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yamakadi
Joined 143 karma
- yamakadi parentI understand the rest, but an otherwise capable person with a sick family member does not clear the bar for competent? Saddening if that’s where we are as a society.
- It’s easy to say that if you aren’t living a normal life here. Grocery receipts are growing faster than they ever have. It’s all small and incremental but enough to nearly double what we spent half a decade ago.
Keep in mind this is a country where new graduate salaries have been unchanging for the past 30 years. Even small rates of inflation is relatively devastating to certain groups.
- Various Japanese websites actually have business hours, though it’s been getting better since 2020’s.
Imagine a banking app not allowing onboarding outside 8:30-18:30 Mon-Fri or a municipal site just saying come back at 8am.
The e-Tax system and various other government services still have these as well, mostly as daily maintenance windows. Some services use it to run data clean-up, consolidation, backup, etc. tasks so it’s not without reason.
- They are franchised here as well, although the holding company owns multiple stores. The overall quality, including the operating hours to the chagrin of the franchisees, is ruthlessly maintained through their contracts and lawsuits though.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/06/24/business/seven-...
The US contracts might be more relaxed or the holding company might not have enough control due to the sheer size of the US market. In Japan, most stores get deliveries more than twice a day, have inspectors show up unannounced, need to make daily reports in some cases, etc. Not much room for leeway.
- I’m sure it’s closed source for the eventual plans to monetize it, but what’s the real difference to something like https://github.com/NavyTitanium/Fake-Sandbox-Artifacts and why can’t you at least name yourselves?
Not many software promises to fend off attackers, asks for an email address before download, and creates a bunch of processes using a closed source dll the existence of which can easily be checked.
Then again, not many malware targeting consumers at random check for security software. You are more likely to see a malware stop working if you fake the amount of ram and cpu and your network driver vendor than if you have CrowdStrike, etc. running.
- My wage in terms of dollars have remained the same for the last 5 years despite earning double. It's not ruining my life only because it takes longer for prices to increase here -- but they are definitely increasing.
Japanese people also don't like talking about wages and not everyone compares what they are making to the dollar. I have heard plenty of colleagues, friends, and family complain. It's more about how the number of diapers in a bag has decreased steadily from 72 to 56 than boy my life is getting ruined by weak yen.
The more prevalent complaints are from fellow mortgage borrowers. Variable rates in Japan have been steady for nearly 30 years, meaning a substantial number of borrowers are watching the central bank's moves like a hawk and are terrified of even any talks of rate increases.
TLDR: We are just not loud complainers (and frankly, if any Japanese person you know is hopefully very lucky, they might be earning just enough to not notice it all)
- Fully agree. Unfortunately, not everyone wants a general direction. A list of things to do and by when so they can plan out their day and only do what’s necessary yields baseline expected results and frees you to give more attention to team members who do want the freedom to choose their tasks and contribute to strategy, etc.
Worst are the people who both don’t like the “I need you to …” task giving and do absolutely nothing when left alone or only given a goal and a direction. How do you deal with it if you are working on an industry where performance adjustments and feedback can take years and you can coast without doing anything four more than a couple of years?
- Add to that weak cell coverage, exorbitant fees, and a privacy nightmare of jumbled up offerings (Yahoo! Japan, PayPay, Line, Telecom, ISP services, etc.), and you get the full picture.
SoftBank is originally one of the big 3 telecom providers in Japan. We do joke around here about our phone bills increasing anytime Masayoshi Son makes a bad investment.
- I fully agree with this.
Some people, including myself unfortunately, are uncomfortable with unread messages. The biggest problem is, you’ll read the message, but not respond right away to avoid creating the impression “keep messaging me at this hour”. Then, when the appropriate time to answer comes, whatever your definition of that is, you’ll forget to actually answer.
I don’t have this problem with email, but messaging platforms create this with read receipts, online/offline status, etc.
- > “It helps to have a friendly and permissive boss.”
I think this is the most impactful factor in achieving pro-activity at a level you are comfortable with. The company might not reward you directly, but being able to change your own job description, find ways you can contribute better, etc. are all more motivating than financial incentives.
It’s easy to get burned out doing too much without a boss that’ll recognize your efforts and encourage you to do less from time to time though. A little bit of love and care, however superficial, goes a long way here.
I agree with doing the bare minimum at an expected quality if you are working in an inflexible system, but getting too comfortable there might leave you doing that until retirement.
- With modest content blocking on iOS Safari turned on, I get a split second of content and then white across the screen. I was curious what humio is and how they are using Elm, but maybe they are bundling their advertising or analytics with their app js? That could be something they might want to address as well.
- I’m not sure how it works in the US, but in Japan, companies usually send a final notice by snail mail that outline the consequences of not paying.
Adobe hasn’t even sent an email saying yet charge failed and I have to update my payment method out anything else. It’s as if they are aware of how shady the cancellation fee is and won’t chase you down for it.
- I had this exact issue. I specially chose the more expensive monthly options and read all the fine print, but apparently the cancellation fee snuck by somehow. My solution was removing my credit card, adding a “you don’t deserve to get paid” prepaid VISA charged with ¥200, and canceling anyway. They tried to charge me on and off for about a month — and a random charge attempt 3 months later.
Having to do this is a terrible felling and I feel like a bad person, but I at least put the cancellation fee I would have paid to good use by buying Affinity Designer.
- The sad truth is, if that were the case, prisons would label what they do as prison labor and claim their wages or sell them connectivity and equipment at exorbitant prices. One upside is it would be a solid addition to their resume, but that’s after they find a company willing to hire ex-cons.
We would all be better off if prisons had rehabilitation and reintegration as their raison d'être, but with private prisons wanting to grow, I doubt that’ll happen any time soon.
- Same here. I do understand disliking Teams if you have used the more clunky alternatives, Skype for business for example. Overall though, I find it more useful than before if only because the cultural change it’s leading in my company where more direct communication is now being encouraged instead of Japanese business emails with 10 extra lines of boilerplate and extreme business language tacked on.
- It’s just extremely uncomfortable. I try to participate in the neighborhood events as well so it’s better to just fall in line (wherever the line is, not really clear either). Just a recent example, I forgot to wear a mask last week when I went to the supermarket and kept getting stares by other shoppers. That wouldn’t be an issue even a couple of months ago.
I’m guilty of it now, too, though. If anyone is smoking on the road while walking or biking, I lock eyes with them and they usually stop or at least turn away.
- There are quite a few rules and local laws in Japan that don’t carry any punishment or, indeed, aren’t even enforced but are still followed. Making it law in this case is more of a nudge than anything else. Honestly, it’s much more scary here to be stared down by a group old people than the police.
- It’s possible they skipped any QA steps in an effort to launch before Family Mart — another convenience store that just launched its own payment app. I’m not sure QA would have helped though — their point card website would email you your plain text password until only a few years ago.
- Political parties are not companies though. The workers in your example will eventually be held responsible if their preferred solution fails even though they might not get the credit if it succeeds. In Corbyn’s case, as the Labour leader, he has to stand behind the messages disseminated under his leadership with his name. Any positive impact on votes by the wider campaign will likely result in voter deception, since Corbyn will believe his message is what worked.
The most worrisome issue here is that Corbyn’s goals don’t align with his subordinates, yes, but deceiving a political leader isn’t just about that leader but the voters as well.
- Being a foreigner is the issue there, not being a different race or ethnicity. You are just as likely to be denied by a landlord for being a part time worker as well even if you are Japanese.
The first time I’ve experienced anything close to discrimination here was when looking for a house. Despite the kind real estate agent trying his best on the phone, he couldn’t convince the landlord’s wife to even show us the house. She kept saying she couldn’t trust me and my wife to stay quiet and orderly, that she didn’t want to deal with “cultural differences”.
Here, more often than not, you are dealing with scared and uncomfortable people who don’t know how to deal with you.
- You can check out a demo here:
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