Living in Japan Q&A / 日本に住むことについての質疑応答

nozawa nachi dog a nest kamijo nice no cotton inside no sto can I tie to my Moscow yoga eat I must see more thing so everyone dog in here um excuse me today I'm going to be doing a long-form Q&A video about general life in Japan so I asked on Twitter the other day send me any any questions you might have about life in Japan and I'm just gonna pick some of the questions that I like and let's get into it incidentally um also kind of related to this I I posted a Twitter survey about a week ago and the question was foreigners have yer has your life improved since coming to Japan yes or no and I think that a lot of the people that asked questions for this video might be interested in the responses to that tweet so incidentally it was 70 70 percent yes I'm glad I came to Japan my life is better 30% no so I'll link that tweet below but anyway let's get into the Q&A just wondering if it is possible to achieve in two level in one year of studying okay um and I'll try and do these questions a little bit faster than normal because I typically take too much time on one question so it is possible to get to an into level in one year of studying but because the jlpt only it doesn't test your speaking skills it means that you'll have studied effectively for an entire year really really really hardcore and never concentrated on speaking if you want to get to that level within a year so I wouldn't recommend it even though it's probably possible if your end goal is to develop I would say balanced Japanese could you explain the bills associated with apartment living in Japan and why it seems that the gas bill is most expensive I swear I only use gas for hot water so I'm really confused why mine is always so high maybe some tips on how to lower your bills would be nice in terms of getting your bills down in general this isn't really a utilities thing but if you are still using Softbank a you or DoCoMo switch as soon as as fast as you can to a cochlea Shima it's a it's like a budget provider I think some of the budget providers in the states right now might be like ting is that what it's called anyway I use this service called QT mobile and it's like $20 and they say in a month and I used to pay for the same kind of plan like $80 on a you so switch to cochlea session but that's the easiest way to lower your your normal bills that you might have living in Japan seriously wondering about this how do you shake off those in HK gangster people who try to harass you for your money um so for me the thing that I find works best is just to really put your foot down like just say like really really don't be like apologetic and be like oh yeah actually I don't have a TV it got a lot easier for me once I had my twin daughters because when he came to the door I legitimately was like crazy busy I was just like you know I'm not paying this I don't have a TV get out of here incidentally I don't have a TV so yeah that's my advice put your foot down okay so by 2030 your twins will be 10 years old do you intend to raise them to be as bilingual as possible um this is a good question so right now we use primarily English at home and then Japanese outside of the home and I think by doing that they'll get a good balance of each language but based on the academic literature that I came across during my phonetic studies in linguistic studies in college and both after college as well I the evidence seems to seemed to indicate that when you bring up people that are completely bilingual each of those languages kind of suffers a little bit compared to someone who is just monolingual and because of that I do think it's better to have a dominant language so I think that their dominant language will probably end up being English because well at least this point in time we use English more than Japanese but like Joey is one of the few people that I've ever met that really speaks both languages fluently and rather than having both languages at like a like a B level rather than both language is that like an A+ level so unless I think one of the reasons for that is because Joey is just really intelligent but I don't know if it's realistic to expect everyone to that's brought up in a bilingual environment too to eventually get to an A+ level in both languages and because of that I think it's probably best to have at least one dominant language or one academic language so to speak next question how to not burn yourself working for our company in Japan so I'm gonna briefly refer to the video I made in the past about working in Japan it's great to live in Japan but working in Japan especially within a Japanese company depending on the company it's not so great and that's because like the strict hierarchies and that's why my logan's formula for success in Japan is to live in Japan and reap all the benefits of living in Japan but try and work independently or work in a company that certainly meets your own that also holds your own personal values whether that's a foreign company in Japan or a Japanese company that has values that may match your own so basically what I want to say with this bit is I'm a lot happier right now living in Japan but doing YouTube then I was when I was working at like a Japanese university or a Japanese company and that's because this work is much better for me and I don't like working within that Japanese system so if it's possible try and do your own thing in Japan living in Japan is great but working in Japan isn't so great so it's best to do your own thing and reap the benefits of living in Japan have you ever driven a car in Japan yes I do have a car and I Drive it almost every day I would say the major difference compared to at least the United States is that people in Japan don't really how do you what do you say don't undergo road rage like the typical American does so people don't really honk their horns in anger and stuff like that in Japan it's much more pleasant to drive in Japan how do i improve upon my Kiowa skills my study group helps a lot but I'm the only one involved in studies beyond jlpt and three currently studying into in that study group of my Institute I feel that it will become too difficult to do it on my own from here on out I've talked about this a little bit in my patreon series but I don't really encourage studying with other people that are studying Japanese because while it might be a really good motivation and they might motivate you to speak and you know keep studying social keep studying when like 90% of the Japanese that you hear is Japanese spoken by foreigners that's not terribly good for your your Japanese so what I would encourage you to do is not to have like a study group but to make Japanese friends that share your interest not like a Japanese language partner that you speak Japanese that you speak Japanese with and then also sometimes you switch into English and stuff like that get into that environment where everything is in in Japanese and you're forced to punch above your weight and it's not like this exchange like okay I'll speak English and then you speak Japanese because when you when you do that it's it's much too slow it's like you can't really concentrate on improving your Japanese you just have to immerse yourself completely in the Japanese environment with no compromises if there is no no group then I would encourage you to one thing I talk about in my phonetic series also is just you like pick a Japanese movie and put it on repeat and watch it like every single day multiple times for a month until you can memorize every single line in the movie and you can recite it as the movies going that'll do wonders for your spoke in Japanese also record yourself if you haven't if you don't regularly do that that helps a lot you can just kind of make like a stupid vlog about like okay this is what I did today but if you're forced to do that in front of a camera in Japanese in your second language it doesn't sound terribly effective when you hear it but once you try it it's the it's really challenging and once you've done that a few times the next time that you actually go out and speak Japanese to like a Japanese person it's not really as intimidating a lot of those nerves will kind of calm down so I found that that helps a lot that's what I would recommend for you are you prepared for the Olympics how do you think it will affect Japan in the long run oh I think this is gonna be really interesting I probably need to like make like an entire video about like date the Olympics um long story short I think that it's going to be like a nightmare I think it'll be like a lot of fun for like the Japanese people all around Japan that are watching the Olympics like from their homes because they can enjoy seeing the Olympics in Japan so to speak it's like a thing of pride for them but in like there's gonna be so many foreigners that haven't wanted to come to Japan since before it was determined that the Olympics would be in Japan all those people are going to come and all a bunch of people from all over Japan are going to go as well and it's gonna be in the summer and the summer in Japan is ridiculously hot and the trains are awful I feel like I feel like well the Olympics themselves will be amazing I feel like the effort in getting to the Olympics and just like getting to like the stadium and stuff like that might put a bad taste in a fair number of people's mouths so I'm just gonna watch it on like YouTube it'll be good for for tourism obviously and not just for that particular year but in the future as well but yeah this summer in Japan is just so so hard and it's getting hotter and hotter every year and it's gonna be in Tokyo and Tokyo is like the hottest besides maybe like kilt awesome I wouldn't want to go but if you are interested in going don't let me stop you Japan has 33 percent of the u.s. population in about four percent of the space everyone knows about the subway sardine packing in Tokyo rush hour but how about in daily life in other prefectures or city this like bet boot which is where I live um does it feel crowded despite the rural areas seeming so beautifully open No so it doesn't really feel crowded per se but you get like small reminders in your daily life that there's a premium on land in Japan and what I mean by that is like the car that I Drive it's called a kei car it's like a it's a it's a very small car that house I think of below 600 cc engine so like a lot of the cars that everyone drives day to day are much small they're almost like as small as a smart car and then also everyone's apartments well they're the apartments themselves are quite nice they're usually quite small compared to like an apartment in the States so it doesn't feel crowded per se but there are little reminders that again there's a premium on land and space in Japan even within the countryside often do you see foreigners on a day to day basis this is interesting as well so I live in Beppu which actually has the highest ratio of foreigners to Japanese citizens and that's because there's a university here that I used to work at called APU and half of the students there that go there are foreign and also a lot of the students that graduate from there end up staying in Beppu and like a bunch of the teachers that teach there are foreigners like I didn't teach there but I was a foreigner and I worked there as well so people in that booth are used to interacting with foreigners and I never get like weird stares or anything like that but as soon as I leave that but I do get like the Oh foreigner over there sometimes but I think there's kind of a it's a misconception that Japanese people have no like are completely not used to interacting with foreigners I think that's certainly like 20 or 30 years ago that was definitely true and I definitely got like a lot more looks I would say like the first time I came to Japan which was 2007-2008 studied abroad for a year but it's it's changing really fast laws the Japanese youth are studying abroad and then coming back so they're you're they're really used to speaking in English and interacting with foreigners and more and more foreigners are living in Japan at the same time so in bed boots it's like non-issue completely but in other parts of Japan it's coming less and less of a big deal big deals not the right term but foreigners are becoming less rare year by year so what I want to say what's the most common negative life habit that expats pick up living in Japan and how do you avoid them wow that's a great question so what I want to say this is funny because this is actually advice that I got from a Japanese guy when I was working at a one of my old one of the old places that I used to work at so there is kind of there is certainly a Japanese kind of way of doing things and to make that to really briefly summarize that that's you can do anything you want within the rules but is and if you do that everything goes smoothly it's not difficult to get anything done but as soon as you take one step out of the normal rules everything becomes just a complete mess you'd have to make like a an application to use like a fax machine it's like a really extreme example but that's the kind of thing that happens as soon as you go out of the range of what's normal within a normal company basically what the Japanese guy told me is as you're working within this Japanese company what's going to happen is the longer that you work here you're going to initially you'll try real hard to get things done in the most effective way because that's just what work is you want to get things done in the quickest most effective way as possible but when you work in a Japanese company you'll often run into a lot of red tape and initially that won't bother you but over time you'll have an idea for getting something done but you won't go through with it whereas you might have when you initially started you won't go through with it after like three or four years at the company because you'll be deterred by the amount of red tape the amount of applications and just things that you have to do initially just to get that thing just to get an okay to do that thing he just said you'll start to lose your own sense of work you know become kind of more Japanese I guess and he said there are times when that's a thing because it'll mean you're a bit more like cautious and you won't make as many mistakes as you do your work but there are certainly times when it's it's a very bad thing and you should be able to zoom out and look at a situation and be like this is so stupid why is it like this if it actually is stupid and not every situation is stupid but he said even after living in Japan for four or five years don't let go of that initial kind of curiosity I want to get things done in the most effective way possible be objective and zoom out and see how you change over time living in Japan do you still get anxious when you when you receive official papers in the mail yes and no I don't get anxious about the Japanese anymore I get anxious because it's usually tax related because I'm self-employed so I get rather than like a company doing everything tax related for me and never having to worry about that I get like something tax related once a week in the mail and it's like all these complicated terms and it's like okay you owe this much money like this massive amount of money and that stresses me out big time but I've been working with a personal accountant for the past year or Japanese personal accountant for the past year or so and that has helped out significantly and also a lot of the times when I'm saying like it's becoming less and less attractive for foreigners to work in Japan not foreigners six people that generate a lot of money to work in Japan a lot of the information I'm saying that because that's what he's told me and he's told me that like how the tax rates are expected to increase in Japan and stuff like that so I've often talked to him about like would it be good to continue to do what I'm doing right now but to like make my own company and would that be able to what could I save taxes if I did things that went and he said well yeah probably for maybe like a year or so but because they're going to be raising taxes on the middle classes for middle class people that are employees at a company rather than self-employed it actually doesn't make sense because you'll lose money if you do that over the course of like two or three years even if you can save mine doing that this year that's because again the tax rates are increasing next year and they're expected to increase again after that oh this is super interesting okay how do you feel about how Japanese teach history World War two in particular I'm gonna try and answer this concisely because I think the more I overthink this the more trouble to get me in from both sides but I do think it would be good if the public schools in Japan taught more about the atrocities that Japan committed during World War two but I don't at all think that Japan was the only one that committed various atrocities and I think that in the research that I've done it's very clear that the United States has certainly done its fair share of terrible things during World War Two as well and I'll leave things that that war is just it's just evil and it's it's easy to say this side obviously was good in this side was obviously bad but I'm not educated enough to say that with confidence so I'm not going to I'm just going to say that again I do think that it'd be good if Japanese if Japanese teachers taught more about the atrocities that the Japanese did but at the same time I think it would be good if the atrocities that the Americans committed were covered more in American schools as well okay do you know Kansai been I can understand it but I can't speak it why did the Japanese seem to love paperwork so much it's big it's a cultural thing it's because paperwork is kind of a physical it's a manifestation of doing things carefully you can look at a paper and see whether or not something is okay rather than just confirming by word of mouth orally and because the Japanese society in general stereotypically if I speak in stereotypes is rather careful compared to like Western cultures it's easy to see why Japanese people like paperwork so much or paperwork is so popular within Japan certainly a lot of Japanese people don't like paperwork so have you ever got a chance to visit the US military bases in Japan yes I have actually I've been to I think almost all of them that's because when I worked at APU I it was my job to recruit Japanese students to go to APU and the students that APU is looking for or like a bilingual half of students and so there's a good number of those students that live within those US military bases in Japan like Japanese wife American soldier husband or the opposite but that first one's typically much more common so I've been to almost all of them and it's really really interesting it's like you kind of go in through the gate and like you you it literally is America so when I say it's like you're going into America it actually is America within Japan but like everything about it is so so super American like the the the street signs I'm like the way that the buildings look and like the restaurants and everything like that like it's literally like you're driving through the streets of like Okinawa or like Yokosuka or wherever it might be where wherever there's a military base in Japan then you drive through the gate and suddenly it's like you're in like a little mini American city in Japan it's it's wild but it's also if you get an opportunity to do it I would highly recommend it it's very very interesting how would you compare the workplace climate to that of the states is there a strict stringent hierarchy / convoluted code of conduct you have to abide by if so was acclamation to that particular structure of expectations and foreign mannerisms difficult for you I think I probably answer that within that first question and the questions that followed where I talked about how in general it takes a lot of time to get things done in Japan but there are less mistakes made along the way but as a foreigner as an American whose values are much more closer to the traditional values of the stereotypical American than the traditional Japanese person it was difficult for me to work in a Japanese company and that's why again I encourage people that know that their values are better aligned with stereotypical American or western wherever it might be Vice compared to Japanese values to do their own thing in Japan rather than trying to force themselves into the values of a Japanese company okay how do you respond when they insult you in Japanese not knowing you can understand them no one has ever insulted me in Japanese not knowing that I could understand them I have had times when people didn't know that I could understand Japanese and I could I knew that they were they were talking about me but usually when that happens I just you know ignore it just be like whatever because it's never been a bad mouth no one's ever like insulted me in Japanese again so how much Japanese what I need to go need to know if I want to visit could I get away with minimal / very basic Japanese yes you can you can really enjoy traveling in Japan with literally no Japanese at all but there's a very large difference between enjoying travel in Japan and enjoying life in Japan so if you ever want to like live here even if it's more any for anything more than like a month you really want to have at least a basic level of Japanese and if you want to be here for a significant amount of time anything more than five years Japanese fluency will make all the difference in the world so okay are you still getting Joel's it and the might so do people still tell you the local jewels yeah they do usually it's like you know there's normal interactions that like the Columbian or something where you say like one were like high school he owned the nice small store whatever and they're like oh you know jewels it but that's kind of Shogun I you can't really be helped typically and like longer conversations that I have with people that doesn't really happen so much anymore but I make a lot of jokes about the nihilism but the thing is like 99.999% of the time when someone tells you that like a Japanese person tells you that they've no ill-will whatsoever so like it's stupid to get like offended by it I just think it makes for really good jokes so I like to make jokes about it um is it easy to migrate to Japan like what are the easiest ways to do so this is a good question because I think this is changing as well in the past and I talked about this a little bit in my like college in Japan video Q&A video that I made not too long ago but in the past it's always been the case that if you want to move to Japan what you have to do is get a college degree and then come here as an English teacher and then after doing that for like three or four years hopefully try and transition into a different career after that but these days it's becoming more and more easy to go directly to college in Japan like if you're an American there's probably between five and ten Japanese universities that you could probably get into and graduate from for less money than it would be to get a similar education in the States that's because Japanese universities in general are much cheaper than states universities in the States but also I know a lot of people granted that they're all basically youtubers or freelance workers that have approached like agencies in Japan and said like this I'm a successful youtuber I'm a successful businessman doing this and I would like to move to Japan can you sponsor me and then they say yes and after like three months or so of paperwork they just come to Japan and they never well some of them don't have college degrees some of them never studied Japanese before but they just wanted to come to Japan and again that traditional system of sorry Japanese graduate from university come to Japan on the jet program then switch out after that after you spent like eight years building up to that that's what I did but it's no longer necessary to do that if you have a strong skill set so that's one thing that I would keep in mind what was the initial reasoning for venturing into calm in combining it with your teaching and is there any major noticeable different notable difference between Japanese comedy and Western American comedy oh this is interesting too um I've talked about my own reason that I got into comedy in a separate video like a Q&A video I did with Tokyo creative basically I wanted to be a writer and I was under the impression that I was a good writer and my professor at college said you're not but you're okay at comedy so if you want to do creative stuff do comedy and that happened I had that same thing happened to me multiple times as I spent like five or six years working on creative writing every time I spent a lot of time working on something and putting it out people were like this isn't very good but this other thing that you did that's comedy that's pretty funny so after that happened enough times I just said okay I'll just do comedy I think japanese comedy versus Western comedy this is an entry aliy interesting because I think very very very generally speaking like the basic idea is like Japanese companies much more slapstick and much more physical and much more visual whereas I think American comedy is much more it has a little bit more subtleties in it and it's like this is like a lot of self-deprecating humor and stuff like that um but that's the just very generally speaking and like I was watching what I'll do like and I you can't laugh TV she's like a New Year special at my wife's place over the New Year's and again a large part of that show is the physical comedy like if they're laughs they get hit by if the people in the show laugh they get hit by bats and it's funny because they're trying not to laugh and they laugh and they get hit and hahaha but there's actually like a whole lot of really really deep like really nuanced humor and that show was as well so like when they brought in like the guests I can't remember the girl's name but they had like these two girls come in onto the bus and they were like singing this song that was kind of making fun of like the Yoshimoto agency and like all the what do you say made a bunch of scandals this year basically and they were like making fun of it like this like childhood or like kids song format and like that is like the polar opposite of like slapstick comedy so I was like yeah if you look at it like from the surface in general slapstick comedy as much more popular in Japan but there are there are a lot of smaller much more nuanced elements of Japanese comedy as well and if you look for them you'll notice them how did you find a place to settle housing when you first decided to move to Japan thinking on moving in the future this really all depends on your own situation like if you come to Japan on the jet program they'll take care of it for you typically but if you don't they don't and sometimes what you have to do is get like a place to stay with a friend until you find it an apartment or you need to go to like a guest house you don't need to but you can go to like a guest house for like a week while you apartment shop in Japan I've never needed to do that but yeah is usually best to have a friend that you can you can stay at their place while you do apartment shopping do you think it's hard to live in Japan as a Muslim student um I'm not Muslim so it's difficult for me to say I can say that at APU there's a very very large Muslim student population like there's even halal foods and stuff like that so if you are interested in studying in Japan ap you would probably be the most welcoming place for a Muslim student and how much how many dollars should I bring over for setup costs if I move over after sorting after if I move over after sorting a job with an English teaching company if you have a lot of savings $10,000 would be great if you don't have all the savings you'll also be fine as long as you're frugal and smart and don't go out all the time the reason that I say $10,000 is because there are like three or four things in Japan that each cost like $1,000 or more if you're making a salary of like 2000 or $3000 a year that you don't know about until you moved to Japan so like I bought this old kei car from the alt that came before me I bought it off him for like literally $200 because it like this old terrible car that he didn't want to have because he was leaving Japan and he was like just please take it from me I'll give it to you for $200 and I was like oh okay great so I bought it and it was it was great for what it was and for $200 it was a steal but after like a month I had to pay like $1,200 for the shotgun which is like the car inspection the mandatory car inspection and then there's also like the city and Prefecture tech taxes the living residence taxes that a lot of people don't get taken out of their salary so like this has happened to me and it also happened to my cousin where you're like oh I'm doing like pretty well on in Japan and I finally started to make some money and I've got some money saved up then you get a check in the mail that's like you owe the city like two thousand dollars in cities tax and city taxes and you're like but because that's on top of income taxes and on top of health insurance and on top of the the retirement funds that you also have to pay into even if you're not planning on retiring in Japan as long as you're like working on a proper Japanese company or your your residence is in Japan I believe you might have to double check me on this but anytime I've ever worked in Japan I've also had to pay into the retirement the Japanese government's retirement fund so what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of expenses that again that you might not know about until you come to Japan and a lot of those can cost $1,000 or $2,000 in one go and so it's good to have money saved up from the get-go would you like to be reborn as Japanese no I'm happy as I am right now but because taxes are becoming more and more complicated for me as a foreigner in jazz an American in Japan I am starting to seriously consider getting rid of my American nationality because it's overly complicated the American taxes believe that America the United States is one of the only developed countries in the world that requires its citizens that are living abroad to report their taxes and sometimes paid taxes as well on top of the taxes that they've already paid to the Japanese government and that's it's just it's so much to think about it such a big headache when you're a self-employed person so I am thinking about getting rid of my American citizenship so and the only reason is because of taxes favorite roc-roc song I don't like Odyssey or j-pop song or artist um well Tokyo GaN there used to be one of my favorite bands they're getting back together so that's great news for all the XI 19 Goldman and Tokyo G hen fans so they're getting back together this year 2020 excited for whatever they put out I've seen them live three times I think two times I went to their concerts and I went to their final like live broadcast at a movie theater as well that was pretty cool when they broke up how did you find your first job in Japan did you did you do Co cultivation so did I do job hunting as a new graduate I didn't so my first real full-time job that I had in Japan was on a jet program teaching English through the government but through the government's program that is but um when I was starting abroad I actually worked at a headhunting company in Tokyo called I think was called East West consulting and in order to get that job I did kind of go through the normal job hunting process where I wrote like a resume and I think part of it was in Japanese certainly yeah I think definitely the at least part of it was in Japanese and then like there was multiple interviews one also had some Japanese there was an English interview then a second English interview that had a Japanese part to it and then I had to like make some cold calls to Japanese companies as part of the interview as well and that was like super stressful as much as I hated that job I do think that that was a better experience for me in the long run than if I is it was probably a better thing for me to do as someone who wanted to live in Japan for the long term rather than doing like a teaching English on the side that would have been easier and I probably would have made a little bit more money if I had done that but because I was like doing the Japanese thing like putting on my suits and like going on the train and on the crowded training going to the Japanese company and like calling companies in Japanese that really like forced me to improve my Japanese and also understand the Japanese working mentality a lot better I've learned a lot of things that I didn't realize realize I learned until several years after I stopped working at that company real question about Japan here why do loss of my friends use yacht oil instead of sheíll yacht oil is more colloquial so if they're your friends they'll probably use that I'm coming to Japan this year and was just wondering how open our Japanese towards having foreigner friends this is cool this is a difficult question as well because it depends completely on the Japanese person a lot of Japanese people would love to have a foreign friend and some of those people would love to have a foreign friend because it's like a gimmick some of them are genuinely into it interested in like foreign countries some of them just want a friend and that person happens to be a foreigner it's all about who you're talking to I don't really have a lot of Japanese friends I personally like to just kind of concentrate on work in my family life drinking is probably the best way to make friends in Japan so if you go out and get drinks with like your co-workers just stuff like that you'll find out a lot of different things that you wouldn't have found out about them if you just worked with them and stayed with them and only talked with them in a formal office setting what was the hardest part of for you about adjusting to life in Japan this kind of goes back to like one of the first or second questions that I answered about the NHK Man is that for a very very very long time like multiple years I was scared of ever putting my foot down in Japan because I know that in general Japanese people aren't very combative so adult culture and the culture in Japan kind of it says that it's best to avoid fight avoid any bad situations and not to be a trouble for other people not to be troublesome for other people so because of that I thought I let a lot of people kind of not take advantage of me for a long time but a lot I let people I let other people make decisions for me for a very long time because of that and after like eight or nine years of living here primarily because after having kids here I just all of my free time went away all of my free time completely went away and so a lot of the things that I wouldn't have done in the past in terms of like saying no I am doing now so like for example I went to the bank the other day and they said okay you need to like fill out this form and I was like holding holding one of my daughter's when I was doing this and after I filled out this this long form while holding my daughter and she was like you know I'm trying to get out of my arms and it was like heavy and I was like giving a cramp and writing as soon as I finished writing it they were like okay now you need to write out the entire form again as a copy for you to keep and in the past I would have been like oh really I don't really want to do that but okay but in that situation I just said no I'm not doing that I don't have time I'm just going to take a picture of this and that's what I'm going to do and they were kind of like oh okay and that kind of thing has been happening more and more recently or it's just like because I don't have the time or the energy to do certain things I am more I'll say no in more situations and it's not so much that it's I want to say it and I'm tired of people walking over me it's more of just I have to say no out of necessity I have found that in more situations but not when you do that people will actually be like oh okay and they might give you an alternate of options so that's one thing to consider if you're having like a a hard time in Japan maybe you're adjusting too hard you're getting like adjustment whiplash another good example of this would be I went to the bank the other day different different instance actually I went to the bank to get a I was getting like a check from twitch the streaming site like they were sending me like a monthly my monthly income like my first monthly income it was like $100 but it came in as a remittance as a international transfer from the states and when that happens in Japan you need to it's rather complicated is what I'm trying to say and so they were kind of suspicious about it and they called me and they said like this this transfer came in do you know what this is and I said oh yeah I'd like this is me don't worry about it they said okay well you need to come in and show proof that like of the company that this is coming from you need to bringing in like your foreign residence card and there was something else I can't remember what it was and I said okay is is proof could I just show you the email that I got within my phone would that be okay as proof and they said yes that would be okay and so I said okay great so I went to the bank and I said okay here's the email and then what happened is once I was there and was even though they had already told me that an email would be okay they said this isn't okay you need to get a physical copy of this and to bring it back to the bank and I didn't have time and I said no I'm not doing that I'll send you a copy of this email and you can print it out here within this Bank so give me your email that's on your business card and they said no no no we can't do that you need to go like the convenience store that's across the road and again I'm holding one of my daughter's one while I'm doing this and I don't have time because I have to bring them home and feed them in just a like 15 minutes and so they came back and said no we can't do that and again I did the same thing I kind of put my put my foot down and said no you told me over the phone that this would be okay I'm not going to do this I'm going to email this to you and you can print it out with that printer that's right there and they kind of looked at some of the other employees at the bank and then like I look like the boss kind of guy that was behind a desk over there and after like talking amongst themselves for like 15 seconds they were like okay we can do that and so again there are a lot of situations where if just out of necessity you can't get something done and you have to say no oftentimes you can say no and without repercussions but again don't be a nuisance don't do things just to be a jerk no one likes that was anime a mistake some anime not all anime most anime is wonderful do you want your kids to inherence some of your culture American / Western and if so what are the ways you trying to do that in general I think there's more creativity in the West and there's more perfecting things that have already been created in the West or other parts of the world within Japan and I think that for a very very long time that particular model worked really well for Japan and I think that the Japanese job hunting system and the education system in Japan is also largely based on that general characteristic of Japanese society but because I think China is kind of overtaking Japan in a lot of the fields that Japan was traditionally dominant at whether that's I don't know making cars or like cell phones and stuff like that like Huawei and jemmye and all of these like companies that used to be people would look to Japan for like Toshiba Sony and stuff like that there's a fair amount of innovation now that's coming out of China so Japan is getting some serious competition in terms of manufacturing from China and from the rest of the world in general right now the degree to which Japan needs to change in order to combat this it's quite large in Japan isn't doing enough fast enough is what I'm trying to say and because of that like I think the fact that so many universities in Japan are like okay we teach programs in English now is a reflection of this like Japan trying to become more global but teaching English in Japan is like a baby step and at the same time like every other country particularly China is taking like these massive leaps every year with like billions of dollars in investments in AI and stuff like that and so I personally think that the number one thing Japan needs to do right now is to really kind of try and shake things up and put more emphasis on creativity from the ground up in in terms of education and job hunting and stuff like that and one of the ways maybe perhaps a small way that Japan could do that would be to make things easier for immigrants to come to Japan but that's a very complicated subject by itself because you can't have too many immigrants that come as Japan I don't know enough Japanese and about Japanese culture and Japanese values because then they'll be friction there as well but basically what I'm trying to say with this bit is that I don't think Japan is putting as much of an emphasis on creativity as it needs to be in terms of both education higher education in terms of the workforce and I don't and again I don't anticipate on that changing quickly enough for my kids to take advantage of that change over the next 10 or 20 years and because of that I would like to kind of bestow my own values and like the importance of creativity to them as they grow up because I don't think they'll look at that in Japanese schools and from society at large that's most of the things that I want to cover today sorry for the couple cuts that I had to take out there were a couple of kind of tangents that I went on I think got a little bit too long slit I cut those those bits out but um let's see one hour and okay I'll try and answer one more question real quick I'm not seeing it right here but I've had a lot of people that are asking well I I feel like I saw some comments that said like do you still play the the foreign card or like what are some instances in which you've played the foreign card in the past and what I wanted to say with regards to the foreign card foreigners have to put up with their own junk their own stuff that they don't like and Japanese people also have to put up with their own stuff and junk that they don't like but I feel like a lot of foreigners aren't aware that Japanese people also have a hard time with a lot of things there's a lot of things in Japanese society they don't like as well and when you're the foreigner that plays the foreigner card while these people are just being diligent and they're not complaining and they're they're working hard that's not a good look for a lot of the foreigners that are here but I like to say is that I see kind of two groups really like the pro conservative Japan group and like the Japan needs to change to become more global and fix all these issues that Japan has group like really fighting it out on Twitter a lot and there's a lot of it's mostly foreigners but there's Japanese members on both sides as well and it's important I believe that it's important to not let these groups escalate to the level that they're out with in the States right now where everyone is just at each other's throats all the time and no one I was willing to have a conversation so I would say going forward my main concern right now is like just decency in Japan as a foreigner living in Japan and so I was really really really happy when I put out this survey the survey the other day not because 70 percent of the people said I I'm glad I lived in Japan but because even the people that said I'm not happy that I came to Japan there was no fighting there was like 300 comments talking about the pros and cons of living in Japan and everything was civil and I was like this is amazing like all these all these people that you know they're expressing like this part of Japanese culture I didn't like and this felt backwards but that's okay and then oh well I experienced this in that and I just hope that this kind of thing continues into the future and becoming more and more political and this is becoming a rant at this point so I'm going to end the video here thanks again for the support happy new year everyone and let's all enjoy 2020 together : load them won't you don't squander Nationals

Channel: Dogen

Views: 147,802

Rating: 4.9766612 out of 5

Keywords: Dogen, Japan, Japanese, 日本, 日本語, Comedy, お笑い, Foreigner, 外国人, Japanese language, Living in Japan Q&A, Life in Japan Q&A, 日本に住むことについての質疑応答, 日本の生活についての質疑応答

Id: bSGAp1AryXs

Length: 49min 28sec (2968 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 03 2020