w00kie

I don't think you're factoring in the weather: Tokyo is incredibly hot and humid in Summer (even more than Singapore, but there it's like that all year round), has a long rainy season in late-spring/early-summer and regular typhoons in late-summer/early-fall. Basically, for more than half of the year you're severely pondering the convenience of taking a cab over walking in the heat/rain.

Even then, the vast majority of people taking taxis regularly are business people going to and from business meetings and expensing it away, as evidenced by the heavily targeted ads for BtoB SaaS playing on the screens in the back of Tokyo taxis.

Don't make the mistake to think these jobs are just there to keep bored retirees active. The basic old age pension (kokumin nenkin - for sole-proprietors and people who have worked in non-permanent positions or small companies) is significantly below the poverty line at 70,600¥ per month -- that's $450 and that's if you've worked for 40 years without any gaps.

The vast majority of old people working these jobs, e.g. construction site security, do so because they would likely starve without it.

Taxes

I might also add that all of the big data center companies have sustainability goals that will push demand for cleaner energy, and therefore investment, in the country where they build.

I work for one of the top datacenter companies in the world and we run 8TWh on 96% renewable energy.

Because "data centers are evil" is trending with the masses.

All this talk of "universal chargers" gets on my nerves: you're not mandating anything about chargers, just the cable connections.

Phone chargers have already been made universal for years, they're all USB-A or C. Stop saying we're revolutionizing the charger industry, we're just standardizing the fucking cable.

Yes, but only after 3 months without a new job as opposed to immediately if laid off.

They can reduce or plain not pay your bonus, yeah. But making the employee pay for "damages", even by subtracting them from remaining pay or bonuses, is very very illegal.

It still takes one standard car's worth of space on the road and one standard car's worth of parking space. This is not a solution to anything.

They can naturalize anytime they want but choose not to...

You're taking the two places that have the most tourists and lowest residential concentration in Tokyo. Obviously it's going to be mostly tourists in the shop.

Go see a Donki in a residential neighborhood and it'll be full of locals. I live in Shirokane, an upscale highly residential neighborhood off of Meguro station, and even if it's reputed as one of the richest place in Tokyo there is a Donki and it's packed with local families shopping.

I love that I can see a word I don't know and get good grasp of its meaning (you can somewhat do that in Latin languages if you have a good grasp of latin and greek roots, but not as reliably). However I still cannot read it since I don't know with any certainty how to pronounce it if I've never heard it before.

And in the old analog days, even if you're an expert with keys and stroke counts, it was still much faster to search a roman character word in a dictionary than a Japanese word you don't know the pronunciation of.

平成 (Heisei) commonly translated to "Achieving Peace" as stated in the article, can also be read as "Flat Growth" which is more indicative of the past two decades here :)

They were actively recruiting clients in France to offer them tax evasion services. There's nothing innocent here.

I live in Japan.

The main issues I see with this is, rather than just "I don't trust the government":

1. They'll do a scan of all devices then ask the ISPs to provide customer information for the vulnerable IPs found so that the government can contact them. So now you'll end up with a big fat list somewhere with names and addresses next to known vulnerability and that list is bound to leak sooner than later. See "My Number" (Japanese equivalent of social security numbers) leaks recently.

2. This makes for great phishing. All newspapers and TV channels have said you might receive notice from the government about security. Now you just have to send emails or letter claiming to be the government, saying "we have found your network to be vulnerable, please run this program to clean it up" and it's way more likely people will run your malware. FREE Advertisement provided by public funds!

Same at a restaurant. They are charging me for food in a nice environment. What am I tipping for? I don't want a nice conversation with my waiter.

Not a typo and it's oral or armpit temperature. Japan is weird with their concept of "fever". When I get a flu shot, they ask me to take my temperature and I have to lie every time because they won't give me the shot if I tell them I read 37.4 C

I was once on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok, connecting back to my home in Tokyo. In such a case Thailand makes you pass immigration on the first flight, so Phuket, then your transit in BKK stays on the airside.

While taxiing to take of, the front landing gear broke so we had to go back to the Phuket airport (still airside) until another plan could be made available. Since we would not make the connection in BKK, they collected everyone's passport to stamp them with a temporary transit visa as we'd need to go to a hotel in Bangkok to wait for the next connection.

After 2-3h the new plane arrived, we flew to BKK and upon deplaning at the gate, a flight attendant came in holding a trash bag filled with all of our passport and proceeded to dump it on the floor and let the 100 or so passengers sift through the pile to find their own passport...

Good times.

And yet hundreds of families are on waiting lists. If you don't get a spot, you have to go to a private facility which can easily cost more than one parent's monthly salary, or drop out of work until you get a spot, but then you're relegated even further down the waiting list.

Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8℃ and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8℃.

Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working.

Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.

You can buy radium balls to put in your bath on amazon japan: https://amzn.to/2JDwICi

And how does the postal worker delivering thousands of letters addressed to "UPS Headquarters ATLANTA" to a dude's apartment in Chicago not think it strange and report it?

Don't worry, it's very weird in Japan too.

Japan has a nice system: when you're not sure your issue is bad enough to call 119 (Japanese version of 911), you can call 7119 which will tell you if it's really an emergency and you need an ambulance or if you should just rest and see a doctor in the morning.

And ensure that all 3 major carriers agree behind closed do to have the exact same prices, just obscured with a bunch of different discounts and mandatory options that makes them look wildly different until you get the bill in the mail and the totals are the same...

I'm always surprised when I go back to Europe and see so many people walking around with iPhone 4.

In Japan, where I live, a vast majority of people get their phones on a 24 months payment plan with a 2 years contract. The carrier gives you a generous discount of about 50% on the price of the phone but applies that discount not on the phone payments but on the data plan. So when the 24 months are done and you've finished paying for the phone, the discount goes away and you pay full price on the data plan and your total bill barely decreases.

In such a system, there is no advantage to keeping your old phone, you might as well just get the latest iPhone every 2 years and that's what 95% of people do.

Mine costs about $1,000: https://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/pas/lineup/city-c/

But I'm in Tokyo so I'm not worried about theft at all. It has an integrated lock on the back wheel and this blocks the handle too.

The van has delivery lockers inside. You can call it to receive your parcel or send one yourself.

You could take the selfie, throw away the ballot and make a new one.

> Both Iceland and Japan are small

Really? Iceland is small will 300k people, yes. But might I remind you Japan is 127 million people...

That was such a let down in the end...