I want to know what Japan is like from people who actually live in Japan especially after seeing some misleading posts online from people who don’t live in Japan & people misunderstanding something resulting in people being misleadingly negative about Japan
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I’m a permanent resident of Japan and am raising a family here. I think you would get better responses if you posed more specific questions, or provided examples of what kind of misunderstandings people have experienced and posted about online.
I find Japan a pleasant place to live, but it is far from perfect, just like any society. The cost of living is quite reasonable compared to many other countries, which makes the lower salaries go further.
People are generally friendly, but you sometimes have to read between the lines, as people tend to be less direct so as to avoid confrontation (“It is a little difficult” is a polite way to say “No!” for example).
Anyway, if you have any other questions I’ll be around.
Yeah, 建前 and 本音 are definitely a thing to get used to, heh. I agree, specific questions are definitely helpful to answer
What is the first word? Google translated it to the pronunciation, but said the second word means “true feelings”
tatemae is the romanisation. It is your public attitude, which may be different to your real attitude (hon’ne).
Thanks! That makes sense, and is what I guessed, but I wanted to confirm
A Japanese person is only going to be able to answer “it is normal” unless they’ve lived abroad. Maybe it would be easier to ask them to debunk or confirm those misleading rumors?
Things I can point out from living in japan is:
healthcare is good
streets are clean
every Japanese person has seen at least a few Animes
Basic Japanese TV is 50% food, 30% reactions with facecam, 15% commercials, and once every Friday 1 movie. (Either ghibli, Harry Potter, or home alone).
You don’t really need to know Japanese in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, but in less touristy places it would be good to know how to order stuff, talk to cashiers and understanding basic instructions in Japanese.
Akihabara is dying.
Disney is more popular than Anime, and there are far more women than men and children combined at Disneyland and Disney sea.
People stand in line just to play pachinko.
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
There is a place in japan for every single hobby.
Japanese people like uniforms. If they have a hobby that sometimes has uniforms, more often than not, the Japanese person is going to have the full set of the uniform.
It is not considered rude to eat while walking, or talk while eating.
It is considered rude to blow your nose at the table, to pass food from chopstick to chopstick, to eat or talk on phone while on the train.
Houses and apartments are small, but cheap if you live further away from the center.
Living even an hour away from Tokyo, you’re still going to have giant cities nearby with everything you need, and everything will be cheaper.
Akihabara:
Urban shopping area in central Tokyo, Japan. considered by many to be the epicentre of modern Japanese otaku culture, and is a major shopping district for video games, anime, manga, electronics and computer-related goods. Icons from popular anime and manga are displayed prominently on the shops in the area, and numerous maid cafés and some arcades are found throughout the district.Disney is more popular than Anime
I don’t know that I agree with that, necessarily, but I suppose it might be how you define “popular”. Tons of people are going to Puroland and stuff (Sanrio/Hello Kitty) if we’re talking about theme parks. Every Japanese kid I know still talks about Anpanman, etc., though all my nieces and nephews definitely do know some Disney (Frozen in particular for the gals at least).
Japan doesn’t have pork broth
I’d generalize that to liquid stock that isn’t dashi. I can at least find chicken stock at Costco, but that’s about it.
Great response! Just a comment, 食べ歩き (eating while walking) is definitely not seen with good eyes in many places in Japan. Some very touristic streets even have signs to forbid it.
I think that’s to prevent littering and people bumping into each other in very crowded places. For example Asakusa does this because it is very crowded, and a lot of the food there comes on sharp sticks, so it might be dangerous, but it isn’t inherently rude or anything. There are spots suitable or even meant for it, and spots less suitable for it. I don’t think culturally it is a problem.
That’s the case for very specific places, but in general, tabearuki is considered 行儀の悪いこと, meaning bad manners, basically.
Take a look at this article, for example. Or this anectode. Or info from a language school. Or this quora answer. They all discuss how eating while walking is bad manners and can bring nuisance to the people around you, even in non crowded places. Of course this is not every Japanese person’s opinion! I’ve even seen people advocating for it.
I think it’s not such bad manner that you would be scolded by a stranger, perhaps by a Japanese partner or close friend, but it’s definetly not seen in good eyes in general.
Japan doesn’t have pork broth. (Biggest culture shock for me)
As in ramen? Have you ever been to Kyushu? These things are regional.
As in knorr broth dice, etc, for cooking. They have chicken and vegetable consomme, and sometimes beef, but never pork. Ramen has a lot of flavoring, but when it comes to cooking food from your native country, even at speciality stores like Kaldi or Seijouishi, you’re lucky to find anything that isn’t already widely popular.
As a Swede, pork broth is the basic of basics in cooking, so it was hard to make dishes for when you’re homesick.
I have been to a few prefectures in Kyushu, and it was a really nice , but I didn’t try the ramen there. I’ll give it a try next time I go.
How expensive is Tokyo compared to the West?
I can only compare it to Sweden, but eating out at restaurants is way cheaper in Japan. Almost cheaper than cooking it yourself.
Groceries depend on where you live, and how local the groceries are. Cooking Japanese food is cheap, and if you can get used to the flavor of Natto (protip, add mustard) you can live dirt cheap. Import goods in general are pricy so you might want to cut down on Nutella.
Rent is cheap, but the hidden fees are annoying. Like renewing your contract, key money, security deposit etc. Moving is expensive.
Hospital fees are at around 330-2000 yen a visit, an MRI scan is around 7000 yen if I remember correctly. Physical Therapy is at 330 yen per visit. With this said, you get treatment fairly fast. (Same day, wait maybe an hour or two).
Children get free treatment, and medicine cost around 30 yen (less than a dollar).
It is easy to spend too much money if you’re not careful, especially with how many entertainment districts there are.
Alcohol is also cheap compared to Sweden, but Sweden has one of the highest taxes on alcohol, so anywhere would be cheaper than Sweden.
The bullet train is pretty expensive. It is cheaper to fly domestic. The subway is cheap if you buy a pass.
Trains in the UK are more expensive than flying as well. They are also slower. They only make finical sense when the journey is too short or you need to be in the centre of the city when arriving.
Why would a Japanese person not be able to give a more in depth answer? I’ve only lived in my country all my life yet I could easily talk about the differences from the rest of the world.
They might, but Japanese are in general not too familiar with how life is outside of japan due to the language barrier, and usually on TV the most you’ll see is foreigners reacting to how it is in Japan, but so far the only TV show I know of where they travel abroad is ItteQ, but it focuses more on the comedians.
Oh are Japanese still largely TV driven? Here in Australia most people consume media online.
Many parts of Japan are stunningly beatiful. The largest cities are some of the most overwhelming places I’ve ever been, but everything works much better than you might expect.
The people are generally respectful and kind if you are the same. I found people to be generally tolerant of unintended rudeness from a foreigner, especially if you apologize. Jokes and humility go a long way.
There’s a TON of Japanese people there. Like, they’re freaking EVERYWHERE.
To this point, the Tokyo skytree may be the most entertaining place I’ve ever been. You can see so much life happening all around, you can see how far Tokyo sprawls, you can see how large the breadth of humanity can be. If you intensely focus on one small spot of the city, you see a myopic little section, but then you raise up, and see the entirety of “Civilization”. It’s super impressive. I expected that it would be fun to see, and maybe spend 20 minutes up there looking around. I spent almost 3 hours just examining life.
I’m sure places like this exist elsewhere, Tokyo seems like the perfect place for it though.
Highly recommend sitting in a cafe in Montmartre Paris. Especially one looking down those spindly small roads. Excellent place to watch humanity on a micro scale.
レミーは英語圏のサイトを圧倒しているし、日本人の大半は英語ができないから、このサイトを利用しない。だから、実際の日本人からの回答は得られない。
[Lemmy] dominates English-speaking sites, and most Japanese people don’t use this site because they can’t speak English. Therefore, we cannot get answers from actual Japanese people.
translation by Google
I only understood a some words in that scentence because I haven’t yet learned enough Japanese to read that fully
I haven’t learned that big of a wordset yet as I’m primarily focusing on learning grammer at the moment before continuing to learn vocabulary
たまたまこの投稿を見つけたので返信してみます（日本語ですまん）
私はおそらく非常に一般的な日本人で英語を話すことが出来ません。
もちろん教育は受けていますがすごく力を入れているわけではないのでほとんどの人は習得せずに学校を卒業してしまいます。ちょっとした単語すらわからない人も多いので
日本に住んでみたい方は必ず言葉の壁に当たると思います。
日本人は親切などはあまり期待しないほうがいいです。
基本的に日本人は余計なことに関わりたくないと思ってます。
それでも困っている人は放っておけないので自分から話しかけてきた人には何かしら手助けをしてくれる可能性はあります。
ただ、これはどこの国でも多分一緒ですよね？
（私はオーストラリアに行ったことがありますが、英語が分からなくても皆親切得でしたよ）
実際に他の国に住んだことがないのであまりたくさん答えることは出来ないですけど、過度な期待はしないほうがいいです。 新宿の通りは汚いし、変な人もいるので治安が悪いところもある。
一番いいのは実際に日本に来てみて短期間観光客が行かないところに行ってみることかもしれません。
あとは住んでいる人の動画を見てみるとか？（宣伝ではないですが私のお気に入りです）
https://www.youtube.com/@LIJ
関係ない話。
他の人も指摘していましたが日本人はほとんどLemmyを使っていません。
使っているのは元々海外のコミュニティが好きで英語ができるような人たちでしょう。純粋な日本人向けのインスタンスも2,3個しかなく私の運営しているMAU4人のところが最大規模なくらいです。
There’s a Japanese YouTuber my japanese learning friend would watch called “that Japanese man Yuta” who goes into this
I know about yuta because I am learning Japanese but I don’t think I have seen their other videos outside of learning Japanese
Right now I’m slowly working my way through grammer at a pace that works for me
Do the videos help? I tried Duolingo with learning languages and nothing stuck from them.
With duolingo and apps like them I don’t actually use them because they don’t allow you to structure your learning to best help you learn
If you’re trying to learn Japanese, wanikani for kanji and bunpro for grammar have been the best resources I’ve found. People recommend to just use anki but I don’t have the time to customize decks and mine sentences for hours on end. Wanikani and bunpro set up a structure that’s easy to follow and understand. I’ve loved using them over the past year.
You could try kanji garden
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.ky.kanjigarden
It is anki like in the way it uses spaced repition but is specifically for kanji though if I remember correctly you can’t customise it like an anki deck
Doesn’t work on foldables for whatever reason. Actually the only app I’ve come across that I can’t install lol. Thanks for the recommendation though
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.
Are everyone’s dicks really pixelated?
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
Omfg 😆
When’s the best time to visit mount midoriami ?
I’m not japanese but I want to travel there. We’ve discovered Takeshii from Japan on YouTube a while ago and I think he is doing a good job in capturing some opinions around different aspects of living in Japan. I’d say it’s worth checking.
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “I’m not japanese but…”
“…here’s someone on YouTube who lives in Japan that does a good job of showing what living in Japan is really like.”
Seriously, what was wrong with that?
“Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?” “…”
wow that’s so much better than people trying to help!
TIL you can only know things about Japan if you’re Japanese
In one sentence or less.
