tiredofsametab

Eh.... Unless you are actually Japanese, you're probably going to be hanging out with other ex-pats, or just very lonely.

I disagree here. Learn the language and hang out where Japanese hang out.

Japan is an extremely conservative and insular country. They don't really mind people visiting for the most part, but they don't really think highly of people actually immigrating there.

The "they" here is doing a lot of work. Certainly, a number of people are anti-immigration as they see an erosion of their tradition and some, the I suspect it an ever-shrinking minority, Others are mostly fine with immigration if it's "the right kind/race of immigrants". I have a loving family here in my in-laws with whom I am often involved (grandpa loves writing letters). As for immigration itself, in the ~10 years I've been here, they've added new visas with quicker paths to permanent resident status. One can apply for citizenship after 5 years (though it requires renouncing all others which is why I don't do it -- I do wish they'd change that).

There are ethnic Koreans who have lived in communities in Japan for hundreds of years who are still considered outsiders and are treated like second class citizens.

I don't know exactly what you're referencing here. There are zainichi Koreans who are in a weird spot. There is more racism to people from the neighboring countries than perhaps others, but that's also not universal. A lot of Koreans that are here because their homes/families were in the north don't take Japanese citizenship and, often, don't really feel Japanese either; they feel their identity is north korean, but don't move their either for obvious reasons. As such, they don't take Japanese citizenship and are basically waiting to "go home". I used to hang out with one and my wife knew a couple and they are in an interesting spot. They often also go schools run by nork-friendly institutions and some (many? all?) do at least visit pyongyang once, but they're well aware of how much they are taught and shown is carefully curated and not typical. Anyway, the not taking citizenship and not going home does rub some (especially the far right) the wrong way and they'd rather they GTFO. Edit: a lot of the families were brought over, often involuntarily, during Japan's colonization of Korea and WWII.

Racism is definitely something that I think is shrinking over time, but definitely still too high and a problem to be addressed.

Japan's economic policy always has been weird, but lately things just keep appearing to get worse with like 30 years worth of shrinkflation happening all at once and wages not raising with inflation at all. The yen has slid against the dollar to pretty terrible rates. While it sucks for me personally wanting to do things like visit family overseas, it also plays a role in imports. Especially post 3-11 when they started turning off nuclear, a lot of fuel for everything, including keeping the lights on, must be imported. The low JPY basically just benefits the export markets.

More progressive, basically. The person who came second for PM wants to continued forced unified surnames (at least when both people getting married are Japanese) and has a bunch of positions on things like LGBTQI that drag progress backward. It also reads like she would revoke broadcasting licenses for news channels whose politics she doesn't like. We already legally have to pay a yearly fee (kinda like a UK license fee, I think) for owning anything capable of receiving a TV signal. This was initially done (at least in part) to fund NHK (Japan's BBC or PBS or whatever) outside of the government. They still have self-censored and at times aired wildly bullshit, racist things (particularly around corona). The position is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanae_Takaichi and, if another PM election which is not unlikely soon, I suspect she might win.

Can confirm, it beats the fuck out of Tokyo 99% of the time. Edit: no dog yet, though, as we want to do some rather long traveling before we get a pet. We do have neighborhood cats and one will come chill near us (though not let us touch him).

If I had it to do over again (born/raised in the US, living in Japan), I might pick Norway or Finland over Japan, but overall I'm fairly happy where I am.

I types out and deleted twice multi-paragraphee answers. I don't think a tldr is better. For reference, I'm barely gen-x and voted.for harris. my immediate family, whom I will reference, are boomers from the late 40s to 1960. I don't know that they all voted for trump, but at least two said they planned to (I have step-parents as well, so it's not just a pair above me).

Although there are groups and people they hate, particularly in the context of evangelical christianty in the case of at least two, that was not the motivating factor. The motivating factor to all of them (at least so far as I can interpret it) was a combination of fear and loss of power and purpose when I try to boil it down.

Some of my direct family live in a place that got famous for its.immigramt population this cycle. When I visited I summer of 2023, their complaints were about systems not being able to keep up and unlicensed and uninsured drivers in those groups. Even one of my super evangelical baptist family members didn't comment on the different variety of Christianity. Had many not been Christians, that might be different

Ok, this is several paragraphs again already. What I think, reading this rambly mess, is it is less hatred at a group (though that does exist), it is fear-based but also based on placed whose systems can't keep up with the issues they face.

Though, having grown up not far from said place, there are hateful and racist people so that factor's weight is also non-zero. Even then, I think the erosion of the middle class and their loss of status was the cause rather than direct hatred.

I guess, at my 4th or 5th attempt at this post, my point is that those folks mostly did not directly or intentionally vote because of hatred, but more out of fear and loss.

I've mostly heard 'yanks' in English. I don't know if Japanese slang specifically has a word for USian foreigners as most situations don't really care about which country and, if more specificity than 'foreigner' is required, it's usually going to be some adjective/descriptor (loud, rude, skin_color_here, etc. in the case of people being those things).

Unfortunately for my sanity over here in UTC+9, I can't just sleep through the whole thing. I'm hopeful that work will be busy enough tomorrow that I won't have time to think about it. What I also know is that it's most likely going to get drawn out longer, so I won't likely be specifically watching anywhere, but just picking up occasional US news somewhat accidentally along the way (either here or via fark). I voted as soon as I could print my overseas ballot and get it in the mail so I've done all I can do.

I didn't have a car for a few years and the one I had was 2003 (with a slight stint from a similarly-aged car during a couple-month time I had to drive). I now have a car again and I HATE that my heat/air and such are all flat against the panel (not a touch screen, though). I literally can't adjust anything without looking in my current car. Thankfully, I avoid driving it whenever possible.

I've always liked the name Ruben for some reason and only ever known one that I can recall (whose brother was called Robin).

I also am partial to Ezekiel and they can have Zeke as a nickname which I think sounds pretty rad.

generally one at a time, sometimes 2 if I decide to grab a cup of coffee.

A decade ago, I interviewed at a FAANG company. It was basically an all-day affair and a bit grueling, but they did at least try to make it as pleasant as possible. I did have to do binary search on a whiteboard. Also write code to do something on a whiteboard (I had initially been told not to bring a personal laptop and the third or fourth interviewer said that I should use my personal laptop since it would be easier than white-boarding. Uhhhhh...)

A couple companies ago, I ended up at like 5 or 6 total interviews, including the initial HR/fit screen. There were some extra steps including background screenings and the like (healthcare IT). I started the job and almost nothing was what they said it was (though apparently that was because of a change in course between when I started and ended the process). It was actually a decent enough gig and taught me a fair bit, but the interview process was rough in terms of sheer number of calls/meetings and timing. I could swear at one point a guy was typing code I was telling him on the phone to verify that it worked (then again, nearly anything is valid Perl which is the language I started in there).

Another previous company was a clusterfuck of time zones, weird interview times from people in multiple countries, poor communication, etc. Still, I was desperate and went with it. Ended up being the longest job I worked, but boy were there shitstorms that came out of the chaos. It was a start-up spun off an existing entity and just weird in a lot of ways.

My current job was an HR fit check and some basic screening questions about tech stuff, interview with peer, interview with a manager, and interview with head of IT. No projects nor coding tests. I've happily been working for them for quite a while now. Pays well enough by Japanese IT standards and, perhaps more importantly to me, is fully remote (though I'm heavily encouraged to bop down to Tokyo for a couple company events per year).

As the interviewer, especially before I was in development and was leading a helpdesk (developing stuff for that job actually got noticed and got me my first developer role), I was heavily into the weird questions (from a book called something like 'how to move mt fuji' IIRC), but at least part of my job was assessing people's approach to situations and questions, how they explain things, how they react under pressure, and so on. Still kinda cringy thinking back to it, but I was in my early 20s at the time in the early 2000s.

As an interviewer for developers, I never gave any assignment I expected to take more than 2 hours in the worst case and only gave those if the person didn't have something already online to submit (i.e. a github repo or whatnot). I would ask them about choices they made, flow, and anything that stuck out to me. I did ask plenty of questions to make sure the applicants weren't full of shit and to assess experience; so many people who have SQL on their resume apparently have no idea WTF the EXPLAIN functionality is and have no idea about indexes which is frightening. I always tried to strike a balance between finding out what I needed to know and respecting the time of my interviewees.

Even before AI, I definitely encountered people writing things on their CV with no actual idea about them. During phone interviews, I could definitely hear people furiously typing away (presumably into some search engine) whilst stalling with non-answers. I was not expecting anyone to know everything about everything, but I'd rather they tell me they aren't sure and give it their best shot than search and give me the same thing one of the first few hits in google or Wikipedia would give (this happened way too often at a previous company that never really screened anybody before taking up engineers' and managers' time for interviews).

I've also had a couple people be confidently incorrect and either refuse to get the hint or acknowledge this when I gently tried to ask questions that should cause them to realize that what they said was wrong or contradictory. People make mistakes, especially under pressure, but I definitely had some answers that left me in disbelief.

When I give interviews, I'm more concerned with the process than the results for some questions. I don't really do it any more, but I'd sometimes ask one question not related to programming or anything on their CV just to see how someone works through a situation given a little bit of a curveball.