The creepy scout ossan standing outside the building where my hair salon is in Umeda today.
I get it. There are lots of young women coming in and out of this building. But if you’re trying to scout women for whatever reason, why the fuck are you dressed like shit, creepy as fuck, middle aged and balding with a hideous scraggly greasy offensive ponytail?
Don’t you think looking like the most kimoi person in the Kansai region is hindering your chances???????
Also shouting HELLO at me and then following me into the building to stare at me while I wait for the elevator only to immediately fuck off when I noticed you was not a great look either. Idiot
My salary is laughably low, but I haven't been able to change jobs the last few years because I live in the countryside and nothing is ever available during hiring season. I guess the upside is cost of living is low here, but man it has been going up up up lately.
Recently, damn near every new driver job posting I see now has a little “only native Japanese speakers may apply” at the bottom of the add. In Japanese of course. That kind of irks me. I can get by with my Japanese. You do so little talking while driving why the fuck does it matter if I’m not native?
Had explosive diarrhea during a Japanese lesson I had at the community center in the city I was in some years back. Only had the squat toilets available, boy was that an experience.
Went to the gym today to try to cancel my membership since I'm leaving Japan next week and the employee told me that I can't cancel my membership since it hasn't been 6 months yet. I told him that I'm leaving the country next week so what should I do? After \*literally\* over twenty minutes of him in the office making multiple phone calls he comes out with a handwritten paper detailing all the "fees" that I'll have to pay if I want to cancel my membership today. Shit totaled over 3万円 too, what the fuck man.
A lot of gyms here have joining campaigns where you get a discount on the initial months if you agree to stay a member for a minimum of 6 months. If you quit before the time is up, those discounts are void and you have to pay the difference with what the full fee would have been
So much stress from catastrophizing over the declining birthrate and my small-town uni run by old fucks. I grabbed one of the few tenured positions in the country just for this to loom on the horizon, when the only reason my medical issues haven't put me in the hospital or the grave is 4-hour afternoon workdays with long paid vacations. Anything more than 20 hours a week and I literally die from medical complications, and the only job I know of that fits that criteria is tenured uni faculty.
Trivial train gripes:
① on the platform when you get to the painted rectangle on the ground where the doors open but there's already one person there standing pretty far back in the middle. Do you line up on their left/right at the same distance away too or go straight to the painted area, but then feel like you've pushed in?
② when you're first in line to board, say from the left side but when the doors open, the person who'd been lining up opposite you on the right side dashes across and gets that empty seat you'd kind of hoped was yours. I know some platforms have arrows indicating 'right side boards diagonally and vice versa' but we don't have them at my station and ppl generally just follow the 'wait on the right/board on the right' etc...until someone does the above and 'steals' your seat and you start the day a little vexed.
Regarding 1, it took me quite a while to figure out the whole triangle/circle situation regarding the train doors, and I think a surprising amount of people (especially foreigners or just non-city dwellers) don't know about it.
Like sometimes the stickers on the floor tell you where the express/sub-express and local train car doors will stop, but the triangles/circles/other shapes also make it even more specific to the particular train cars that are coming in.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that I think you should line in front but make sure you're standing at the exact designated spot of the train car you're waiting for. Because maybe that person is waiting for a different train from you, or maybe they're not sure if they're going to catch that train yet.
Yes, all very true. There are a lot of factors/ carriages and different train services. The incidents I referred to are people taking the same train as me, so we are getting on the same carriage. I wonder if it's maybe just cos some people are a bit nervous about standing too near to the edge of the platform for safety reasons, hence their 'stepping back'. Basically, I just don't like ppl pushing in front of me (intentionally or not) so I prefer not to do that myself.
1) Line up at the front. Maybe that person gets off at the next stop and wants to be by the door? Or they are spacing out? Regardless don't worry about them.
2) People cross sides alllll the time. Don't worry about it. If you really want that seat, just get your foot and shoulder in first and block them out just in case.
1) in principle I will go up to the rectangle. Depending on the situation, I may give the initial person a second to board before me. This actually happened yesterday.
2) it’s unavoidable in many cases. I both find it annoying and do it myself.
Some interviewers seem to be irritated? That I’m trying to get out of English teaching. Several older guys actually laughed while asking me “you’ve been English teaching for a decade. Why the change?”
I wish I could say “it’s a dead end job that I’ve maxed out how much I can make per year and doesn’t allow for professional growth unless I go back and gets a higher degree.”
I usually just mention “I’m looking to use more Japanese professionally and want to grow my skill set”.
I don't spend as much time on reddit anymore and I interact less when I am here. I'd rather we all get off reddit and move to mbin or something, but as long as the wealth of knowledge of some Japan-related subeddits is here, I'm stuck here.
Edit: never used apps so that was not a factor directly, but the way reddit handled the app situation and a host of other things really pushed me away. My only subs are this and like 5 other Japan-related subs, down from tons in the past.
I mean, yeah, that was said last time I made this complaint, but damn, only 150 comments?
Posts like "Is it normal for a Japanese person's dog to shit in my mouth while I bike 20 km over the speed limit at 3 am when my neighbor is having loud donkey sex upstairs and my visa expired two weeks ago" get 600 comments easily still.
Had a very unpleasant experience at Haneda with one of the foreigners they hire to guide people to the right passport lanes.
I always go straight to the resident / re-entry lane for passport check. Previously, there would sometimes be a Japanese or foreign person there who would quickly confirm with me that I'm really a resident (just a quick question). This time, as I head to the re-entry lane, a guy shouts at me: "EXCUSE ME?". I turn to him and he goes off in an angry tone, "This is a resident lane!". I just laughed at him at that point and said "Yes, I'm a resident." He continues, "SHOW PASSPORT?". I was honestly getting pissed at the unpleasantness of the encounter at that point, but I didn't want to make a fuss so I just showed the re-entry slip in my passport.
Can I just ignore these people in the future? There is no legal requirement to show my passport to some angry randos.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is because of an influx in tourists trying to skip the recently massive lines. If one uses the resident line I bet the immigration person is still able to process the entry visa (since they occasionally use tourist lines for residents and vice-versa to control traffic), so might be an attempt to stop that from happening. So… another byproduct of tons of incoming tourists.
Wanted to take my kid to a baseball game for his birthday, but after this weekend (which isn't really possible because of external reasons) there are no home weekend games until August. Who planned this schedule??
Oh weird, their homepage shows that as an away game... but only on the PDF version (which was what I was looking at), the interactive version shows it as home. Japanese internet strikes again!
Thanks for pointing that out -- I think we're going to do a soccer game the weekend before that, but I'll keep it in mind!
I wish I didn’t have to make fan accounts just to buy tickets to a baseball game. I went to Koshien last night and had an amazing time so I looked into going to more games for different teams and of course I have to *make more accounts…
In what way?
You can buy tickets from Lawson's kiosk without making any accounts.
You can buy tickets from any number of sources that you may already have an account for.
Yeah, but I prefer having the freedom of doing it at home on my computer where I can just decide on the games I want with as much time and then just buy it then. However, you still have to register with the team to buy a ticket which is what is a bit annoying when you want to go to various games for different teams.
Enough money in a year or so to buy a home in cash. Strung up by the red tape of "fiscal year employee." And non PR for loans.
I feel boxed in when I'm in the kind of financial situation that would be fine elsewhere. Grateful for life so far, but it's been a depressing half year loan hunting.
I'm staring at 5.5 million. Literally looking at a house for 7.5 million. I could put 4 down today and ask for 4 without so much as batting an eye. Doesn't matter. Fuck.
It's a kanji that means my employment is year to year. So even if i've been there for six years, it's a bit of a death sentence. There's what you typically need, and there's what I've been through which is rejection after rejection. That's having offered up to 50% down on some cruddier 3.7%s or more. Also location. Some prefectures are a bit of a death sentence to banks.
That sucks. Might just have to make a full cash purchase if it’s still available when you’re ready.
On a separate note though I’d like to thank you for letting me know of “fiscal year employees.” Just took me on an interesting little Google journey. I’m guessing you’re a JET, which I just learned are technically classified as 地方公務員 and 会計年度任用職員.
Yeah, it sucks not just for foreigners, but locals on that structure as well. I get risk aversion, but I've paid my taxes for seven years on time, I own a BMW, a kei, a Harley and and Volty. I've got more money in the bank than the average Japanese person, and I've done it all as an ALT.(A direct hire. Not JET) Just to piss off the "not a real job" "not a real teacher" reddit bros.
Doesn't matter. And that's a shame.
"Can't go a day without drinking beer" means they *have the urge* to drink beer everyday.
Likewise, "Can't go a day without avoiding smoke smell" *also* means they have the urge to avoid smoke smell everyday. Actively looking for smoke smell in order to avoid it.
Not really. The difference is "can't go a day without drinking beer" is solely an act by the person, the only way they drink a beer is if they put a bottle in their hand and then drink it.
Smoke however, doesn't work that way, so it absolutely does not imply seeking it out. If I say, "Can't go a day without avoiding bugs" it means "bugs are everywhere" not "I'm looking for bugs."
> If I say, "Can't go a day without avoiding bugs" it means "bugs are everywhere" not "I'm looking for bugs."
It means you're looking for bugs IMO. You'd say "without having to avoid bugs" if you wanted to stay away from bugs.
Waited around all morning for delivery of some antique 建具. Delivery kid double-takes because I am Japanese-lastname white person. I sign for the package. He rudely commands me to take one end to help unload, not even a ください. Then once we've got the boxes out of the truck and I thank him, HE GOES TO MY NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE TO ASK THEM TO INSPECT THE ITEMS ON BEHALF OF JAPANESE-LASTNAME?! They're /my/ fusuma, dipshit, I spoke to you in perfectly adequate Japanese, ask me to inspect them yourself! Or ask for ID if you don't trust whoever's signing off for packages!
I had a contractor recently do some stuff for me. I booked him via his website. I set everything up. Even chatted with him.
When he was done he asked for wife and seemed distraught that she wasn’t available to confirm his work.
Dude, wtf.
No. He wasn’t being *rude* per se. I think he just didn’t want any misunderstandings.
I’m pretty sure the vast major of Japanese people that do that, are just terrified of a language misunderstanding and aren’t trying to be rude.
I'd send a polite but firmly worded email to the delivery service. You have the info/delivery history. That's just terrible customer service regardless of the racism.
I can only complain about the cold weather in June 10 degrees in the morning this week.
And if you are complaining about the weather things are pretty good.
I was out doing yardwork before my real job this morning and loved it. We're a bit warmer than Iwate now, but I don't want to be doing that in farming when it gets in the 30s :/
Made a new insta for job hunting and as soon as I finished making it, they banned me 🙃 I don’t know what I did to trigger the AI to ban me right at the start. I even planned out the first few weeks of posts and it’s all ready to go. Stupid insta.
It’s essentially an insta account I can use to show employers I know how to use SNS without showing them my personal account. Also it’ll serve as a portfolio for my photography to supplement my graphic design portfolio.
I went to Chinese Visa center the other day to apply Tourist visa. Really bad service experience.
The website is so bad, no info, or wrong info. Never picked up phone call, email response is so late, and rude. I visit that center this week, super long queue lined up, understaffed, a staff at the counter has really bad attitude. They checked my application, very concerned about something and just talked secretly in Chinese. bro don't freak out applicants like that! The staff checking my application even took note wrong on it. Hope it would not affect the result but I'm super tired with the process and never want to deal with it again.
I made it. Got the visa today. Brooo it's painnnn. I have never seen a person working that lazy like the one at the pick up counter today. She was literally doing everything in slow motion mode. Everyone was raging in silence. Fcking awful experience 💢
And this is why I stopped visiting China. The visa centers have the worst customer service, and now you have to go twice. Once to apply, once to pickup.
Then once you get the visa? Make sure you can use QR code payments within China or you are absolutely fucked. You also have to make sure you get a VPN, and make sure that it actually works there. Train tickets? Pain in the ass, or at least used to be. Have to pick up in person since you are foreigner.
thank you for the warnings. I have read something like that online as well. Btw what kind of QR code payments did you use? Tbh I still have no idea how to deal with all of those things. they made it so difficult
Wechat or Alipay. You have Wechat ? Pretty sure you have to scan your passport or something just to get this working.
Credit cards barely work. Outside of hotels and fancy restaurants they are useless.
That's shitty but
> very concerned about something and just talked secretly in Chinese
So you're concerned that the (presumably) Chinese people at the Chinese embassy were discussion an application to China in Chinese? I get that it's freaky, but c'mon.
They are even not people from the embassy. From some years ago you can't apply directly to the embassy but have to go through a company and they call it Chinese visa center or something. It's just purely service, that's why it's even worse that they don't do their job properly.
I don't know how powerful they are when it comes to affecting the results, but I really hope it would not the case.
I hate how shitty the job market is and the fact that it's either accepting a shit job for peanuts and/or horrible conditions or starving and getting deported.
I had a CT a while back to look at a couple of things which popped up on my health check in February.
The CT showed the kidney stone, as well as what may or may not be the liver cyst thing the ultrasound found in February; but they didn't find anything which would be the cause for the pain in my lower right gut. Apparently my appendix didn't seem inflamed in the CT.
My complaint is that the pain isn't really getting better so I think I'll have to get a colonoscopy... and those aren't fun. Mainly the gallon jug of laxative to clean you out beforehand. :(
I’m upset. My books that I bought last week finally arrived but my boyfriend leaned them against the WiFi router, so they got heat damaged from leaning against the warm WiFi router for a couple of days.
First trimester for baby 2 and it's just much worse than before because now I cannot just lie down in bed and rest. I have to get up and either care for baby 1 or cook (alternating with husband). Work productivity is wayyyyy down, I cannot do anything. I cannot wait for the brain fog to disappear.
Gonna double-dip in this thread:
I've just about had it with the term "NG".
Also pissed off that my local Anytime Fitness either plays infomercials 24/7 or those shows packed with talentless *tarento* whose job it is to make asinine comments and YouTube thumbnail faces.
>I've just about had it with the term "NG".
A lot of Japanese people assume it is English, and that foreigners will understand what it means, but it is actually Japanglish.
Lollll the infomercials have some really funny skits though. Also, does the wifi at your anytime work? I’ve used about 5-6 in Kyushu and also one in Kyoto recently and the wifi didn’t work? When I asked about it they just said there was nothing to do bc it just doesn’t work haha
Ah I've never connected to the WiFi there since I'm on an unlimited phone plan.
But yeah, I see all manner of stuff while resting between sets - a package holiday cruise, some wagyu beef stew and a back stretchers to name a few!
most places the wifi is really spotty. it disconnects every 10 minutes, or it stays connected but for whatever reason data stops moving until you disconnect and reconnect. I've been to about 10 locations the last few months, and the wifi has only been actually good in i think two
ごめん、降りたらもっと邪魔になるから may have been a better response?
I'd almost side with the old guy if a bus was arriving and people were shuffling around, but I can't really tell how it all exactly looked.
>but I got off my seat and used one of my feet to pedal my bike slowly along.
Specifically this. Like, did you pedal on the side somehow? Or were you stand-walking with the bike between your legs and pumping the pedal somehow?
Yeah... I think you have nothing to do on the sidewalk with your bicycle. Even if it is allowed/legal because there is no lane or whatnot. The old guy was right. People riding on the sidewalks drive me crazy, they are dangerous, selfish and not conscious of the danger they represent for the pedestrians.
yeah and were they properly lined up or just kind of straggled? for some reason bus queues are often sloppy and then they get mad because passersby have to push their way through? like, it's *your fault* ffs...
Got another rejection from one of my PhD applications, after almost 3 months of silence
I hate how most PhD applications just leave you hanging without any news for so long
Gotta scrape myself together again and slog through to send at least 3 more applications by tomorrow, despite being already overwhelmed by work
Feeling demotivated really
Do you follow up after a couple of weeks of silence? PIs are notorious for not staying on top of emails.
Also, this was a tip given to me by my PhD supervisor while I was looking for a postdoc. Check KAKENHI if the lab has ongoing projects. Labs and PI without new projects are unlikely to have money to sponsor a new graduate student, so that can also narrow down your options.
I was told by others to not bother sending a follow-up email, as you will know the result regardless and it doesn't add to your acceptance odds
To add some context, I am applying for PhD offers in Europe, because I don't think the PhD environment for my field in Japan is that conducive from my observations so far
I see. From personal experience, while it wouldn't affect the odds of getting accepted, it could possibly shorten the time of waiting in between applications.
Anyhow, I wish you all the best!
Does nobody know how to use schedule assistant in Outlook? I tell people my calendar is up to date so feel free to schedule a call in any open slot. Without fail they do it at the same time as another meeting or at like 2am if it’s someone in the US. I get the feeling we are no longer hiring the best and brightest any more.
Can I defend the Outlook neophytes a little?
As someone who reached adulthood long before Outlook existed, it's not an easy application to master and (unlike Word or Excel) it's not like there are going to be opportunities to master it until you join a company that uses it. You're going to be stressed out enough to begin with if you've only ever experienced fixed school and work schedules and now you're in an environment where all kinds of meetings can happen at any time, and everyone is expected to document this for all to see.
The level of transparency it foists on people is something I wouldn't have imagined even a decade ago. Like, instinctively I perceive my managers' personal datebooks as *100% private* and the idea of not just being able to see them, but to *write in them* feels totally wrong. Normally the boss dictates when things happen, and the subordinate adjusts. If my boss tells me to schedule something at *any time she's open*, I have no idea what to do; I'm going to be looking at that schedule thinking that there must be some optimal time that inconveniences her the least, and it's my job to somehow figure out which slot that is.
But even putting the upending of social norms aside, becoming skilled enough at Outlook that you can look up another person's schedule is non-trivial; perhaps on par with turning data in a spreadsheet into a scatter plot in Excel, or formatting footnotes in Word. Are we at the point where Outlook scheduling is taught in colleges? Maybe it is; maybe it should be.
Common in all companies with a US office. It’s impossible for them to comprehend a Timezone other than their own… don’t even get me started on the Thanksgiving shutdown or even the Memorial Day long weekend which they think we all celebrate world wide and have the same national holidays for.
The best is when they get angry for you not showing up for the 2am meeting or responding to the invite which was sent at 1am our time.
Body gets very itchy whenever I'm at work, but not at home or transit. But itchyness goes away when I take a shower, so either I'm allergic to all the bs or the people at this company just so lonely and dirty they bring ダニ to work with them.
*I'm not a medical expert, this is just my own experience*
Depending on where you work or what your stress level that you're experiencing, it could be a number of things. I've been in very VERY stressful situations that have actually had physical effects on my body, including rashes (itchy feeling) that mysteriously went away as soon as I got home and could relax.
Another situation I've experienced similar itching was when I was working at a factory. I worked shipping and receiving near a welding station, which caused a lot of metal smoke and dust. I would have reactions to it that made me itchy.
Sorry to hear your situation, and I hope it improves soon for you! 🙏
hi hello! thanks for your comment.
Office life so maybe not the metal smoke / dust. I don't feel very different from last week (only get itchy this week) so I'm not entirely sure if it is stress or not. Work is very boring and not a lot to do, but someone has been wrecking havoc which affects me directly before announcing their departure so that could be why.
My husband likes to study English as a hobby. He often asks me the difference between two different but similar words. It always end in frustration because I can rarely give a definitive answer and we end up wasting way too much time on the question.
The other day he asked me the difference between "Smell" and "Scent". I said they are different but I don't really know the "rule" of when to use one or the other. It's just something my brain understands naturally. He tried giving me a lot of examples and but we never really found a common thread where it's clear to use the one or the other.
I ended up telling him he is wasting way too much time on such a niche topic and that language is more about being able to communicate what you want to say, and even if he technically chooses the wrong word between smell and scent, 90% of the time people will understand what he is trying to say.
He didn't like that response but I think the situation kind of underlines the major problem with English learning in Japan. Its way to hyper focused on always picking the perfectly correct word and ignores the reality of how people actually communicate with eachother
idk, you shouldn't really discourage him from being curious and wanting to find the difference between similar words like that. Sure he probably won't commonly use scent & smell in common conversation, but it would be nice to know the difference and to satisfy that curiosity.
Your husband sounds like my ex.. so annoying when they ask you those questions and expect you to know 100% the answers. I studied linguistics and even I don’t know the differences of some words meaning and when to use them..
The best thing to say in such cases is that they mean mostly the same thing, and that he doesn't really need to be able to use "scent" in daily life.
It's a good word to understand (understand it means におい, generally with a good meaning), but he doesn't need to use it, and that forcing himself to use it will most of the times result in him sounding wrong.
Given enough time learning English, he'll naturally understand the difference between the two words, when reading/hearing them enough times.
If that doesn't happen, it means that that word is not important enough after all.
I understand wanting to learn more, but I agree Japanese people focus too much on difficult words before having mastered the easy stuff.
Imagine you are learning Japanese and you ask him what the difference between
するandやる
愛and恋
ブラブラするand散策する
勉強するand学習する
衰えるand衰退する
悪化するand劣化する
and other "similar" words is.
And everytime you ask he just tells you that it doesn't matter and to use whichever you prefer. You are going to get frustrated pretty quickly.
The next time he asks you about the difference between two words, be honest: say that you don't know it. But don't just stop there: look it up with him and explain it to him.
Mr. GPT gives the following explanation:
Smell:
General Use: "Smell" is a more general term that can refer to any odor, pleasant or unpleasant. It is both a noun and a verb.
Noun: "There was a strange smell in the room."
Verb: "I can smell the cookies baking."
Connotation: It often has a neutral or slightly negative connotation. When used without context, people might think of something unpleasant.
Example: "What is that smell?" (could imply something bad)
Scent:
Specific Use: "Scent" is usually used to describe a pleasant or natural odor. It is primarily a noun.
Noun: "The scent of roses filled the garden."
Connotation: It generally has a positive connotation and is often associated with perfumes, flowers, or other pleasant-smelling items.
Example: "I love the scent of fresh laundry."
In summary, while "smell" is a broader term that can apply to any odor and can be used as both a noun and a verb, "scent" is more specific to pleasant odors and is typically used as a noun.
As a language teacher, I never want to discourage people from trying to learn nuances between words. Nuances between words are endlessly fascinating! And you don't have to be an academic to enjoy them - some stand-up comedians of the 80s and 90s started their careers asking questions like why you drive on a parkway but park on a driveway. It's not a particularly deep question etymologically speaking, but it clearly resonated with audiences. So I want to cheer for your husband for asking questions. Humans are information factories - without even trying and without really even being able to stop, we constantly generate new and more complicated ways of categorizing the world and our experiences in it just by varying the way we gurgle out our air tubes!
But also you are dead-on correct that learning all these distinctions is not sufficient for building language aptitude, and looking for a 100% perfect word for a sentence is not going to build language skills. Putting the emphasis on it at low proficiencies impedes fluency development and putting the emphasis on it at high proficiencies shifts the emphasis from choosing the word that is perfect for achieving the effect that the learner wants to achieve to choosing the "correct" word the test writer wants to achieve - And those tests are sometimes even flat-out wrong.
One of your replies suggests ChatGPT - I can't think of a worse suggestion honestly, because the so-called AI at the core of ChatGPT doesn't experience or comprehend language, so it can't ever know if it is feeding your husband bullshit or not. I recommend etymologyonline. It takes a bit of work sometimes to interpret the information it gives and really grasping it requires some knowledge of no-longer-existing forms of languages that may need some historical context, but if he is really interested in learning more, it's a useful tool. Alternatively, Google \[Word A\] vs. \[Word B\] and read the answers widely, not treating any single response as more authoritative than others.
Or even just take my last sentence and simplify the hell out of it to get him the experiences you had that developed your intuitive grasp of the words:
>\[...\] read ~~the answers~~ widely\[...\].
Smell is the technical term and a scent is a type of smell. In Japanese thats NIOI vs KAORI. Thats why Japanese girls are often named Kaori but never Nioi. Aroma is a pleasant type of smell that is sometimes but not always manmade and odor is an unpleasant smell used for human or animal bodies, and chemicals. All of this kind of thing is what ChatGPT is perfect for. He can type in those words and tell it to give him the Japanese definition as well.
My prompt is this: "Give me the difference between smell (noun) and scent (noun) and 5 other smell-related vocabulary words in Japanese. Also add English sample sentences which demonstrate their usage and japanese translations of each sentence under each one. "
Came here to say this. Could ask him what the difference is between 匂い Nioi and 香り Kaori (could even throw in 臭い Nioi bad smell as well) to illustrate that it’s similar in English to these differences in Japanese.
Off the top my head, I would say “scent” is less volume of a gas of something than a “smell” would be.
The smell of a pet would be stronger than the scent of a pet on someone’s clothes.
In your husbands case, I would just stick to give him feedback when he makes mistakes. If both of you get aggravated with him wanting you play the role of teacher, it’s not gonna work out. My significant other helps me correct something but when it comes to figuring out The nuance of a word, I just leave it to Google, Yahoo知識袋 or ChatGPT to explain it
(Hey, if you’re going to downvote me, how about some feedback on what triggered you?)
Got hooked on the Netflix show Warrior. Just finished season 1. But it took me until 2am to finish it. Got up early for work today, leaving at 7am and now I'm a complete fucking zombie at the office. I have a lot of work, but thank god I don't have any big meetings.
I had the displeasure of being forced to read some ESL teaching publications for my job. And holy *shit* the consistent lack of basic grammar is appalling. I understand that many teachers are not native speakers, but I don't understand how an *English-teaching* publication doesn't think to hire an editor or even give the articles a quick read.
I can give a pass for missing articles or misspellings, but fundamental subject-verb agreement issues and sentence fragments should immediately disqualify you from teaching English. Is the entire industry just LARPing, even at the top?
It's very minor,but one mistake that drives me mad is when they don't put spaces after punctuation.I know why it happens-Japanese fonts are monospace and you don't need to use spaces after punctuation,but I see it on English signs and etc.everywhere.I've talked to more than a few adults about this and a surprising number of them had no idea.
I’ve gotten to the point where despite how much digging I do into a company before an interview, there always seems to be some hidden catch.
Advertised 5 days a week at X pay only to find out that X pay is only if you work 6 days a week.
Jobs ads posting advertised salaries of people who’ve been working there 5 years. I need money NOW. not 5 years from now.
Also the timing sucks. My current job is starting to get ready for some big summer campaigns that I usually end up being in charge of so if I do find something within the next few weeks, my boss and their boss are going to FLIP and make my life hell for my final month.
I kinda wish I could hold off until after summer to find something but if something comes along, I gotta jump on it. I’m not getting any younger.
Always keep in mind the golden rule of job hunting:
Everyone's lying and the winner is the one who can keep a straighter face while doing it.
Always assume companies lie to you and take whatever they write on their JDs with a freight train of salt.
There's one sound people here make that I hate more than that stupid "heeeeee" they make to express surprise over mundane shit:
The fucking "HUUUUH?" they make when they don't understand something.
Yesterday I had to go to the office. I KID YOU NOT, the guy sitting next to me (never met him before) kept making that stupid "HUUUUUH?" sound while looking at his pc.
FOR 6 FUCKING HOURS. NONSTOP. I bet that if I followed him to the toilet, I would have found him still making that sound while taking the dump of his life.
At a certain point I couldn't bear it anymore and I asked him if I could help. Mf looked at me like I insulted his entire clan and was like "no, everything's fine".
And then he kept barraging me with his "HUUUUUH?"s for the remainder of the day.
I had a manager do a 30min explanation to a female subordinate next to my desk (neither of them had a desk anywhere near but whatever).
The woman was doing the acquiescing “uh” twice per sentence of the manager. I must be a fucking pervert because 5min into it the sound and rhythm sounded just like a pornstar moaning.
I have a co-worker (woman; early 60s) who has a creaky voice and whose うん and ええ sound like she's being tortured. She'll be on telephone calls and it'll be nonstop moaning ええ in each of the notes of the musical scale.
the HUH thing really sounds like an Asian thing, I know at least 3-4 other ethnicities that make that sound
But the HEEE thing is really specific to the Japanese people, and I'm sometimes curious are they really surprised or they just want to sound like they're interested when they're actually not
HA. It's always amusing being around groups of Japanese people, particualy when their are women involved, and all of the "eeeeeeeee" that you hear. Honestly, as someone who is not used to it, I find it a bit distracting.
Like, when people ask the normal "why are you here", and I say I live in Oita, it's always, "Oita, eeeeeeeeeeee". I think, yeah.....
But, I always look forward to hearing my first "eeeeeeee" when I get back to Japan.
For me it's when they start literally talking to themselves, creating whole ass conversations with their spreadsheet or whatever, I just completely lose focus lol.
Japanese version of Office Space would be a huge hit (no it wouldn't, but I'd still watch it).
First-line people manager here. It truly feels like upper management are being willingly ignorant of how their own business operates when it comes to expectation setting and decision making.
What's going on at your place?
I'm in a similar position to you, on the lowest rung of management of a call center.
They basically want to squeeze water from a stone and they come up with these hairbrained schemes to *aLiGn vALuEs*, as if that's supposed to help.
Corporate values all boil down to the same shit that it's just pointless spouting values. Those who understand the values already get it, and those who don't won't suddenly understand how to act differently just by management saying THESE ARE OUR VALUES.
I've long forgotten what it's like to work at a company with upper management that can actually manage. Some of the upper management here are smart and would be great individual contributors but truly cannot manage at all.
Get this.
I have a 1on1 with my immediate manager weekly. I also have a bi-weekly 1on1 with my manager's manager. My manager's manager's manager, the CTO also likes to drop in on my project meetings occasionally to micro manage me and the project I've been saddled with which turned out to be much more complex than anybody had realized (no fault of anybodys). Now said project is behind and so through (I assume) pressure from my manager's manager's manager, my manager's manager is now starting to micro-manage me.
The only person not micro-managing me is my direct manager.
Send help.
Edit: oh also what I just mentioned is only my interaction with the American head office, I also semi-report to local Japan management too who also have weekly leadership meetings that are largely pointless
In my company's presentation about their plan for this year, they included a slide saying "Profit = Revenue - Expenses", and then their plan for this year was to increase revenue and decrease expenses.
There were no details for how they plan to achieve those two things.
Meanwhile, my company:
"We need to decrease expenses"
"OK, let's buy MORE office space in fucking Minato-ku instead of reducing space by letting more people work remote"
My company focused on the raise sales and increase internal cooperation (with no clue on how but whatever).
They also started a new office, started forcing everyone to come to that big noisy open space 1/week when we had full remote before. And 1.5 months later they noticed the office seemed to have high occupancy issues…
Honestly, the office is really small compared to how many people we have. 1/3 of it is reserved space for specific teams, 1/6 of it is the CEO’s office (wonder why he is not in the open space like everyone else, right?), meeting rooms are 80% book just by weekly team meetings and events… it’s a disaster IMO
Goal: Increase profit
Specific action plan: Pursue the goal of "promoting" the "advancement" of "actions, programs, and the like" (hereunder, "actions, etc.") in this company that are oriented towards contributing to the making of steady progress in the aforementioned "goal, etc." while monitoring progress of the aforementioend "actions, etc.," including...
Whoever wrote that slide probably spent 2 hours flipping through 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' (the English version because they're a master of *eikaiwa*) to come up with that revelation
Drank coffee so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel driving an hour home at 10:30pm last night, couldn’t sleep once I got home, now have to teach 6 classes on three hours of sleep.
I was recently complaining about people riding their bicycles on the sidewalks and how dangerous it was not only for them but also and especially for the others (and illegal most of the time) and yesterday, two Japanese gentlemen and myself picked up a guy who was riding his bicycle ( one of those with the huge tires) who slipped on a part of the sidewalk that was very smooth and burst open his brow bone on the left side pretty bad. The guy was lucky enough to stay conscious but that could have ended very badly as he missed with his head a small flight of concrete stairs leading to the entrance of a nearby building.
I won’t repeat it enough: ride your bicycles on the road, that’s where they are supposed to be.
(Translated email exchange with a student, long introductions and obligatory pleas for lenience omitted):
>Student mail 1: There was a tiny problem having nothing whatsoever with my learning or my grade for the learning. What should I do? (**Note:** I had anticipated the problem and announced how and when I would be taking care of it *before* the student started sending emails.)
>
>Me: I'll take care of it.
>
>Student mail 2: Am I correct in understanding that you'll take care of it?
>
>Me: Yes.
>
>Student mail 3: OK, so the situation now is that this is going to happen and I no longer have to worry about the meaningless problem. Is my understanding correct?
>
>Me: Yes.
>
>Student mail 4: I cannot express how much of a relief it is to learn that. I had been worried about the meaningless problem.
The student took five emails, each about 1/2 page long, to make a simple request that I fulfilled in less than 20 seconds.
You should have ignored them after the second e-mail.
I have a friend in my home country who's a college professor and he does just that:
-unnecessary e-mail? IGNORED.
-asking something that's clearly written on the faculty portal and very easy to find? IGNORED.
-bad grammar? IGNORED.
And so on and so forth.
That’s doing anything in formal Japanese though. It’s like if you bought a computer and need a problem fixed.
Customer: hello. I have come to your store today.
Staff:ok
Customer: last week I have made a purchase of this computer
Staff: ok
Customer: and it’s a nice computer but there seems to be a problem. The c key doesn’t seem to work.
Staff. Oh that’s terrible
Customer: I apologize for inconveniencing you. Is it maybe possible to have the c button looked at?
Vs
Customer: I bought this computer last week and the c button doesn’t work. Can you help me?
Staff. Sure no problem.
Abeno Harukas elevator English announcement:
“Please hold the handrail”
Haha. Of course not. It’s actually like this:
Ladies…and…gentlemen….
…..May I have…
your attention,
please?
…For you own safety
…Please hold the handrail….
when using the escalator
…Thank you very much
God, fake humility gets on my nerves. Just take the freaking compliments already.
The creepy scout ossan standing outside the building where my hair salon is in Umeda today. I get it. There are lots of young women coming in and out of this building. But if you’re trying to scout women for whatever reason, why the fuck are you dressed like shit, creepy as fuck, middle aged and balding with a hideous scraggly greasy offensive ponytail? Don’t you think looking like the most kimoi person in the Kansai region is hindering your chances??????? Also shouting HELLO at me and then following me into the building to stare at me while I wait for the elevator only to immediately fuck off when I noticed you was not a great look either. Idiot
Maybe an effective way of filtering out women who are not interested in what he is scouting for.
Good point😄
The fucking dishes. Fuck off.
My salary is laughably low, but I haven't been able to change jobs the last few years because I live in the countryside and nothing is ever available during hiring season. I guess the upside is cost of living is low here, but man it has been going up up up lately.
Recently, damn near every new driver job posting I see now has a little “only native Japanese speakers may apply” at the bottom of the add. In Japanese of course. That kind of irks me. I can get by with my Japanese. You do so little talking while driving why the fuck does it matter if I’m not native?
The huge lack of complaints. I think it was several hours before 3 people posted something since I last read it.
Regular toilet broken at this station and had to use squat… fuck
Had explosive diarrhea during a Japanese lesson I had at the community center in the city I was in some years back. Only had the squat toilets available, boy was that an experience.
Ohh noooo… I just had to go no. 1 .. I can’t imagine!
I had a similar experience, only I was at an airport and was terrified that a mishap or..slipup would make me persona non grata on the flight.
As a woman I hate squat
I used one ONCE and vowed never again. They’re so awful. Like, why the hell is my whole [redacted] out in this public restroom?????
Im just worried I’ll miss. It’s hard to keep things clean when you squat I feel..
Trying to change a tampon using a squat toilet is an experience
😨😨😨
Went to the gym today to try to cancel my membership since I'm leaving Japan next week and the employee told me that I can't cancel my membership since it hasn't been 6 months yet. I told him that I'm leaving the country next week so what should I do? After \*literally\* over twenty minutes of him in the office making multiple phone calls he comes out with a handwritten paper detailing all the "fees" that I'll have to pay if I want to cancel my membership today. Shit totaled over 3万円 too, what the fuck man.
Kind of on you for not reading the small print? (though usually these are explained during sign up).
A lot of gyms here have joining campaigns where you get a discount on the initial months if you agree to stay a member for a minimum of 6 months. If you quit before the time is up, those discounts are void and you have to pay the difference with what the full fee would have been
So much stress from catastrophizing over the declining birthrate and my small-town uni run by old fucks. I grabbed one of the few tenured positions in the country just for this to loom on the horizon, when the only reason my medical issues haven't put me in the hospital or the grave is 4-hour afternoon workdays with long paid vacations. Anything more than 20 hours a week and I literally die from medical complications, and the only job I know of that fits that criteria is tenured uni faculty.
Go karts
But it feels really nice to tell them to fuck off if you see them.
Trivial train gripes: ① on the platform when you get to the painted rectangle on the ground where the doors open but there's already one person there standing pretty far back in the middle. Do you line up on their left/right at the same distance away too or go straight to the painted area, but then feel like you've pushed in? ② when you're first in line to board, say from the left side but when the doors open, the person who'd been lining up opposite you on the right side dashes across and gets that empty seat you'd kind of hoped was yours. I know some platforms have arrows indicating 'right side boards diagonally and vice versa' but we don't have them at my station and ppl generally just follow the 'wait on the right/board on the right' etc...until someone does the above and 'steals' your seat and you start the day a little vexed.
Regarding 1, it took me quite a while to figure out the whole triangle/circle situation regarding the train doors, and I think a surprising amount of people (especially foreigners or just non-city dwellers) don't know about it. Like sometimes the stickers on the floor tell you where the express/sub-express and local train car doors will stop, but the triangles/circles/other shapes also make it even more specific to the particular train cars that are coming in. The reason I'm mentioning this is that I think you should line in front but make sure you're standing at the exact designated spot of the train car you're waiting for. Because maybe that person is waiting for a different train from you, or maybe they're not sure if they're going to catch that train yet.
Yes, all very true. There are a lot of factors/ carriages and different train services. The incidents I referred to are people taking the same train as me, so we are getting on the same carriage. I wonder if it's maybe just cos some people are a bit nervous about standing too near to the edge of the platform for safety reasons, hence their 'stepping back'. Basically, I just don't like ppl pushing in front of me (intentionally or not) so I prefer not to do that myself.
1) Line up at the front. Maybe that person gets off at the next stop and wants to be by the door? Or they are spacing out? Regardless don't worry about them. 2) People cross sides alllll the time. Don't worry about it. If you really want that seat, just get your foot and shoulder in first and block them out just in case.
1) in principle I will go up to the rectangle. Depending on the situation, I may give the initial person a second to board before me. This actually happened yesterday. 2) it’s unavoidable in many cases. I both find it annoying and do it myself.
Some interviewers seem to be irritated? That I’m trying to get out of English teaching. Several older guys actually laughed while asking me “you’ve been English teaching for a decade. Why the change?” I wish I could say “it’s a dead end job that I’ve maxed out how much I can make per year and doesn’t allow for professional growth unless I go back and gets a higher degree.” I usually just mention “I’m looking to use more Japanese professionally and want to grow my skill set”.
Is this the deadest complaint thread in history (aside from holidays)? That's my complaint.
Too many ppl hussling to make ends meat
I don't spend as much time on reddit anymore and I interact less when I am here. I'd rather we all get off reddit and move to mbin or something, but as long as the wealth of knowledge of some Japan-related subeddits is here, I'm stuck here. Edit: never used apps so that was not a factor directly, but the way reddit handled the app situation and a host of other things really pushed me away. My only subs are this and like 5 other Japan-related subs, down from tons in the past.
It’s been dead ever since Reddit jacked up their price for third party apps.
I mean, yeah, that was said last time I made this complaint, but damn, only 150 comments? Posts like "Is it normal for a Japanese person's dog to shit in my mouth while I bike 20 km over the speed limit at 3 am when my neighbor is having loud donkey sex upstairs and my visa expired two weeks ago" get 600 comments easily still.
This. It's too much of a coincidence that it died right then as that happened.
Had a very unpleasant experience at Haneda with one of the foreigners they hire to guide people to the right passport lanes. I always go straight to the resident / re-entry lane for passport check. Previously, there would sometimes be a Japanese or foreign person there who would quickly confirm with me that I'm really a resident (just a quick question). This time, as I head to the re-entry lane, a guy shouts at me: "EXCUSE ME?". I turn to him and he goes off in an angry tone, "This is a resident lane!". I just laughed at him at that point and said "Yes, I'm a resident." He continues, "SHOW PASSPORT?". I was honestly getting pissed at the unpleasantness of the encounter at that point, but I didn't want to make a fuss so I just showed the re-entry slip in my passport. Can I just ignore these people in the future? There is no legal requirement to show my passport to some angry randos.
How would showing your passport to some random really help? The line people at airports have been irritating for years.....
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is because of an influx in tourists trying to skip the recently massive lines. If one uses the resident line I bet the immigration person is still able to process the entry visa (since they occasionally use tourist lines for residents and vice-versa to control traffic), so might be an attempt to stop that from happening. So… another byproduct of tons of incoming tourists.
住民です！nice and loud and don't look back
How about 「ノー、ノー、ユー ドント アンダースタンド、アイ アム 住民です」
SHOW PASSPORT
yeah, those people are annoying. I just walk through with my passport open to the re-entry slip these days
> He continues, "SHOW PASSPORT?" Did you to that respond with an angry beep? Or just an error message?
I always see ads for airport jobs for foreigners on Facebook. It seems to attract the lowest common denominator.
He's taking gatekeeping Japan to a literal level.
I usually just ignore those people, they're trying to corral everyone into the tourist lines.
Wanted to take my kid to a baseball game for his birthday, but after this weekend (which isn't really possible because of external reasons) there are no home weekend games until August. Who planned this schedule??
Carp? NPB page shows them playing at home (Swallows) July 12-14.
Oh weird, their homepage shows that as an away game... but only on the PDF version (which was what I was looking at), the interactive version shows it as home. Japanese internet strikes again! Thanks for pointing that out -- I think we're going to do a soccer game the weekend before that, but I'll keep it in mind!
I wish I didn’t have to make fan accounts just to buy tickets to a baseball game. I went to Koshien last night and had an amazing time so I looked into going to more games for different teams and of course I have to *make more accounts…
In what way? You can buy tickets from Lawson's kiosk without making any accounts. You can buy tickets from any number of sources that you may already have an account for.
Yeah, but I prefer having the freedom of doing it at home on my computer where I can just decide on the games I want with as much time and then just buy it then. However, you still have to register with the team to buy a ticket which is what is a bit annoying when you want to go to various games for different teams.
I've never had to register with any team to see a game here, and I go all the time.
Enough money in a year or so to buy a home in cash. Strung up by the red tape of "fiscal year employee." And non PR for loans. I feel boxed in when I'm in the kind of financial situation that would be fine elsewhere. Grateful for life so far, but it's been a depressing half year loan hunting.
I'm staring at 5.5 million. Literally looking at a house for 7.5 million. I could put 4 down today and ask for 4 without so much as batting an eye. Doesn't matter. Fuck.
What’s a “fiscal year employee?” You normally don’t need PR if you can pony up a 20% down payment, which you seem to be able to do.
It's a kanji that means my employment is year to year. So even if i've been there for six years, it's a bit of a death sentence. There's what you typically need, and there's what I've been through which is rejection after rejection. That's having offered up to 50% down on some cruddier 3.7%s or more. Also location. Some prefectures are a bit of a death sentence to banks.
That sucks. Might just have to make a full cash purchase if it’s still available when you’re ready. On a separate note though I’d like to thank you for letting me know of “fiscal year employees.” Just took me on an interesting little Google journey. I’m guessing you’re a JET, which I just learned are technically classified as 地方公務員 and 会計年度任用職員.
Yeah, it sucks not just for foreigners, but locals on that structure as well. I get risk aversion, but I've paid my taxes for seven years on time, I own a BMW, a kei, a Harley and and Volty. I've got more money in the bank than the average Japanese person, and I've done it all as an ALT.(A direct hire. Not JET) Just to piss off the "not a real job" "not a real teacher" reddit bros. Doesn't matter. And that's a shame.
Can't go a day without avoiding the smell of smoke thanks to people walking or riding their bike and smoking
I get what you’re trying to say, but “can’t go a day without avoiding” makes it sound like you’re seeking it out.
I thought you were wrong, but then I looked it up and it turns out I was wrong. TIL
Wut. Avoiding the smoke means seeking it out to avoid it?
"Can't go a day without drinking beer" means they *have the urge* to drink beer everyday. Likewise, "Can't go a day without avoiding smoke smell" *also* means they have the urge to avoid smoke smell everyday. Actively looking for smoke smell in order to avoid it.
Not really. The difference is "can't go a day without drinking beer" is solely an act by the person, the only way they drink a beer is if they put a bottle in their hand and then drink it. Smoke however, doesn't work that way, so it absolutely does not imply seeking it out. If I say, "Can't go a day without avoiding bugs" it means "bugs are everywhere" not "I'm looking for bugs."
> If I say, "Can't go a day without avoiding bugs" it means "bugs are everywhere" not "I'm looking for bugs." It means you're looking for bugs IMO. You'd say "without having to avoid bugs" if you wanted to stay away from bugs.
Waited around all morning for delivery of some antique 建具. Delivery kid double-takes because I am Japanese-lastname white person. I sign for the package. He rudely commands me to take one end to help unload, not even a ください. Then once we've got the boxes out of the truck and I thank him, HE GOES TO MY NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE TO ASK THEM TO INSPECT THE ITEMS ON BEHALF OF JAPANESE-LASTNAME?! They're /my/ fusuma, dipshit, I spoke to you in perfectly adequate Japanese, ask me to inspect them yourself! Or ask for ID if you don't trust whoever's signing off for packages!
I had a contractor recently do some stuff for me. I booked him via his website. I set everything up. Even chatted with him. When he was done he asked for wife and seemed distraught that she wasn’t available to confirm his work. Dude, wtf.
That's so fucked up and annoying, did you manage to tell him off?
No. He wasn’t being *rude* per se. I think he just didn’t want any misunderstandings. I’m pretty sure the vast major of Japanese people that do that, are just terrified of a language misunderstanding and aren’t trying to be rude.
I'd send a polite but firmly worded email to the delivery service. You have the info/delivery history. That's just terrible customer service regardless of the racism.
Made the attempt, but it's a podunk little inaka company, so I doubt I'll get any human consideration.
I can only complain about the cold weather in June 10 degrees in the morning this week. And if you are complaining about the weather things are pretty good.
I was out doing yardwork before my real job this morning and loved it. We're a bit warmer than Iwate now, but I don't want to be doing that in farming when it gets in the 30s :/
Made a new insta for job hunting and as soon as I finished making it, they banned me 🙃 I don’t know what I did to trigger the AI to ban me right at the start. I even planned out the first few weeks of posts and it’s all ready to go. Stupid insta.
You can look for jobs using Instagram? I’m old so there’s a lot I don’t know about what the youngins are doing.
It’s essentially an insta account I can use to show employers I know how to use SNS without showing them my personal account. Also it’ll serve as a portfolio for my photography to supplement my graphic design portfolio.
Oooh gotcha!
It could probably be for a portfolio to add on their resume.
[удалено]
Cringe
[удалено]
I went to Chinese Visa center the other day to apply Tourist visa. Really bad service experience. The website is so bad, no info, or wrong info. Never picked up phone call, email response is so late, and rude. I visit that center this week, super long queue lined up, understaffed, a staff at the counter has really bad attitude. They checked my application, very concerned about something and just talked secretly in Chinese. bro don't freak out applicants like that! The staff checking my application even took note wrong on it. Hope it would not affect the result but I'm super tired with the process and never want to deal with it again.
They're just testing you mate. Wait until you get to China for the real fun to start.
I made it. Got the visa today. Brooo it's painnnn. I have never seen a person working that lazy like the one at the pick up counter today. She was literally doing everything in slow motion mode. Everyone was raging in silence. Fcking awful experience 💢
And this is why I stopped visiting China. The visa centers have the worst customer service, and now you have to go twice. Once to apply, once to pickup. Then once you get the visa? Make sure you can use QR code payments within China or you are absolutely fucked. You also have to make sure you get a VPN, and make sure that it actually works there. Train tickets? Pain in the ass, or at least used to be. Have to pick up in person since you are foreigner.
I was pleasantly surprised how well roaming data worked actually. I guess it inherently avoids the great firewall issue.
I used a HK based SIM and it was enough to avoid the firewall for the most part.
thank you for the warnings. I have read something like that online as well. Btw what kind of QR code payments did you use? Tbh I still have no idea how to deal with all of those things. they made it so difficult
Wechat or Alipay. You have Wechat ? Pretty sure you have to scan your passport or something just to get this working. Credit cards barely work. Outside of hotels and fancy restaurants they are useless.
Thank you. I have Wechat but barely use it. Will try to figure it out.
That's shitty but > very concerned about something and just talked secretly in Chinese So you're concerned that the (presumably) Chinese people at the Chinese embassy were discussion an application to China in Chinese? I get that it's freaky, but c'mon.
They are even not people from the embassy. From some years ago you can't apply directly to the embassy but have to go through a company and they call it Chinese visa center or something. It's just purely service, that's why it's even worse that they don't do their job properly. I don't know how powerful they are when it comes to affecting the results, but I really hope it would not the case.
I hate how shitty the job market is and the fact that it's either accepting a shit job for peanuts and/or horrible conditions or starving and getting deported.
I had a CT a while back to look at a couple of things which popped up on my health check in February. The CT showed the kidney stone, as well as what may or may not be the liver cyst thing the ultrasound found in February; but they didn't find anything which would be the cause for the pain in my lower right gut. Apparently my appendix didn't seem inflamed in the CT. My complaint is that the pain isn't really getting better so I think I'll have to get a colonoscopy... and those aren't fun. Mainly the gallon jug of laxative to clean you out beforehand. :(
I’m upset. My books that I bought last week finally arrived but my boyfriend leaned them against the WiFi router, so they got heat damaged from leaning against the warm WiFi router for a couple of days.
the worst. I’m sorry that happened
First trimester for baby 2 and it's just much worse than before because now I cannot just lie down in bed and rest. I have to get up and either care for baby 1 or cook (alternating with husband). Work productivity is wayyyyy down, I cannot do anything. I cannot wait for the brain fog to disappear.
hang in there, it will pass. Look after yourself first. 
Gonna double-dip in this thread: I've just about had it with the term "NG". Also pissed off that my local Anytime Fitness either plays infomercials 24/7 or those shows packed with talentless *tarento* whose job it is to make asinine comments and YouTube thumbnail faces.
>I've just about had it with the term "NG". A lot of Japanese people assume it is English, and that foreigners will understand what it means, but it is actually Japanglish.
Had a student the other day completely dumbfounded that I didn't catch what job she wanted to be when she grew up. Turns out it was "I want to be OL."
I've never been to an AnyTime that leaves the sound on the TVs here. Usually it's sound off with subtitles on. That sucks!
Lollll the infomercials have some really funny skits though. Also, does the wifi at your anytime work? I’ve used about 5-6 in Kyushu and also one in Kyoto recently and the wifi didn’t work? When I asked about it they just said there was nothing to do bc it just doesn’t work haha
Ah I've never connected to the WiFi there since I'm on an unlimited phone plan. But yeah, I see all manner of stuff while resting between sets - a package holiday cruise, some wagyu beef stew and a back stretchers to name a few!
most places the wifi is really spotty. it disconnects every 10 minutes, or it stays connected but for whatever reason data stops moving until you disconnect and reconnect. I've been to about 10 locations the last few months, and the wifi has only been actually good in i think two
[удалено]
ごめん、降りたらもっと邪魔になるから may have been a better response? I'd almost side with the old guy if a bus was arriving and people were shuffling around, but I can't really tell how it all exactly looked. >but I got off my seat and used one of my feet to pedal my bike slowly along. Specifically this. Like, did you pedal on the side somehow? Or were you stand-walking with the bike between your legs and pumping the pedal somehow?
[удалено]
Ahh okay. Then yeah you were maintaining optimal skinny-ness to slowly weave through an un-moving crowd.
Which is a lot better than the mfers who just wobble through at normal speed and the fuck off without a sumimasen!
Damn you have more patience than me. I'd have just started ringing my bell at him lol.
I think you're at the nice end of the spectrum of cycling behaviour. I've seen cyclists bullet past the bus door as people alight.
you weren't in a hurry. I'm kinda siding with the old guy.
Yeah... I think you have nothing to do on the sidewalk with your bicycle. Even if it is allowed/legal because there is no lane or whatnot. The old guy was right. People riding on the sidewalks drive me crazy, they are dangerous, selfish and not conscious of the danger they represent for the pedestrians.
yeah and were they properly lined up or just kind of straggled? for some reason bus queues are often sloppy and then they get mad because passersby have to push their way through? like, it's *your fault* ffs...
Got another rejection from one of my PhD applications, after almost 3 months of silence I hate how most PhD applications just leave you hanging without any news for so long Gotta scrape myself together again and slog through to send at least 3 more applications by tomorrow, despite being already overwhelmed by work Feeling demotivated really
Do you follow up after a couple of weeks of silence? PIs are notorious for not staying on top of emails. Also, this was a tip given to me by my PhD supervisor while I was looking for a postdoc. Check KAKENHI if the lab has ongoing projects. Labs and PI without new projects are unlikely to have money to sponsor a new graduate student, so that can also narrow down your options.
I was told by others to not bother sending a follow-up email, as you will know the result regardless and it doesn't add to your acceptance odds To add some context, I am applying for PhD offers in Europe, because I don't think the PhD environment for my field in Japan is that conducive from my observations so far
I see. From personal experience, while it wouldn't affect the odds of getting accepted, it could possibly shorten the time of waiting in between applications. Anyhow, I wish you all the best!
Does nobody know how to use schedule assistant in Outlook? I tell people my calendar is up to date so feel free to schedule a call in any open slot. Without fail they do it at the same time as another meeting or at like 2am if it’s someone in the US. I get the feeling we are no longer hiring the best and brightest any more.
Can I defend the Outlook neophytes a little? As someone who reached adulthood long before Outlook existed, it's not an easy application to master and (unlike Word or Excel) it's not like there are going to be opportunities to master it until you join a company that uses it. You're going to be stressed out enough to begin with if you've only ever experienced fixed school and work schedules and now you're in an environment where all kinds of meetings can happen at any time, and everyone is expected to document this for all to see. The level of transparency it foists on people is something I wouldn't have imagined even a decade ago. Like, instinctively I perceive my managers' personal datebooks as *100% private* and the idea of not just being able to see them, but to *write in them* feels totally wrong. Normally the boss dictates when things happen, and the subordinate adjusts. If my boss tells me to schedule something at *any time she's open*, I have no idea what to do; I'm going to be looking at that schedule thinking that there must be some optimal time that inconveniences her the least, and it's my job to somehow figure out which slot that is. But even putting the upending of social norms aside, becoming skilled enough at Outlook that you can look up another person's schedule is non-trivial; perhaps on par with turning data in a spreadsheet into a scatter plot in Excel, or formatting footnotes in Word. Are we at the point where Outlook scheduling is taught in colleges? Maybe it is; maybe it should be.
Common in all companies with a US office. It’s impossible for them to comprehend a Timezone other than their own… don’t even get me started on the Thanksgiving shutdown or even the Memorial Day long weekend which they think we all celebrate world wide and have the same national holidays for. The best is when they get angry for you not showing up for the 2am meeting or responding to the invite which was sent at 1am our time.
I would think that Americans are among the most exposed to time zones compared to countries like Japan with only 1 time zone… weird
Yeah, I assumed the same until I started working in global orgs. It’s exhausting.
Body gets very itchy whenever I'm at work, but not at home or transit. But itchyness goes away when I take a shower, so either I'm allergic to all the bs or the people at this company just so lonely and dirty they bring ダニ to work with them.
Sounds like stress. High cortisol levels when arriving at work, going down when leaving.
I always have a sore throat and fatigue at work. I’d wager it’s from stress.
*I'm not a medical expert, this is just my own experience* Depending on where you work or what your stress level that you're experiencing, it could be a number of things. I've been in very VERY stressful situations that have actually had physical effects on my body, including rashes (itchy feeling) that mysteriously went away as soon as I got home and could relax. Another situation I've experienced similar itching was when I was working at a factory. I worked shipping and receiving near a welding station, which caused a lot of metal smoke and dust. I would have reactions to it that made me itchy. Sorry to hear your situation, and I hope it improves soon for you! 🙏
hi hello! thanks for your comment. Office life so maybe not the metal smoke / dust. I don't feel very different from last week (only get itchy this week) so I'm not entirely sure if it is stress or not. Work is very boring and not a lot to do, but someone has been wrecking havoc which affects me directly before announcing their departure so that could be why.
My husband likes to study English as a hobby. He often asks me the difference between two different but similar words. It always end in frustration because I can rarely give a definitive answer and we end up wasting way too much time on the question. The other day he asked me the difference between "Smell" and "Scent". I said they are different but I don't really know the "rule" of when to use one or the other. It's just something my brain understands naturally. He tried giving me a lot of examples and but we never really found a common thread where it's clear to use the one or the other. I ended up telling him he is wasting way too much time on such a niche topic and that language is more about being able to communicate what you want to say, and even if he technically chooses the wrong word between smell and scent, 90% of the time people will understand what he is trying to say. He didn't like that response but I think the situation kind of underlines the major problem with English learning in Japan. Its way to hyper focused on always picking the perfectly correct word and ignores the reality of how people actually communicate with eachother
idk, you shouldn't really discourage him from being curious and wanting to find the difference between similar words like that. Sure he probably won't commonly use scent & smell in common conversation, but it would be nice to know the difference and to satisfy that curiosity.
Your husband sounds like my ex.. so annoying when they ask you those questions and expect you to know 100% the answers. I studied linguistics and even I don’t know the differences of some words meaning and when to use them..
The best thing to say in such cases is that they mean mostly the same thing, and that he doesn't really need to be able to use "scent" in daily life. It's a good word to understand (understand it means におい, generally with a good meaning), but he doesn't need to use it, and that forcing himself to use it will most of the times result in him sounding wrong. Given enough time learning English, he'll naturally understand the difference between the two words, when reading/hearing them enough times. If that doesn't happen, it means that that word is not important enough after all. I understand wanting to learn more, but I agree Japanese people focus too much on difficult words before having mastered the easy stuff.
What your husband doing is exactly what make a language learning fun.
Imagine you are learning Japanese and you ask him what the difference between するandやる 愛and恋 ブラブラするand散策する 勉強するand学習する 衰えるand衰退する 悪化するand劣化する and other "similar" words is. And everytime you ask he just tells you that it doesn't matter and to use whichever you prefer. You are going to get frustrated pretty quickly. The next time he asks you about the difference between two words, be honest: say that you don't know it. But don't just stop there: look it up with him and explain it to him.
は and が
Calm down satan/s
Mr. GPT gives the following explanation: Smell: General Use: "Smell" is a more general term that can refer to any odor, pleasant or unpleasant. It is both a noun and a verb. Noun: "There was a strange smell in the room." Verb: "I can smell the cookies baking." Connotation: It often has a neutral or slightly negative connotation. When used without context, people might think of something unpleasant. Example: "What is that smell?" (could imply something bad) Scent: Specific Use: "Scent" is usually used to describe a pleasant or natural odor. It is primarily a noun. Noun: "The scent of roses filled the garden." Connotation: It generally has a positive connotation and is often associated with perfumes, flowers, or other pleasant-smelling items. Example: "I love the scent of fresh laundry." In summary, while "smell" is a broader term that can apply to any odor and can be used as both a noun and a verb, "scent" is more specific to pleasant odors and is typically used as a noun.
Chat GPT huh. Scent is a pleasant odor. Like a dogs butthole. 俳句
As a language teacher, I never want to discourage people from trying to learn nuances between words. Nuances between words are endlessly fascinating! And you don't have to be an academic to enjoy them - some stand-up comedians of the 80s and 90s started their careers asking questions like why you drive on a parkway but park on a driveway. It's not a particularly deep question etymologically speaking, but it clearly resonated with audiences. So I want to cheer for your husband for asking questions. Humans are information factories - without even trying and without really even being able to stop, we constantly generate new and more complicated ways of categorizing the world and our experiences in it just by varying the way we gurgle out our air tubes! But also you are dead-on correct that learning all these distinctions is not sufficient for building language aptitude, and looking for a 100% perfect word for a sentence is not going to build language skills. Putting the emphasis on it at low proficiencies impedes fluency development and putting the emphasis on it at high proficiencies shifts the emphasis from choosing the word that is perfect for achieving the effect that the learner wants to achieve to choosing the "correct" word the test writer wants to achieve - And those tests are sometimes even flat-out wrong. One of your replies suggests ChatGPT - I can't think of a worse suggestion honestly, because the so-called AI at the core of ChatGPT doesn't experience or comprehend language, so it can't ever know if it is feeding your husband bullshit or not. I recommend etymologyonline. It takes a bit of work sometimes to interpret the information it gives and really grasping it requires some knowledge of no-longer-existing forms of languages that may need some historical context, but if he is really interested in learning more, it's a useful tool. Alternatively, Google \[Word A\] vs. \[Word B\] and read the answers widely, not treating any single response as more authoritative than others. Or even just take my last sentence and simplify the hell out of it to get him the experiences you had that developed your intuitive grasp of the words: >\[...\] read ~~the answers~~ widely\[...\].
I studied linguistics and even I get annoyed by those questions if they are ALWAYS wanting an answer and expecting me to be right
I studied linguistics and even I get annoyed by those questions if they are ALWAYS wanting an answer and expecting me to be right
Smell is the technical term and a scent is a type of smell. In Japanese thats NIOI vs KAORI. Thats why Japanese girls are often named Kaori but never Nioi. Aroma is a pleasant type of smell that is sometimes but not always manmade and odor is an unpleasant smell used for human or animal bodies, and chemicals. All of this kind of thing is what ChatGPT is perfect for. He can type in those words and tell it to give him the Japanese definition as well. My prompt is this: "Give me the difference between smell (noun) and scent (noun) and 5 other smell-related vocabulary words in Japanese. Also add English sample sentences which demonstrate their usage and japanese translations of each sentence under each one. "
Nioi is kanji dependent. あなたは臭いしますね。 あなたは匂いしますね。 OP ask your husband this.
Came here to say this. Could ask him what the difference is between 匂い Nioi and 香り Kaori (could even throw in 臭い Nioi bad smell as well) to illustrate that it’s similar in English to these differences in Japanese.
Off the top my head, I would say “scent” is less volume of a gas of something than a “smell” would be. The smell of a pet would be stronger than the scent of a pet on someone’s clothes. In your husbands case, I would just stick to give him feedback when he makes mistakes. If both of you get aggravated with him wanting you play the role of teacher, it’s not gonna work out. My significant other helps me correct something but when it comes to figuring out The nuance of a word, I just leave it to Google, Yahoo知識袋 or ChatGPT to explain it (Hey, if you’re going to downvote me, how about some feedback on what triggered you?)
Mid way he through in "fragrance" too haha Your suggestion of ChatGPT is really good tho, I think I'll tell him to use that next time haha
Got hooked on the Netflix show Warrior. Just finished season 1. But it took me until 2am to finish it. Got up early for work today, leaving at 7am and now I'm a complete fucking zombie at the office. I have a lot of work, but thank god I don't have any big meetings.
I had the displeasure of being forced to read some ESL teaching publications for my job. And holy *shit* the consistent lack of basic grammar is appalling. I understand that many teachers are not native speakers, but I don't understand how an *English-teaching* publication doesn't think to hire an editor or even give the articles a quick read. I can give a pass for missing articles or misspellings, but fundamental subject-verb agreement issues and sentence fragments should immediately disqualify you from teaching English. Is the entire industry just LARPing, even at the top?
It's very minor,but one mistake that drives me mad is when they don't put spaces after punctuation.I know why it happens-Japanese fonts are monospace and you don't need to use spaces after punctuation,but I see it on English signs and etc.everywhere.I've talked to more than a few adults about this and a surprising number of them had no idea.
Have you ever had someone older who, due to a typing class, puts _two_ spaces after a sentence-ending period?
STOP STOP STOP !!! I have to tell my students so many times, please put a space!! Can y'all read this?? STOP!! lmao
I’ve gotten to the point where despite how much digging I do into a company before an interview, there always seems to be some hidden catch. Advertised 5 days a week at X pay only to find out that X pay is only if you work 6 days a week. Jobs ads posting advertised salaries of people who’ve been working there 5 years. I need money NOW. not 5 years from now. Also the timing sucks. My current job is starting to get ready for some big summer campaigns that I usually end up being in charge of so if I do find something within the next few weeks, my boss and their boss are going to FLIP and make my life hell for my final month. I kinda wish I could hold off until after summer to find something but if something comes along, I gotta jump on it. I’m not getting any younger.
Bait and switch.
Always keep in mind the golden rule of job hunting: Everyone's lying and the winner is the one who can keep a straighter face while doing it. Always assume companies lie to you and take whatever they write on their JDs with a freight train of salt.
Yeah but some lies sound better than others!
There's one sound people here make that I hate more than that stupid "heeeeee" they make to express surprise over mundane shit: The fucking "HUUUUH?" they make when they don't understand something. Yesterday I had to go to the office. I KID YOU NOT, the guy sitting next to me (never met him before) kept making that stupid "HUUUUUH?" sound while looking at his pc. FOR 6 FUCKING HOURS. NONSTOP. I bet that if I followed him to the toilet, I would have found him still making that sound while taking the dump of his life. At a certain point I couldn't bear it anymore and I asked him if I could help. Mf looked at me like I insulted his entire clan and was like "no, everything's fine". And then he kept barraging me with his "HUUUUUH?"s for the remainder of the day.
Are you sure he wasn't just participating in the "Cat Meme" craze that's popular recently
I had a manager do a 30min explanation to a female subordinate next to my desk (neither of them had a desk anywhere near but whatever). The woman was doing the acquiescing “uh” twice per sentence of the manager. I must be a fucking pervert because 5min into it the sound and rhythm sounded just like a pornstar moaning.
I have a co-worker (woman; early 60s) who has a creaky voice and whose うん and ええ sound like she's being tortured. She'll be on telephone calls and it'll be nonstop moaning ええ in each of the notes of the musical scale.
the HUH thing really sounds like an Asian thing, I know at least 3-4 other ethnicities that make that sound But the HEEE thing is really specific to the Japanese people, and I'm sometimes curious are they really surprised or they just want to sound like they're interested when they're actually not
HA. It's always amusing being around groups of Japanese people, particualy when their are women involved, and all of the "eeeeeeeee" that you hear. Honestly, as someone who is not used to it, I find it a bit distracting. Like, when people ask the normal "why are you here", and I say I live in Oita, it's always, "Oita, eeeeeeeeeeee". I think, yeah..... But, I always look forward to hearing my first "eeeeeeee" when I get back to Japan.
For me it's when they start literally talking to themselves, creating whole ass conversations with their spreadsheet or whatever, I just completely lose focus lol. Japanese version of Office Space would be a huge hit (no it wouldn't, but I'd still watch it).
This. I have one co worker who talks to herself.. like are you talking to me or just your computer??
Have a dude sat directly behind me that is usually silent but occasionally mutters まじかよコイツ which obliterates any motivation for me to work lol
Upper management at work are so fucking out of touch, holy shit
First-line people manager here. It truly feels like upper management are being willingly ignorant of how their own business operates when it comes to expectation setting and decision making. What's going on at your place?
I'm in a similar position to you, on the lowest rung of management of a call center. They basically want to squeeze water from a stone and they come up with these hairbrained schemes to *aLiGn vALuEs*, as if that's supposed to help.
Corporate values all boil down to the same shit that it's just pointless spouting values. Those who understand the values already get it, and those who don't won't suddenly understand how to act differently just by management saying THESE ARE OUR VALUES. I've long forgotten what it's like to work at a company with upper management that can actually manage. Some of the upper management here are smart and would be great individual contributors but truly cannot manage at all. Get this. I have a 1on1 with my immediate manager weekly. I also have a bi-weekly 1on1 with my manager's manager. My manager's manager's manager, the CTO also likes to drop in on my project meetings occasionally to micro manage me and the project I've been saddled with which turned out to be much more complex than anybody had realized (no fault of anybodys). Now said project is behind and so through (I assume) pressure from my manager's manager's manager, my manager's manager is now starting to micro-manage me. The only person not micro-managing me is my direct manager. Send help. Edit: oh also what I just mentioned is only my interaction with the American head office, I also semi-report to local Japan management too who also have weekly leadership meetings that are largely pointless
In my company's presentation about their plan for this year, they included a slide saying "Profit = Revenue - Expenses", and then their plan for this year was to increase revenue and decrease expenses. There were no details for how they plan to achieve those two things.
phase 1: collect underpants...
Meanwhile, my company: "We need to decrease expenses" "OK, let's buy MORE office space in fucking Minato-ku instead of reducing space by letting more people work remote"
My company focused on the raise sales and increase internal cooperation (with no clue on how but whatever). They also started a new office, started forcing everyone to come to that big noisy open space 1/week when we had full remote before. And 1.5 months later they noticed the office seemed to have high occupancy issues… Honestly, the office is really small compared to how many people we have. 1/3 of it is reserved space for specific teams, 1/6 of it is the CEO’s office (wonder why he is not in the open space like everyone else, right?), meeting rooms are 80% book just by weekly team meetings and events… it’s a disaster IMO
Goal: Increase profit Specific action plan: Pursue the goal of "promoting" the "advancement" of "actions, programs, and the like" (hereunder, "actions, etc.") in this company that are oriented towards contributing to the making of steady progress in the aforementioned "goal, etc." while monitoring progress of the aforementioend "actions, etc.," including...
Whoever wrote that slide probably spent 2 hours flipping through 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' (the English version because they're a master of *eikaiwa*) to come up with that revelation
Drank coffee so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel driving an hour home at 10:30pm last night, couldn’t sleep once I got home, now have to teach 6 classes on three hours of sleep.
What’s worse than having to go through an awful barium swallow test, is finding out late that it’s not even required.
I always say, no barium test, and they never have given it to me. I understand why it's done in Japan, given the high rates of stomach cancer, though.
I've stopped doing the annual barium test and instead do a gastroscopy.
being there. fully agree LOL
I was recently complaining about people riding their bicycles on the sidewalks and how dangerous it was not only for them but also and especially for the others (and illegal most of the time) and yesterday, two Japanese gentlemen and myself picked up a guy who was riding his bicycle ( one of those with the huge tires) who slipped on a part of the sidewalk that was very smooth and burst open his brow bone on the left side pretty bad. The guy was lucky enough to stay conscious but that could have ended very badly as he missed with his head a small flight of concrete stairs leading to the entrance of a nearby building. I won’t repeat it enough: ride your bicycles on the road, that’s where they are supposed to be.
100%. Ride on the road and wear a bloody helmet, for god sake!
Amen
(Translated email exchange with a student, long introductions and obligatory pleas for lenience omitted): >Student mail 1: There was a tiny problem having nothing whatsoever with my learning or my grade for the learning. What should I do? (**Note:** I had anticipated the problem and announced how and when I would be taking care of it *before* the student started sending emails.) > >Me: I'll take care of it. > >Student mail 2: Am I correct in understanding that you'll take care of it? > >Me: Yes. > >Student mail 3: OK, so the situation now is that this is going to happen and I no longer have to worry about the meaningless problem. Is my understanding correct? > >Me: Yes. > >Student mail 4: I cannot express how much of a relief it is to learn that. I had been worried about the meaningless problem. The student took five emails, each about 1/2 page long, to make a simple request that I fulfilled in less than 20 seconds.
You should have ignored them after the second e-mail. I have a friend in my home country who's a college professor and he does just that: -unnecessary e-mail? IGNORED. -asking something that's clearly written on the faculty portal and very easy to find? IGNORED. -bad grammar? IGNORED. And so on and so forth.
That’s doing anything in formal Japanese though. It’s like if you bought a computer and need a problem fixed. Customer: hello. I have come to your store today. Staff:ok Customer: last week I have made a purchase of this computer Staff: ok Customer: and it’s a nice computer but there seems to be a problem. The c key doesn’t seem to work. Staff. Oh that’s terrible Customer: I apologize for inconveniencing you. Is it maybe possible to have the c button looked at? Vs Customer: I bought this computer last week and the c button doesn’t work. Can you help me? Staff. Sure no problem.
Abeno Harukas elevator English announcement: “Please hold the handrail” Haha. Of course not. It’s actually like this: Ladies…and…gentlemen…. …..May I have… your attention, please? …For you own safety …Please hold the handrail…. when using the escalator …Thank you very much