tiredofsametab

It only calls the ZPhone of No Return

I know people who want to have kids but they worry about daycare and such (rough lottery-ish system in Tokyo) and jobs (which means moving to someplace like Tokyo) and the overtime expectations and such. So much stuff here nearly expects one person being home or not working during business hours to get stuff done yet, on the medium japanese, or even Tokyo, income, that’s not tenable. The yen keeps dropping compared to other currencies yet our fuel, agricultural inputs, and many raw materials are still imported.

I’ve been here a decade and have citizenship elsewhere so, if worse comes to worse, I have options. Most japanese do not. Yet salaries remain stagnant whilst everything goes up in prise or disappears from the market.

Yeah, not going to get better until the government addresses the actual problems and reasons people aren’t having kids.

I wonder if Korea has reputational protection laws like Japan where uploading a photo/video of doing something wrong can still get you sued if you don’t hide their identity. That would at least explain some aspect of a reaction potentially. (And for the record, fuck the Japanese reputational damage laws). Still wouldn’t matter based on where it was done, but might give it some background.

They feel only ultra-nationalist conservatives will defend them well against NK & China.

By all indications, cost of living and stagnant wages are the highest priority across the board. Overtourism is usually second or third. NK is hardly a consideration. China (and even Russia) are higher but mostly among ultranationalists due to territory disputes and Chinese investors buying up property.

Yeah this move was essentially to reset the counter to a full 4 years in the lower house. The ldp loves scandles, though, so she might step on a rake and we see some sort of pm election and another general

Pray you’ll have elections come next time cause they’re going to be “fraudulent” with a need to be “reformed”

She does want to reduce the number of reps in one of the houses, but that’s all I’m immediately aware of. Another party wanted to restrict naturalized citizens more, but I don’t think that made its way to the LDP platform.

The “next time” for elections in Japan is also a little less set since the PM can dissolve the lower house whenever triggering an election a couple weeks later. There are also other elections on other schedules. I don’t see it going that far at this time, personally.

Cult of personality + foreigners bad. LDP went further right since Sanseito and other anti-foreigner-spewing parties took a chunk of their voters in the last election. This correctly showed that they would go back to LDP (though Sanseito still lives).

The main opposition, CDP, merged with Komeito, LDP’s former coalition partner, to form a new centerist party (mostly to the right of the former CDP). Komeito has ties to Sokka Gakkai which, in my personal opinion, is a cult. This put off people voting on any of their new candidates. They also didn’t have time to really solidify things since the election came so fast (I suspect this was either very last-minute or not fully baked by the time the election was called).

Some other parties did get more seats. Team Mirai was one, though they seem to also have a bit of a vague platform in some regards and, at worst, may turn out to be DOGE-like techbros. Time will tell.

For parties left of center, with the CDP being gone, there are only a couple. The JCP (Japanese Communist Party) is not actually a communist party anymore but stubbornly refuse to rebrand and people are still scared of them (they’re more social democrats or somewhere thereabouts).

I don’t think that’s exactly right as someone in Japan for more than a decade now.

Overtourism is a separate problem. With the yen weakening compared to other currencies, it made things more affordable. A lot of the tourist industry also collapsed around Corona and the strict (to those external) lockdowns here. That meant there also were fewer accommodations, tourism staff, etc. here. This compounded the problems.

With Corona also came increased prices of a lot of goods and salaries were largely staying stagnant. Having a bunch of extra people buying things up on the cheap yen also meant those things were harder to get for locals. Add to this the JA (basically an ag cartel) and bad weather causing bad rice harvests and people can’t even get the staple that has defined Japanese life for centuries. There’s a lot of simmering anger there. The additional influx of tourists also means that Japanese can’t even travel domestically as cheaply. Hotel prices in some areas have more than doubled since corona and peoples’ salaries have not.

There’s a whole lot going on. I could add a ton of (often illegal) short-term rentals (think Air BnB or similar) pricing people out, foreign (largely Chinese) investors buying land and buildings pricing out the locals is also causing issues. A lot of this boils over to stronger anti-foreigner sentiment that was a real hit in the last election last year and somewhat carried forward this year.

The LDP’s former coalition partner broke off with their rightward turned and formed a new party combining with the main opposition. This meant the main opposition party shifted to the right and also now had ties to Sokka Gakkai which also made them unpalatable to at least some voters. Allegedly, there’s still Moonie money and involvement in the LDP, but I haven’t followed that news much. The LDP’s rightward shift, though, did pick up those tired of the “foreigner issues” (lovely that they rarely distinguish actual residents from tourists, innit) voters who went to other parties. I’ll certainly shed no tears for the more racist parties losing seats, but this is still worrying overall.

Team Mirai, a new party of young people, did pick up votes. They claim to aim for transparency and come from mostly IT backgrounds. The worry here is they’re a bit too into the Dodge type of thing in the US, that they may be very tech-bro types, and they want to use AI for stuff. I don’t know yet. I am no fan of AI and certainly don’t want Dodge tech-bro bullshit coming in. Who knows.

I can’t vote as a non-citizen anyway. If things get bad, I’ll just have to uproot my whole life and move again, but I certainly hope it never gets there.

It more accurately happens like every second or third PM and then things swing to another faction of the LDP (or, historically rarely since WWII ended, another party though the last times that happened they faceplanted pretty quickly and it went back to the LDP)

Ah, also rolling back some labor reforms. For people like me who voluntarily work two jobs (my own small company) it’s not a bad thing on paper but I worry about other things.

More immigration strictness. Things like same-sex marriage and changes or abolishment of the koseki system are dead. Possibly revising the constitution to have real military again and remove or change the defense only clause. Harder lives for the non-wealthy. More corruption and interference with the moonies (allegedly). More stirring shit and nationalism

People waste their money on all kinds of dumb shit. Posters, pictures, plastic toys that will just end up in some landfill, etc. This is mine and I almost certainly spend a lot less on it (again, $20-$25 a year in USD depending on the exchange rate). I almost never eat out. I have real investments. This is entertainment.

Edit: to clarify, dumb here means not necessary. Support art and artists, but don’t by plastic stuff that’s going to end up in a landfill

Ah but I have won… just not enough to do more than pay for about a year’s worth of tickets. It’s not an investment strategy; it’s entertainment. If I ever get rich (and I don’t expect to), nice bonus.

This could be interesting for another reason. Alienation of affection laws (i.e. breaking up a marriage) are a thing here. In the past, some have gotten out of the fines/penalties because this was clearly a transaction and not love. Not being able to legally pay anymore makes that interesting.

I seem to remember sex as being strictly defined as p-in-v penetrative action very narrowly thus allowing other acts to not count for those purposes. Soaplands aren’t technically that and host clubs don’t do any action on the clock or directly for cash.

Edit: clarity.

I mean, I buy up to a dozen lottery tickets a year next door in Japan. Paying off the house would be first and, were I not already a homeowner, buying one would certainly top the list. Those lottery tickets amount to something like 3600 JPY a year which is probably like 20 USD or so. It’s not a financial plan, but I wouldn’t complain if I won. I used to spend more than that at starbucks in a month.

I wonder if there will be more of this as places get more expensive and wages don’t keep up with inflation as with older people never leaving jobs so younger people can move up. People will gravitate toward cheaper places but that means younger people who don’t have other choices can’t enjoy it.

But, as the article points out, this is not legally enforceable. It may or may not get them into actual legal trouble if someone follows through on a complaint (depending on the wording). The English translation in the article makes it sound like they could get in trouble for it, but it’s hard to tell without the original Japanese.

In Japan for over a decade now and agree.

Yeah, i think metro areas make more sense for many things. There’s the 23ku, but also the rest of (non-marintime) Tokyo pref., much of kanagawa pref., and parts of Chiba and Saitama prefs.

The daytime population of the 23ku is crazy, but not everyone lives therein.