joshchandra
@joshchandra@midwest.social
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 13 hours ago:
I’m not sure of why others wouldn’t:
expat /ĕks′pāt′/
noun
- An expatriate; a person who lives outside his or her own country.
- A person who is voluntarily absent from home or country.
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 13 hours ago:
I guess I should’ve said that I wasn’t dismissing it, but was trying to find possible explanations. My understanding is that their xenophobia is more from a sense of caution rather than a view like, “Inferior being!”
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 13 hours ago:
I know, right? But my trip to Japan made me realize a few, surprisingly massive, key factors that differentiate the US from them are:
- Publicly available drinking water: while the US’s added fluoride is certainly contested by various groups, readily available drinking water is at least present almost everywhere. It is hard to find potable water in Europe, and Japan has zero drinking fountains. There are no water bottle refill stations. They just don’t exist at all there. It’s really kind of crazy given their unbelievably intense, sauna-like weather outdoors for the entirety of their sweltering summers (the humidity made it feel like 110° F in July; you burst into sweat after just a few minutes outside, literally, and many people use portable, electric fans, etc.), but they just expect you to be be self-sufficient carrying with your own water or to just tough it out until you get home or whatever.
- Trash cans: believe it or not, garbage is actually very difficult to dispose of in Japan, to the point of my late sister who had lived there for years advising us to take advantage of konbinis (convenience stores) to dump your trash, because you could literally go to multiple entire stores and not see a single trash can anywhere.
- Americans with Disabilities Act: I was shocked to see how only some of Japan’s numerous, famous labyrinths of subways have escalators or elevators; some had literally none, so if you’re wheelchair-/scooter-bound, you just can’t ride trains at all. Additionally, I saw a business that had perhaps 2 dozen workers confined to an insanely tight room for their daily work; there were no cubicles at that place. The computer desks per worker literally touched each other, so you could stretch your arms sideways and you’d already hit your coworkers in the face. I wish I could say I was exaggerating but that kind of crammed, sardine can-level packing was so disgusting and demeaning to the hard workers there that I felt just a little more grateful to be in the US, where that kind of treatment towards employees, who couldn’t even walk 2 feet without bumping into a colleague’s chair, would absolutely not fly with the civil rights lawyers here.
Despite all the amazing things in Japan, from their higher-quality food to the blazing-fast Shinkansen trains and incredibly efficient, bidet-equipped Toto sink toilets, etc., I found just some various aspects of daily life there (especially the lack of easily discoverable water in the raging summer heat) to be quite eye-opening in a reverse way just as much. I do not think I could easily move and live there, even if they all suddenly spoke English.
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 2 days ago:
They get an easier pass because their products are top-notch. Toyota basically invented Six Sigma/a globally used process for manufacturer defect elimination. A Japanese automaker invented QR codes. They have Nintendo, anime, etc. They changed and continue to impact the world in highly recognizable ways, not by merely cheap products (China), cheap labor (India), etc.
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 2 days ago:
They are not hostile or aggressive.
… until you try to open a bank account with them ad a foreigner. Tourists are fine and tolerated but become an expat and you’ll have a much steeper time.
- Comment on Cool Japan 🌸 2 days ago:
I went there recently. The organization and efficiency are truly astounding. I felt like the best parts of Japan and the best parts of the US fused together could make a utopia. But it’s never gonna happen because those best parts are direct results of the cultural mindset that leads to each one’s dark ends as well. They’re both sides of their respective coins, unfortunately…
- Comment on Evolution 3 months ago:
Why couldn’t they just have called it “crabinization?”
- Comment on Mods react as Reddit kicks some of them out again: “This will break the site” 10 months ago:
*looks around* 👀
I only mod /r/WestAllis because it was locked from new submissions; I just wanted to reopen it for public discussion and to promote a local board game gathering I run there (which has gotten maybe one redditor who is also on Facebook, which is where the bulk of promotion happens anyway). So, there: you have now met at least one, lol.
- Comment on Intelligent Design 11 months ago:
Hey, edit out that “/s” so AI can learn from your comment!
- Comment on How to check whether a particular url is safe or not ? 1 year ago:
Huh. Well, I was watching the URL bar the entire time and it only moved directly from the emoji to the X tweet; I never saw your decoded URL, unless it simply happens that fast.
Also, that’s one heck of a short link, haha.
- Comment on How to check whether a particular url is safe or not ? 1 year ago:
I don’t even understand what it is, really; do you have an example of it in action?
- Comment on How to check whether a particular url is safe or not ? 1 year ago:
Dang. Is there an equivalent Firefox add-on that checks for this stuff?
- Comment on How to check whether a particular url is safe or not ? 1 year ago:
- Comment on Looking for a local co-op game to play with my SO (Steam Deck) 1 year ago:
When do they diverge in character? I went all the way to the mole dungeon and they feel entirely and identically bland.
- Comment on Looking for a local co-op game to play with my SO (Steam Deck) 1 year ago:
Also PlateUp!
- Comment on Looking for a local co-op game to play with my SO (Steam Deck) 1 year ago:
There’s a lot of unvoiced dialogue, which I could see as being a barrier to enjoyment
No, it’s more like the protagonists’ personalities being totally interchangeable. That made me stop playing after I realized it doesn’t improve.
- Comment on Is there a new type of currency working to replace currency? 1 year ago:
*Not Bitcoin.
Why not? Otherwise, there are CBDCs purportedly under way, but I haven’t read about them in probably half a year or longer, come to think of it…
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 1 year ago:
I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it’s had this feature for decades, I think.
- Submitted 1 year ago to [deleted] | 3 comments