I live and work in Japan, and it definitely is not a very condusive environment for younger Japanese people to have children. My wife and I are both foreigners, and we are in out late 30's and just had our first. The country has some really great benefits and support services for having children, but we definitely would not be able to do this if we worked for Japanese companies, and with the Japanese work mentality.

While it IS getting better, work being the central pillar of life and the expectations from the older generations are still very much a thing. The long hours of paper pushing, the culture of promotion based on age and time served rather than innovation and hard work takes a toll on people. If you are not living in the office in your 20s to show your dedication, you are looked down upon, at least accoridng to my Japanese friends.

Immigration could help fix some of this. Japan is a desireable, largely affordable country, that is safe when it comes to raising children. Living here as a foreigner though has specific challenges, and your job prospects are pretty poor unless you are lucky, and access to housing and just general living can be challenging, even if you can speak Japanese.

I just got a new job in Kyoto, and I currently live in Tokyo. I would say around 40% of the houses we applied to look at would not even let us see the properties because we are foreigners. That's 100% legal and totally ok to say here, and I take that in stride. In Australia (where I am from), they would either just tell you to piss off, or show you the property knowing you don't have a chance, so at least they are upfront about it here I guess. Getting a credit card is a massive ordeal, which you kinda need here because debit cards are increasingly hard to find, and they don't even work for all bills and systems, and getting a bank account ... it all just snowballs.

Also anything outside of the major cities is kinda dead. I love it, but living and thriving there in places that have more space that would probably promote having big families, is nearly impossible, or at least impossibly boring. This is not unique to Japan, Australia is largely the same outside of the main cities.

Not sure what the fix is. But annecdotally I see these articles all the time, and yet there are kids and younger families always around, so not sure if it is as serious as they are saying, or more media hype?

JFC CAN JUST ONE COMPANY I PAY MONEY TO NOT TURN OUT TO BE A NIGHTMARE.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Another stellar release. 8bitdo are seriously becoming a force to be reckoned with. When my Xbox Elite 2 dies I’ll probably get one of these to replace it. Already have the Ultimate as my go to for the Switch and when I have my Steam Decked docked to the TV.

Wonder if all this tariff nonsense it going to hurt its foothold in the US…

This is something that I wrestle with. There are certain companies I don’t want to spend money with, but I want to support the work and the crews who work on those things.

The argument is my money doesn’t go to the crews. But my time spent watching adds to the metrics that gets these shows and albums greenlit, but ultimately it comes down to how you feel about those quandaries.

I make games for a living so I feel that supporting is best for me. If no one bought the games I worked on I couldn’t feed my son. Instead I’m making more conscious decisions about where and how I spend my money. I just switched to Proton for my email, I use Kagi for search. I support teams I care about and support services I believe in. I buy games I want to play. I don’t think too much about the other things.

If a show is not available in my country easily, I do pirate. That’s kinda the only thing I pirate these days.

Wait… what happened to proton? I just signed up…😩

I am going to make a more concerted effort to use Lemmy more than Reddit moving forward. I just wish it had more info over here. I think from now on if I cannot find the info that I seek on Lemmy, I will find some sources on Reddit and then maybe pay it forward via sharing my findings on Lemmy. That's at least what I'm going to try and do for a while and see if I can help make a difference.

I will admit I haven’t watched the video (I’m going to when I get home) but I thought Avowed was doing pretty well?

A number of major podcasts and outlets are signing its praises. It has some divisive scores for sure, but I’ve certainly anecdotally heard way more praise than criticism from games media, and friends of mine who are playing.

Obsidian have been on a pretty decent roll for quite some time. Avowed is exactly what Gamepass was seeking to support - smaller focused games, and it ain’t even that small. 30-50 hours from what I’m hearing.

I’m not even a massive fan of the genre, or the studio, but I don’t really get the negativity surrounding the game. Seems pretty successful by most metrics to me.

I really like komoot but I find that the routes are not super good or complete for Japan where I live. I use Ride With GPS instead.

Have they released numbers yet? Surely it has sold pretty well, the word of mouth must be decent.

I never played the Japanese version, but I live in Japan and I have worked with various game localization companies. It's a pretty fine line on how they handle these kinds of translations, and it is often the developers who give the direction.

A good localization firm will take the original intent, and then culturalize it for the target market to make sure it has the same intended "vibe" rather than an actual 1:1 translation. The first company I worked at here did the localization for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. They were using a lot of old Japanese in that, and they specifically DID want us to get as close to 1:1 as possible, while ensuring that the intent was still very clear. Another game that I cannot say was more free saying "please make sure that the jokes land with the US", and quite a bit of the actual dialog was re-written, but once again, to match the vibe and intent that the developer was searching.

Each project is different. Each player is different. You aren't wrong for your wants here, but developers aren't wrong for trying to make something be more culturally appropriate for their target market, often which will sell more copies than their local market.

Nice! I really like Field Notes books, they were the first ones I started using when I got into carrying notebooks with me. I found that the ghosting was too much for me with fountain pens, so I ditched them a while ago. What pens are you using?

I really need to practice my hiragana and katakana. I rarely have to write Japanese but lately I have been filling out so many forms that I really need to re-learn to make my life easier haha.

No problem! When I get home I will cross-link to Journaling too! Let's build some great places here.

This is really rough, but it sounds like Jay is going through some stuff after what I am sure has been quite a whirlwind few years. The industry is rough, and finding a space for a niche that he fills, I do wonder how the sales would go when contractors and publishers are taking cuts.

I hope he gets some time and makes something new that soothes his soul.

Not decentralized, but I have been using Kagi for around six months and it has changed the way I view the internet for the better. I love how you can also rank sites you trust higher so they appear in more searches. The only problem I have had is searching for shopping links here in Japan sometimes is a little wonky, so I still will use google when I want to just see how much an item costs on average online.

I have never thought about decentralized search. Could be an interesting rabbit hole to fall into.

I am lucky enough to not have an English teaching job, and never have. But unless you are highly specialized, or somehow manage to start your own thing here, there seems to be limite scope as a foreigner to really have a strong career.

I am actually moving to Shiga Prefecture in a few days. It's going to be a big change from living on the outskirts of Tokyo for the past six years. Excited to see how my perception of life in Japan changes from the move.

Gotta start somewhere. Hopefully we can turn it into a nice and vibrant community!

I’m so glad I switched to Kagi. The writing was on the wall once they started rolling out the AI suggestions wide.

Thanks for mentioning Orwell. I worked on this game and it's probably the favorite title I've shipped!

Alrighty, I’m going to give it a real go when I finish moving house and see how it goes.

Hadn't seen the tweet. I was using Hey but those founders have also been problematic apparenty, and the service is just expensive, not as secure as what Proton offers, and I thought I could consolidate a number of services and accounts and save some money...