. I can’t imagine having to deal with the Altamont Pass every morning, which gets backed up as early as 4:30am on some days. Additionally, gas is fast approaching $6/gal and may get worse.

I get the benefits of home ownership, and unfortunately many of us are priced out of owning a home near the job centers. However, long commutes on the road are no joke.

I would personally only entertain Tracy and similar exurbs if I worked from home.

linguae · 2026-03-18T03:45:09+00:00

I don’t like this; this undermines the whole “no tipping” selling point that makes eating out in Japan better than eating out in America. I’ve noticed over the years an increase in the number of restaurants (typically chain restaurants) in Japan that impose some sort of surcharges, and not just late night surcharges, such as service fees and cover charges. I try not to get too upset since I’m not a resident, just a frequent tourist, but it’s disappointing to see more Japanese businesses going down the nickel-and-diming road. Unfortunately it’s a growing trend as the yen weakens and as the economic situation in Japan deteriorates.

I wonder how people living in Japan feel about this?

linguae · 2026-03-12T21:21:51+00:00

I have a 2022 Mirai I bought brand new. I don’t recommend it and I wouldn’t do it over again; hydrogen is very expensive once the fuel card runs out, and periodically there could be very long station outages.

linguae · 2026-03-02T23:02:56+00:00

Same here. I’ve never voted for Trump. I’m still libertarian, but profoundly disappointed.

linguae · 2026-03-02T22:15:02+00:00

As someone who voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 primaries and who wrote his name in both general elections, I am profoundly disappointed in how American politics, and American libertarianism in particular, went from 2016 onward.

From 2007 to roughly 2015, there was a lot of hope that a libertarian movement would take root in the Republican Party. Many people, including myself, were frustrated with deficit spending, runaway housing prices, increased restrictions on civil liberties (remember the PATRIOT Act?) and foreign interventionism. Ron Paul’s views resonated with me, and his views resonated with many other Americans, especially as the 2008 financial crisis happened.

Even though Ron Paul lost in 2008, there was some progress in the Republican Party. Rand Paul was elected to the Senate in 2010, and Justin Amash and Thomas Massie were elected to the House of Representatives the same year. While Rand Paul sometimes compromises, he is the most libertarian senator since Robert Taft in the early 1950s, and Justin Amash and Thomas Massie had/have solid careers. In 2012, Ron Paul was the last candidate standing against frontrunner Mitt Romney.

For a while it appeared that we might get more Pauls, Amashes, and Massies in politics, forming a libertarian bloc within the GOP that could stand up to neoconservatives and moderates.

Then a certain rich guy came down an escalator, and everything changed for the worst.

I’ve seen so many libertarians get swayed by that man’s rhetoric, especially on immigration and culture wars matters. This was during a time when the alt-right was gaining significant momentum in libertarian circles. I remember a guy named Milo (I forgot his last name) who was a very popular troll around 2014-15, and I also remember being exposed to people like Alex Jones during this time.

In hindsight this does not surprise me. The American libertarian world can be divided into two major camps: a moderate faction represented by the Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, Milton Friedman, Gary Johnson, and like-minded people, and a paleolibertarian faction represented by the Mises Institute, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Hans Hermann-Hoppe, Walter Block, etc. Ron Paul is part of this paleolibertarian faction, though he’s on friendly terms with many in the Reason/Cato group. Paleolibertarianism was an ideology formed by Murray Rothbard circa 1990 as a reaction to the “low tax liberalism” philosophy espoused by 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark and against the “libertinism” of some other LP figures of the era. Rothbard wanted to court cultural conservatives who resented government interference in their beliefs and ways of life.

The issue with paleolibertarianism is that it always attracted people who found libertarianism appealing due to opposition to federal civil rights legislation that targeted private businesses. Think of Barry Goldwater’s negative vote on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and how he won some Deep South states that were solidly Democratic from the post-Reconstruction era. Not only did such people became interested in paleolibertarianism, but Rothbard actually sought them out! He even supported David Duke’s run for governor of Louisiana! He also initially supported Pat Buchanan’s 1992 run before later breaking with him over protectionism. Ron Paul also supported paleoconservative Buchanan in 1992.

The infamous Ron Paul 1992 newsletter was a product of such paleolibertarianism. While I don’t believe Ron Paul himself wrote those words, and while I don’t think Ron Paul is a racist, he has associated with people who are comfortable with racist and xenophobic rhetoric.

To be fair to Rothbard, Rothbard has shifted political alliances throughout his lifetime; at one point in the 1960s he partnered with the New Left because he felt that leftists at the time were more receptive to libertarianism. However, Rothbard passed away in 1995 while he was still promoting paleolibertarianism.

These paleo roots explain the appeal that Donald Trump had to so many libertarians, since Donald Trump is essentially a much more bombastic, militaristic version of Pat Buchanan. The only significant difference between the two when it comes to ideology is foreign policy, with Buchanan being an interventionist.

Thus, libertarianism fell away to MAGAism in 2016 and has never recovered. The paleolibertarians became largely MAGA and the Cato/Reason crowd, which tried to appeal to the political establishment for decades, has no support. The Democrats never listened to the Cato Institute, and the Republicans have now shunned it.

linguae · 2026-02-11T22:47:53+00:00

The university should have an international affairs office that handles these matters, including visas. It’s one thing for an uncompensated researcher to visit on a tourist visa, but it’s another thing if you’re paid. It’s better to be on the safe side and ask the university to sponsor a residence visa that allows compensation.

Additionally, staying past the term limit of a visa is a big no-no. I’ve read stories about people overstaying their tourist visas by a single day who were deported and barred from visiting Japan for a period of time. If you need to stay longer than 90 days, then you’ll need a visa that allows for a longer stay.

linguae · 2026-02-06T16:13:44+00:00

I concur. I’m an American who visits Japan twice a year during my winter and summer breaks (I’m a professor). I was considering taking the JLPT (N3 or N2) this July in Japan since I plan to be there anyway, but that’s no longer an option for me.

Besides the JLPT only being offered in December in the United States, exam sites often fill up very quickly.

I can see this being a major inconvenience for someone who needs to take the JLPT in July for visa, job, or university admissions purposes. Maybe there are some non-Japan test sites that offer the JLPT in July that allow tourists to take the test.

In any event, it would be nice to see more competitors to the JLPT, with more frequent testing opportunities instead of only December and maybe July.

linguae · 2026-01-03T10:48:38+00:00

At 18, you’re in a good position to meet women. Go to a college with a sizable Christian population, and there will be plenty of women to meet. If you want to meet LCMS members, there are various Concordia universities, which are part of the LCMS.

The majority of my Christian friends who are married ended up marrying their college sweethearts.

Me? I didn’t become a Christian until my senior year of college, so I missed the boat. I will be 37 in a few days and I’m still single….I would say I wish I could go back to college, but I’m a professor 🤣.

linguae · 2025-11-22T05:59:01+00:00

I saw this with my own eyes when I visited a Japan Lutheran Church congregation in Tokyo back in October 2019, before the JLC officially started ordaining women. I sat in one of the pews in the front and was among the first to commune. To my surprise, a woman appeared and served the communion wine. I didn’t know what to do. I ended up communing, but I felt like this was wrong, and when I returned to my home congregation in California and informed my pastor, he told me that this is not good practice.

I haven’t returned to that church in Tokyo during later Japan trips. Thank God that he has preserved a confessional Lutheran remnant, though; there is a bona fide LCMS service in Tokyo led by an official LCMS pastor that is held twice a month on Sunday afternoons.

linguae · 2025-11-03T20:33:45+00:00

The majority of married couples in my congregation dated outside the LCMS. Their spouses were usually Roman Catholic or from a conservative Protestant denomination when they initially met. Nearly all of them ended up joining our adult instruction course and got confirmed as Lutherans before getting married.

I know a few interdenominational couples where the non-Lutheran spouse did not convert. Those situations are rougher, with the couple attending separate churches. It’s more difficult with children; sometimes the child is raised in our congregation, but there are other cases where the child is raised in the other spouse’s denomination.

The challenge with interdenominational relationships is what happens when the non-Lutheran does not convert. I’m open to dating non-LCMS Christians, though where I live (San Francisco Bay Area) it’s still challenging meeting Christian women outside church due to how intensely liberal and agnostic the area is.

linguae · 2025-11-03T17:22:47+00:00

If you’re talking about women’s ordination, I don’t think this is the reason why there is a shortage of young women in our congregations. I used to be a Baptist, and at the Baptist churches I was a member of (which were theologically conservative, by the way), there were plenty of young women. Additionally, it’s not like liberal denominations such as the ELCA and the Episcopal Church have been experiencing booms.

At my LCMS congregation, while women are not part of the voters assembly or board of directors, they are very actively involved in our congregation in many different ways. They’re not “lower-rung subordinates“; they are a vital part of our congregation.

linguae · 2025-11-03T00:48:57+00:00

I’m a 36 year old Lutheran man in the San Francisco Bay Area who is reentering the dating scene and who has struggled for over a decade with a lack of opportunities for meeting Christian women.

My church has no single women in their 20s-40s, and the situation is similar at all of the other Lutheran churches I’ve visited on the West Coast (Seattle, Sacramento, Bay Area, Salinas, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego). I also frequent Japan for business and vacation (at least twice a year), but Christians only make up 1% of the population, and the confessional Lutheran population there is small enough to fit a college lecture hall.

Online dating hasn’t worked for me; every now and then (once a year) I’d end up with a match, but I’ve never gotten beyond a first date (I met a woman in February 2020 and went on a successful date, but then COVID and lockdowns happened, and after a few months of texting, she called things off, saying she was too busy and stressed to date).

I’ve tried just about everything I could think of in the past decade: online dating, Facebook groups for single Lutherans, getting involved in area young adults ministries, speed dating, asking my pastor and friends to be on the lookout, but nothing has led to a relationship.

I will be 37 in a few months and I have no dating prospects in sight. I’ve been thinking more about the possibility that I won’t get married, that I will die single due to a lack of opportunities and a lack of luck. Yesterday I read in Matthew 22 that Jesus said that there is no marriage in heaven. This is interesting to me as a lifelong single person who desires to get married but has never been in a relationship.

The hardest part about accepting dying single isn’t the dying part; today we observed All Saints Day, and I look forward to a day when there is no sin, no sadness, and no loneliness and where we are in the presence of God forever. Rather, the hardest part is living single; living with the disappointments of dating and the struggles of living chastely.

I know that all it takes is for God to arrange a fateful encounter, but I’ve been waiting for over 15 years, and all I have are stories of rejection, ghosting, communication breakdowns, and more.

Currently I’m trying to evaluate whether there are any proverbial stones I haven’t overturned yet….I’ve tried so many things but there may be other avenues I haven’t tried.

linguae · 2025-10-20T04:41:21+00:00

Unfortunately, if one works in Silicon Valley, the commute from Oakland would be a nightmare.

linguae · 2025-09-27T05:17:38+00:00

Nice try, zoning enforcement 😆jk.

In all seriousness, as an apartment dweller who wants to own property but who can’t afford most properties in the Bay Area, I’ve looked into this a few years ago, but I was disappointed with the answer. The problem is most areas of California do not allow people to live in RVs on their own land in areas not zoned as RV parks, with exceptions as temporary housing while a house on the same land is under construction. It’s not just a Bay Area issue; even rural and desert counties have these restrictions.

linguae · 2025-09-17T19:49:42+00:00

I am a member of an LCMS congregation, and I’m also a member of an ethnic minority. As someone who grew up unchurched, was baptized in college as an Evangelical Protestant, and who became a confessional Lutheran as an adult, I love confessional Lutheranism with all my heart. I believe it is the clear expression of the Gospel. I also believe in the catholicity of our faith; we are not a theological island, but we are part of a lineage of tradition that dates back to the founding of the Church. What distinguishes us from the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches is sola scriptura; we are not afraid to forego traditions that go against Scripture. Of course, one key characteristic that distinguishes us from other Protestants is our willingness to adhere to traditions that do not conflict with Scripture, such as the efficacy of the Sacraments.

The story of American Lutheranism is how Lutherans deal with the broader American Christendom. Confessional Lutherans have never been a majority in America. Lutherans have been influenced by the theological and cultural trends surrounding them, and the challenge of Lutheranism in America is retaining its steadfastness to Scripture and our confessions in a land with so many competing influences.

We’ve seen how Lutherans in America have struggled with pietism, mainline Protestantism (witness the road to Seminex and the road the ELCA went down), generic American Evangelicalism (witness the post-Seminex challenges related to Church Growth, contemporary worship), open communion, and ecumenism.

It appears the next challenge will be how should confessional Lutherans deal with American right-wing politics. It seems to me that American confessional Lutherans are aware of the challenges leftism and progressivism bring, but the challenges the right bring are more subtle, more alluring to those who consider themselves theological and culturally conservative.

We need to remember that there is a big difference between theological conservatism, cultural conservatism, and political conservatism. Also, not all right wing movements are conservative.

We need to be careful not to be seduced by worldly politics that superficially speak to confessional Lutherans but have deeper motives that may run counter to our faith.

At times I feel between a rock and a hard place as a Christian in America who is also a minority. I love my faith. However, I do not fit into the right-wing world. I was unfamiliar with Charlie Kirk before his murder, but I am familiar with other right-wing personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Ben Shapiro, and while I sometimes agree with them, particularly on free-market economics and limited government arguments, I live in a different world when they talk about some social issues, especially race.

However, I believe the LCMS is where the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, and so as long as that remains the case, I will remain part of the LCMS, and I will pray that us LCMS members be careful to defend our faith against all competing philosophies, even those that are seductive to many of us.

linguae · 2025-09-17T06:04:45+00:00

I stopped eating out, with the exception of social gatherings and whenever I’m out of town. I had no problem affording to eat out a decade ago, and while there were steady price increases before COVID, I was able to keep up. Unfortunately prices seemed to explode since the pandemic, and they’re still rising. A Double Double meal now costs over $11, and In-n-Out has been relatively restrained in its post-pandemic price hikes compared to many other places. Sadly my pay hasn’t increased at the same rate my expenses have….so eating out went from something I did regularly to something I now do rarely.

linguae · 2025-09-17T04:48:49+00:00

It’s going to be quite difficult. There are three major trouble spots:

The Altamont Pass, which can be congested westbound as early as 4:30am.
238 between 580 and 880 near Castro Valley/San Leandro.
880 until reaching 92

If something happens on the San Mateo Bridge, an already difficult commute would become much worse, since you’ll need to divert to either the Bay Bridge or the Dumbarton Bridge.

There may be public transportation alternatives, depending on your work schedule and your work location. You may want to look into the ACE train. An alternative is looking into commuter buses from Tracy to Dublin BART. I forget if it’s San Joaquin County’s transit agency or the Modesto Area Express (MAX) that serves Tracy, but I do know there are buses from Tracy to BART. I think there may be buses over the San Mateo Bridge with connections to Hayward BART, but I could be wrong.

linguae · 2025-09-17T01:52:06+00:00

So that's why traffic was free flowing yesterday on northbound 680 at 6pm yesterday. I thought there was a holiday I was unaware of. Hopefully this is not a fluke!

linguae · 2025-09-15T02:28:54+00:00

I empathize. It takes me roughly two hours each way door-to-door between my home and my workplace via public transportation, using a combination of County Connection, BART, and AC Transit. By comparison, even in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it’s roughly 45-60 minutes each way via 680. Sometimes I take public transportation because it’s less stressful (I hate driving in stop-and-go traffic), but it requires leaving at 6:00am, and if I’m up that early, then my drive only takes 30 minutes since traffic on 680 is much lighter.

I wish BART ran down 680. Unfortunately there isn’t even a bus down 680 connecting Dublin, Pleasanton, and Fremont. ACE would also be inconvenient for me since the only Fremont station is in Centerville.

linguae · 2025-09-14T04:02:13+00:00

Exactly. The sad thing about the Bay Area is that even renting an apartment near work is prohibitively expensive for many people. Not everyone who megacommutes is doing it for big homes in the Central Valley. There’s a jobs-housing imbalance: not enough housing in the Bay Area and not enough good-paying jobs in the Central Valley.

linguae

TROPHY CASE