I mean, we’re in deep shit in Japan in a number of ways.

More xenophobic people and anti-foreigner policies, higher costs of status renewal (they claimed to bring in line with Germany and other countries despite the fact that our salaries are way lower), etc. are driving foreigners away. Foreigners are taking jobs no one else is (it’s generally an immigration requirement for a work visa is that you can’t take a job a Japanese could do, roughly). Bus drivers, elder carers, hospital workers, etc. Rather than look at the actual issues and do something about it (voter participation, particularly among the young, is abysmal), they just keep voting LDP that keeps enriching the rich and powerful and not doing much to actually help.

There are all kinds of systemic issues around working conditions, gender roles, and other things that hold families back. Almost everyone moves to Tokyo or another big city for university and never comes back because the only jobs outside are farming, fishing, forestry, and factories, more or less. People like me who do move to be a part of a small community have their companies say “oopsie, we didn’t mean work from anywhere; you have to be in the Tokyo office now” which is basically impossible (my union is fighting the company who retained a lawfirm, so who knows where this goes). There’s no stability outside of the city. This is driving up prices on a number of things. Childcare is also over-burdened in those areas so one parent often has to quit, at least for a while, if they want to start a family. This only gets worse (whereas where I live, they pay people to move here and we have free/subsidized daycare for kids with open slots).

There’s still more that I could write about. Inflation is rampant and wages don’t keep up. Salaries were long flat, but so were prices until corona followed by Russia’s invasion. I don’t have much hope. It’s gotten me (over a decade here, permanent resident, etc.) thinking it’s time to go, which is not a statement I thought I would say; I had planned to retire and spend the rest of my life here. Now, I’m trying to get a job somewhere like Norway where I can do a silly thing like at least vote in local elections after 3 years, unlike Japan which is never in most places and the xenophobes are trying to remove it in the few places it does exist (despite us paying the same taxes, pension, and everything else).