tiredofsametab

Almost every shower I've seen in Japan has it on a movable hose rather than fixed, so at least there's that. I forgot when I went back to the US for a visit for the first time in ~6 years and was super annoyed, heh.

I've only worked at two Japanese companies. My wife has worked at several in her life (and loves her current company and job). I've also read stories of people in bad places asking for advice. I'll answer based on that, but realize that it is not a huge sample size.

"black companies" are very much a thing and take advantage of those that either can't (or feel that they can't) find other work. Recent years have seen laws to reform the number of hours worked and against various forms of "power harassment" (you can google that for what it is, but basically managers/superiors cannot do certain things). My first company in Japan kinda waffled between a company with a ton of overtime, got quite nice, and then went back the opposite direction.

Some of it is just social pressure, which is a big thing in Japan. People don't want to rock the boat, so they will, for example, clock out but keep working, not leave before the boss, etc. Corona causing a lot of people to work from home has changed things, though, and a lot of people who have gone back to the office have a much better understanding of how much useless BS there is and how many hours of their lives they're missing out on. We'll see how it plays out in the future.

Midoriyama (mount green mountain, heh). They do Sasuke once a year usually, but you'd need a translator to participate. I don't think they really have an audience open to the public (it seems they're all related to the contestants in some way), but I'm not sure about that

I think maybe older abroad in Japan might be fine. Rachael and Jun is another one I used to watch. I consume that type of content less the longer I live here. If you're into outdoorsy stuff Go North Japan is really nice

Yeah, 建前 and 本音 are definitely a thing to get used to, heh. I agree, specific questions are definitely helpful to answer

I don't know of any Japanese who really know of Lemmy and I've never seen it mentioned online (though mastadon is at least somewhat known, but not by the average japanese). Also asking in English is going to limit the pool of respondants quite a bit. I'm not japanese but I've been living here since 2015 and speak japanese on a daily basis with my wife and family.

• really depends upon what you're into and where you want to go. English ability can drop pretty rapidly outside of the cities, but I got by with and handful of words and gestures when I started visiting
• not really. Some old building are tough, but you can duck. I have a buddy who's 194cm (I think) and he's fine (born and raised in Japan)
• not really. I did fine as mentioned it point 1 with some very basic words and I've met plenty of people who knows zero and enjoy their visits

Having been to many a hot spring, yes (but only in my head).

Edit: seriously, though, sitting in an outdoor bath in the mountains as snow slowly falls is one of life's great simple pleasures

I've even living in Japan for almost a decade (probably closer if you count times I visited for months before living here). If you have specific questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Yes. Things feel out-of-balance without it to me. However, if the meaning is unclear (something something stripping Hitler and Stalin), I will work around it and/or use other punctuation. I think I have a bit of a weird synesthesia thing going on for written text (English or written code (in the programming sense); I don't have it as much in the other languages I read/write, but it isn't absent there, either).

What?! My mother was a saint!~ Oh, the other repurposing

Did he pay for expenses out of his own money? Is he away from his usual station? I have a feeling this means I'm old.