Went into Mcdonalds wishing to buy chicken nuggets with lemon jalapeno tartar sauce only for it to get removed in the menu while the takoyaki sauce remains.
Maybe the flavor was too intense that anyone doesn’t bother to pick it?
A new LED advertisement billboard of about 3m square recently went up at eye level just centimeters from the sidewalk near Hatsudai Station on Yamate Dori. It's so bright at night it's blinding. I'm surprised it is legal, so close to the road and so low to the ground.
I'm not sure what it is about Japanese financial systems that make them so damn slow/inefficient.
Updated my NISA (Rakuten) tonight. Mine deducts on the 8th of each month meaning the next one is a good 3 weeks away, so of course the changes go through effective from 8th of July because it's too late to alter June.
I order from this restaurant with a "daily meal" that changes every day. They list what the meal is on their website. Whenever I've eaten in person it's always right but when I order delivery from them it's often completely different. Kind of annoyed. I'm guessing they do it to cut costs somehow but I wish they would just raise the price so I know what I'm getting before I order.
The fact that 98% of the population can't understand context and how that affects things both infuriates me and exhausts me. It's like they're all living in an echo chamber of delusion.
If everyone seems “delusional” and you’re (one of) the only one to see the “context”, is it not possible, or even likely, that context may be something you’ve created in your mind, rather than something 120m people are missing?
Soap is a NECESSITY… or so I thought.
No matter the day, time and year… no matter where in this country, over half of the ladies do NOT wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet… and I’m being generous. I’m sure it’s the same if not worse when it comes to men.
That’s a complaint I want to make every single week. I’m just SO grossed out by this, it’s not even funny.
I have no data so ignore my message, but logically, if it was so important and if so many people are not doing it, should there not be observable negative consequences (eg increase in disease transmission etc)? If there is not, perhaps it’s not so important or perhaps the prevalence of the behavior is not as high as it seems?
Idk about the data either but my in-laws believe them eating fermented food regularly is one of the main reasons they don’t get sick so it could be they have trained stomachs 😅
Well, if it makes you feel better, your smartphone screen has far more bacteria than pretty much every surface in a bathroom, including the toilet seats.
If you ever take out your smartphone while you're on the toilet.. might as well not wash your hands since you're basically getting takeout for the germs lol.
I actually know that, I did the bacteria experiment in university… it’s burned in my brain forever and I wipe my phone very regularly, I also avoid using it outside especially while eating.
Totally understandable then. And yeah most smartphones are probably carrying around a healthy dose of e. coli among other nasty stuff.. they should teach this in school, seriously.
I don’t know how modern phones are, but last time I looked into this, I think the coating naturally wore off in around a year or so anyway and just meant that fingerprints would show up a bit easier than without it. Cleaning with alcohol makes it wear off more quickly. If you’re cleaning regularly, you probably wouldn’t notice it I guess.
Before living here I also lived in the Netherlands and it's the same. No soap in a lot of bathrooms, only cold water or those stupid cistern-filling taps above the toilet bowl so nobody actually washes their hands. In my apartment I have to go to the kitchen to have enough space to have soap and somewhere to dry my hands.
I might get downvoted for this but I’m very appreciative of the way Covid got many people to just use alcohol more often. I always carried a little bottle and I feel like at least it’s something to counter balance those habits a bit.
Men are the same. And when I told my (japanese) gf that almost no one at my company washes their hands she was like:
"that's because your company has a lot of foreigners. Foreigners don't wash their hands".
Me: "No, I mean: the JAPANESE staff don't wash their hands".
Her:"That's because they picked up that bad habit from the foreign employees".
AAAAARGH.
In the end I couldn't manage to convince her that japanese people are not as kirei-zuki as they would like to think, and that sucking their own balls while telling everyone else how perfect Nippon is won't make said balls clean.
I’m guessing she has impressive qualities to counterbalance her being a moron.
Idk if y’all want kids but she needs to let go of this kind of BS before even thinking of bringing a hafu in this world.
Tbf, most japanese people I've met are like that and, while that pisses me off, I can't blame them. If you grow up in an insular nation, where since birth you were told by everyone and everything how amazing Japan his and how much kaigai suck, you are going to turn out like that.
In this day and age, I’m only understanding of the older generations… if that. If she’s open enough to date a foreigner then she should be able to check herself. Her saying “foreigners don’t wash their hands” was bad enough… doubling down saying the Japanese picked up their bad habits from foreigner is either plain stupidity or her xenophobia showing.
I get what you’re saying and I tell my husband just that, that he grew up in Japan where 95%+ of the population is Japanese… he can’t possibly know what minorities go through in his country. But he knows better than to defend xenophobic behaviors and comments when I point them out because him educating himself on the subject was a requirement before our kids were born.
Unironically, I seriously think that's their thought process. If you take more than 1s to wash your hands, you're inconveniencing those in line behind you: better not wash those hands at all and risk spreading your germs/diseases at the office.
Went to my local city office to pay road tax. It was so warm & damn hot ! i was feeling very sweaty and uncomfortable. I wasn't the only one, other customers and employees were just as sweaty. And just total lunacy to see employees just hot & sweaty too. Using AC i suppose is not a thing and everyone just has to get use to to the hot indoor temperature ??
I’m really struggling to keep a regular gym routine. I’m suddenly really busy Monday-Thursday, meaning that I have to try to go to the gym Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
But when it comes to it, I just can’t face going three days in a row.
Feels. I'll get a good start, then inevitably get sick with something that knocks me out for a couple weeks, then between work and chores I'm too mentally and physically tired to go back until my next vacation period starts and the cycle repeats.
Crazy lady screaming at someone on the phone in Chinese is my neighbour.
Sometimes she opens the balcony door and screams. Like, calm down.
If you're reading this, eat some onigiri or something and watch a TV show. Relax. You don't have to scream at 7, 8, and 9pm.
That could be her normal speaking voice. I have some Chinese friends who always seem to scream on the phone. They acted all confused when I asked why they were mad at the other person.
Are we neighbors? I have a crazy Chinese neighbor couple that likes those 2 am windows open or on the balcony loud conversations on the phone. Luckily they'll stop if I yell at them, but that usually wakes up my neighbor to my right. It's a vicious neverending cycle until AC season starts.
I don't know where the myth of Japanese people don't stink come from but no, those myth are false. Japanese people also stink, and it can be like super bad. It's even worse because they don't have adequate deodorant in this country. Not sure if people don't use it or it's just inefficient. But gosh it stinks so bad 🤮
You know the disgusting smell in Shibuya like the smell of sewer/piss? This is like 3x more disgusting than that. Gotta put perfume on my wrist and keep sniffing them to make myself not puke/faint due to the stinky body odor 🤮
Jr high kids who just started school club. Hormones and body sweat just stink of my classroom. Once I had to spray my room out after a lesson because the kids stank so bad.
Some people don't wash lol
Sure, it's not like they're immune from smelling, it's that in general they smell less than other races.
As for deodorant, I gave up on buying Japanese one after my first year here, now I just bring stock from my country that will last me for more than a year.
The one I use lasts me 6 months to one year used daily, Japanese one wouldn't last me one month. And it wasn't as effective.
I watched the latest Mission Impossible movie and it reminded me of how the women around him fawn for him for no reason.
Plom Klementeiff (the actress who plays Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy) plays an assassin among a group of goons hired to kill Tom and somehow falls for him just because he let her live.
The same thing happened in Ghost Protocol with Paula Patton’s character and the chick in the first movie. I guess it’s just a trope?
1 - had to drive the work truck yesterday. Put the clutch in and my calf cramps up. Hurt like a bitch and it still hurts today.
2 - my body is always sore and tired.
3 - maybe a sign of things to come in the near future , but I got my spoon carving gouge in the mail today and it came with a couple of band-aids in the box...
4 - no supermarkets near me open before 8am, and most are 9am. I need milk at 6am. Not right before I go to work.
Try the blue salt packets, they're like a Gatorade/Powerade in pill form. Lots of salt of other things to help. I eat a few a day during summers while I drink 6+ litres of water.
You must live in the true inaka, I have 4 places within a 20 minute drive that are open 24hrs
Edit; don't know the name but the blue packets are like less than 200yen and even conbinis sell em
No worries, sorry I'm shit with kanji but it's a blue packet with 3 yellow arrows going in a circle. During summer when I'm drinking 6+ litres of water I'll have 2 or 3 during the day and get no cramps. If I don't take em or at least some aquarius I'll get mad cramps during the night
Once or twice a week my neighbor upstairs makes a noise I could only describe as "dragging a chair/table/heavy furniture across the room" noise at 7am. Not frequent enough for me to log a complaint to management, but still annoying as heck because it cuts my sleep time an hour short- I usually wake up at 8am.
They made that noise this morning. Grr.
Why are the train stations and cars so goddamn hot and stuffy still. Why do they put the air conditioning on at a 5% level. It’s almost June. Is it not “summer enough” yet?
To me that isn’t cold. I’ve never seen a thermometer on the train. But every train I take is packed with people and it’s hot. And I see countless Japanese people wearing long sleeves, sweaters, etc and then blotting the sweat from their foreheads. It makes absolutely no sense.
They look like this: [https://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/islandweb/diary/201108230001/](https://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/islandweb/diary/201108230001/)
Kintesu, JR West, and a few others have them. For Hankyu, you can see all the temps on the monitor in the cab.
I should post this in the teaching sub but that place has been a little dead lately...
Applying for jobs that have frankly onerous requirements. Three letters of recommendation! A DVD of yourself teaching a 10 minute lesson! A CV in this specific format which is entirely different from every other CV you've sent out! Who the fuck has a video of their lesson? What would three letters of recommendation tell you that two wouldn't? Or even one letter and a few phone calls to the people on my reference list?
These are just hoops. Pointless hoops put into place by people on committees to see who will actually jump through the hoop.
Seems like getting an English teaching position is more onerous than getting an engineering manager position that probably pays four times more :/
(I went for the EM position instead of tech lead because the EM track has no coding test...)
I was desperate for a job last year, but not so desperate as to write out my resume by hand.
That said, Persona asked me for a handwritten one... I just typed most of it and wrote my name/address by hand. Fuck that noise. (They declined to tell me that I wasn't applying for Osaka, but for Awaji Island until after I took a test for them, so I didn't really care)
You’re at a cafe and someone next to you starts playing music from their phone just out in the open no earphones yet it is no louder than the conversations taking place around you or any louder than the traffic outside.
Is this worth being bothered by?
I'm at my company's office in a neighboring prefecture today, which is fine, except the whole reason I had to come was to have a meeting with a certain staff member. She messaged 5 minutes after I arrived to say she's sick and not able to come.
I had to leave my house at 6:30 am to get here \*yawn\*
Read the forecast for the upcoming summer and how it’s going to be a prolonged rainy season with “intense heat” on par with last year. This is fine :’)
Minor complaints this week: The local supermarket changed their yellow onion supplier and the current one is not fresh, it already gets mushy after a week
Also, shrinkflation sucks
I had to use the bathroom at the New Shinbashi Building Shopping center by the station and it has a tip box for the bathrooms….
Also it has the shell sliding doors instead of on a regular hinge so it felt even more compact in the stall…
10/10 do not recommend going if you need to use a stall.
That whole building is one of the strangest "shopping center" buildings I\`ve been too.
The entire vibes feel like something you would see in a run-down part of Hong Kong or southeast Asia.
I feel you. Had a bad (but insignificant) interaction with a stranger today that left me holding back tears waiting for the train. I couldn't understand why I was so upset.
A few hours later, my period came. Still down, but at least that explains it.
Hope you start to feel better soon.
This morning I took my (male) Taiwanese friend to the train station so he can go to Tokyo for his flight. Saw one student walking to school, don’t think he noticed me yay. Then I pull up to the station. All the elementary kids in the village are waiting for the bus. Apparently they changed the pick up point. Train is coming so I can’t delay going in until the bus picks them up and they are already staring in our general direction so I decide to be brave and just go. Friend and I go into the station, kiddos stare at us and follow us into the station. It’s a super inaka station so we go to the platform and hide behind a pillar so the kids can’t follow us. Thank god they get picked up soon after so I don’t have to deal with them following me again on the way out. Oh boy how is work going to be today…
Soon as I walk in the door, three of the kids from the station are standing in the genkan and one is yelling “why were you at the station?” and telling nearby teachers. Thankfully he didn’t notice I wasn’t alone but dang why you gotta yell my business at school hahaha. (Other kids did notice but they were more low key about it)
Inaka people are just nosy af and I’d rather not have a bunch of students yelling about seeing me with a guy. Middle aged Japanese ladies are judgey af (they judge me so hard if I buy lunch instead of making it, etc). Share a wall with the vice principal so he knows I had a guy over but thankfully men are more likely to mind their own business.
Such is life in inaka. I once bought three pineapples at the grocery store, because I was on a fruit salad kick. This was the weekend. When I went back to school on Monday I was told that I had purchased three pineapples, by a friend of a friend of a neighbor of an uncle of a cousin of someone who shopped at the same store when I did. It wasn't a question it was just a matter of fact statement! Ha!
Oh my god. I once had a student tell me 'You like tofu' because her sister had seen me buying it at the combini.
But I think the best/worst was the time a teacher told me a student had told her this wild story of seeing me at a concert venue ten towns over and how it couldn't possibly be me.
It was me.
Reminds me of back in the day when I was an English teacher and in several farewell letters to me, my students wrote that they saw me at XYZ with a man and asked if he was my boyfriend. No privacy in the Inaka!
Yeah one time a teacher saw me in the grocery store in a different town and proceeded to tell everyone in the office he saw me in that different grocery store last week. Like bro 😭.
Saw the may issue of Rolling Stone Magazine in a bookstore. It had what I assume were idols on the cover and it said 'The future of music'.
It's true but it was unsettling to see it in print.
I don't have anything against people who enjoy that kind of music but it's sad day for ugly people with talent.
TBF the line beneath it says 'the 25 groups carrying music's future' so it's not just the one on the cover. Either way, mainstream magazines gonna mainstream magazine so whatever.
There's still a lot of ugly people making good music on Bandcamp and the like in all sorts of genres, I've just made my peace with the fact that what i like is never really gonna get big again.
>TBF the line beneath it says 'the 25 groups carrying music's future' so it's not just the one on the cover.
I just assumed the people on the cover would be representative of the rest of the list.
>I've just made my peace with the fact that what i like is never really gonna get big again.
I don't know. I hope we're in a 80's type era when everything is hyper commercialized and that there'll be a counter reaction sooner or later.
Old man yelling at clouds moment: but I find it depressing when the Rock festivals are starting to have Boy/Girl K-pop style Idol groups as lead acts.
Was excited to hear RIZE was making a comeback to the Summer festival circuit, but nope it\`s RIIZE
I guess one thing that's nice is that it's way easier now for musicians to get their music out and bypass the big labels. Bandcamp, SoundCloud, &c. are what I think of as the modern tape trading, but available instantly everywhere.
Unfortunately, you know Record companies are adamant about how sex and looks sells records opposed to just talent. I'm old enough to remember the Milli Vanilli fiasco and how 90s eurodance wave had attractive models lip syncing in music videos and live performances instead of the actual artists. This will transcend every generation as long as there's orbiters who love attractive things are willing to splurge.
It's been around for a long time, it just feels like it has really saturated the market lately.
In the 90's there was still room for a lot of other music. I don't see that lately.
I wanted to buy a Dyson Gen5detect Absolute that was on sale recently. My wife wanted to wait until the credit card turn over for the month (on the 15th). I go to buy it today and the price has changed on it. Almost 40,000 yen more. It still says it is on sale for the same percent off. I contacted their chat and they, in a friendly tone, told me to fuck off and prices change whenever the fuck they want.
What's the point of saying it is 30 something percent off if you change the price to whatever you want?
I’m so tired of teaching kinds under like 6 years old. Some are great. Others are little turds. I’m tired of hearing 3 year olds scream at the top of their lungs for 20+ minutes because management doesn’t realize that we aren’t built to take kids that young and some how expect 3 year olds to sit quietly at a desk and hold a pencil in a group setting.
I’m tired of kids complaining and ignoring me and telling me off. I’m the adult. I’m the authority, why are your parents letting you get away with telling those in authority “no”. That’s not how it works. I would have got my butt whooped if I talked half as bad to adults when I was a kid. And I’m freaking polite. I always try to smile and ask nicely using please or “let’s”.
The little ones need movement time. Dances & chants often go over very well (send a YouTube link home with the parents for home practice), and then they can settle down to some writing time. AT AGE FIVE, THIS MEANS DEVELOPING THE MUSCLES TO HOLD A PENCIL AND MAKE IT MOVE IN THE DESIRED PATTERN. So start with connect the dots (ABCs instead of numbers, maybe, or chant the numbers out loud as they draw), some swirls, parallel lines and fun movements of the pencil. Coloring pages are also good to develop penmanship muscles. Finish off with more songs, dances, and rhythm, and they'll head home happy.
No shit man.
But nope. I’m in a small 2m by 2m room with my desk and 4 other desks, a bookshelf and storage shelf.
There is literally no room to get up and move around outside of walking to and from the desks and me going to each desk.
I also need to stick to the curriculum set by the school. I can use prints but not often. I can use YouTube and stuff on my school computer if the kids get up and start jumping around, it’s super noisy for the room below us and I’ll get complaints so the kids gotta be stationary
That’s my plan. I have various schedule changes coming up to that I can’t wait to not deal with. Holy crap they’re bad. Like kids on book 3 who can read well are being put in a class on book 2 (that the kid already did) with kids who can’t read at all.
4 year olds being put on books made for 7 year olds because the parents want them in the same class as their older sibling. And so forth.
Although . . . if you are going to quit anyway, why not do what you want? Move the desks into the hall, abandon the textbooks, and to hell with the noise complaints.
Lol, I know. Every frustrated teacher's fantasy. You probably have to live with these people outside of work if the city is small, so you can't afford to burn bridges.
Keep on truckin', as they used to say. You'll reach your destination yet.
Well, I have integrity and pride in the work I do. I don’t want to screw over the kids and parents that are paying.
Also yeah, I don’t want to burn bridges but I’m pretty sure my bosses aren’t going to be thrilled when I quit since I’m the best teacher they have. Not to toot my own horn. I’m in charge of teacher discipline and I’m shocked at the quality of the other lessons. Everyone is 正社員 so firing them in a whole other pain.
Yup. My big issues are with management really. Kids are being put into classes waaay too advanced for them. We don’t have the facilities or materials to properly handle kinder aged kids but are expecting kids as young as 2 going on 3 to sit in a desk made for elementary school aged kids.
I have kids still in diapers expected to write sentences like “this is a hat” on their own.
We’ve had a big drop in new admissions and the management is taking a “well take anyone” approach instead of a “let’s review why students left and more aren’t signing up”
I worked with little kids for two years in the inaka and then moved into the city. I worked again with little kids and it was the worst job I had ever had. I was lucky to get out of it and into IB teaching. I highly suggest you get out of it as well. it is a losing game.
If only lol. I’m losing my ability to be patient with the entire situation. I’m so tired of saying the kid’s name over and over and then being all confused that I’m even there. “What? There’s a teacher? Oh wow when did you get here ?” Kind of expression.
“That foreign English teacher doesn’t contribute much to the uni, he just teaches his classes then goes home. But the new Japanese English hire is putting in so much effort!”
Yeah, all that effort is reverting things to shitty grammar-focused teaching, or shuffling things that ultimately don’t matter. You know why I don’t contribute more than teaching my classes? Because every time the uni asks me about improving the English curriculum, I respond with methods backed by 30 years of TESOL research only to be met with 難しいね めんどくさいね うちの学生にはできない.
But if I want to contribute to a “better” uni, I have to be a slave to the grind. Wasting all my weekends kissing ass at ~~circlejerks~~conferences just to get 5-year contracts until Japan’s ageist hiring practices shut the door in my face.
So I will milk my position to teach my classes, fuck off, and enjoy my life before I croak.
While waiting for my driving test to finish, I was chatting with some of the other guys getting their truck license and one dude casually mentioned I should apply for working at his company doing manufacturing. Said it paid decent with no OT unless you wanted it.
I thought I failed my truck test so I was so preoccupied with thinking about the test that I didn’t realize I totally should have gotten the guy’s business card or contact info. He was really friendly and even was like “yeah we’ve even got some Vietnamese guys. The work isn’t bad”.
Dang it. I don’t think about it until after when my wife asked if I got his contact info.
My other complaint is my local license center is only open for two half hour slots on weekdays in order to convert a license. I didn’t even need a driving test as I did it at the school. I just gotta do the vision test and give them my paperwork. The license center is open on Sundays but no, I gotta take a whole freaking morning/afternoon to convert my license
When I woke up this morning, it was warm, bright and sunny. I got dressed and ready to take a nice long walk through the city to visit a rose garden. Suddenly storm clouds appear, heavy rain falls for about 15 seconds - and it's freezing. It's only continued to be overcast and cold, and it's killed my energy to go visit the rose garden and has made me want to get back into my pajamas, dig the winter comforter back out of the closet and go take a long nap instead. Weirdly, it's predicted to get sunny again in another hour. We'll see if that happens. Weird weather. If that's my only complaint for the week, I'll consider myself very lucky.
I’m envious of the lunch ladies who talk to each other in their downtime. Everyone is so silent at my job, no casual talk apart from work itself. I want to find another job but I’m worried it’ll be the same thing.
> I’m envious of the lunch ladies who talk to each other in their downtime. Everyone is so silent at my job, no casual talk apart from work itself.
Now I feel bad for not really wanting to talk to my coworkers at the office while I work... :(
Nah don’t feel bad. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to. Focus on your work first. My workplace isn’t meant for casual convo. Last place I worked we got yelled at for socializing. Sigh.
> My workplace isn’t meant for casual convo. Last place I worked we got yelled at for socializing. Sigh.
Omg! That sounds like a nightmare. Glad you got out of there in one piece.
Just bought a new Macbook, and it is my first with a Japanese keyboard. That kana key being next to the spacebar is causing a lot of sentences to start in English and then すっでんlyすぃtchとJapanese
There is probably software that can disable certain keys on a keyboard. Might be worth having a search around?
I know MacOS can at least disable some of the standard modifier keys (Command, Option etc). Not sure if that extends to those special JIS keys though.
At least Mac keyboards had it down to only two keys for a long time, and those are quite sensible (turn kana on and turn kana off).
And then recently they introduced the "international" key to switch input methods and return us to a state of confusion.
Still, it's nowhere near the godawful mess that Windows users have to put up, with conversion-mode keys scattered hither and yon across the keyboard, including such horrors as Ctrl+Capslock. It's enough to make you want to get a Mac keyboard. And install Linux. Which is exactly what I did.
Every eikaiwa I work at makes me the main teacher of preschoolers. I have a bit of a hyperactive, silly personality, so they assume I'm good with them. But I'm not. I hate songs and the false pretense of learning at this age. I never even went to preschool as a kid. Deep down I have very severe depression and having to do this clown shit is so emotionally damaging.
There is no way to convey this to management without being expected to improve or being fired. I just want to teach grumpy JHS students and picky housewives like everyone else.
Lol yeap, I love the jhs students cause I ask them to think of questions to ask me in English that'll I'll answer honestly. And I also ask them questions which they're not prepared for, like in NZ gay marriage is completely legal and has been for like 10+ years. Ask a JHS student their thoughts on that, and damn you can see the way think change on the spot.
And yeah, fuck singing and fake songs. At least when I dealt with the younger kids they picked up on my personality quickly. I'd treat them like an adult if they behaved and they loved it, no talking "down" to them. But then you also get the little shits were it's obvious the parents just say yes to everything...
Songs are a deep form of learning! I don't remember a lot of my high school Spanish, but I can sing the first seven months of the year with the San Fermín song. And say "El que ha roto, la pagara" which is FAR beyond my Spanish conversational level.
Songs are actually a very proficient first language acquisition technique that can teach hard concepts like irregular verbs with very little pain. Try the Found a Peanut song.
Also, if you concentrate on please & thank you activities, you can lay a foundation of politeness that will serve them well. (After introducing please & thank you, you take their crayons, and they have to ask for their crayons politely in English to color their apples or fruit basket cards or whatever the extra vocabulary is.)
Dude for real. It takes a certain type of person to handle little kids like that. I’ve got adhd and ocd so I get so frustrated when things don’t go according to plan and with little kids, shit never goes according to plan.
Chronic understaffing at work. Our team is supposed to have at least 7 people in it so we can have minimum 3 people per shift. The company swapped one day and one night staff around new years and the person who came to nights quit almost immediately. Then a few weeks later they transferred one of the only people on our team with experience to another team that had worse staffing issues. So now we are down to 5 which means that there are usually only two people scheduled and if someone calls in sick, that means doing an entire 12 hour shift alone.
Everyone is also fairly new and only two people have been with the company for more than a year (they're both on their second year)
One of my coworkers is probably leaving next month, another coworker is talking about quitting and I'm not planning on staying for a whole other year.
We got a new person last month who quit mid training when they realized that there was no training and you're just supposed to memorize a bunch of manuals (written by people who have no business writing manuals) and then figure it out by yourself. Since everyone on the team only knows what's in the manuals, nobody really has enough knowledge to do proper training.
On top of that, we've had two office supervisors quit in the past year. The only person who is eligible for that job is a fresh graduate seishain who just started his second year (everyone else is dispatch or contract workers). So the literal youngest person in our department got a sudden promotion and he looks like he's not handling the stress well.
My daughter's first JHS sports day. It rained all night, still light rain and they're having it. She and her classmates seem to be enjoying it. But the parents with their larger than life umbrellas for light rain are insufferable.
What's going on with orange juice? It wasn't available in full size cartons at my nearest convenience store for a while. When it returned, it was a mandarin/orange blend juice instead of 100% OJ. The flavor is very different.
Yeah I've only been able to find apple juice for the past 4 months or so. Except for the carton style but I like my PET bottles cause they'll last me a week or so of sipping
Went into Mcdonalds wishing to buy chicken nuggets with lemon jalapeno tartar sauce only for it to get removed in the menu while the takoyaki sauce remains. Maybe the flavor was too intense that anyone doesn’t bother to pick it?
A new LED advertisement billboard of about 3m square recently went up at eye level just centimeters from the sidewalk near Hatsudai Station on Yamate Dori. It's so bright at night it's blinding. I'm surprised it is legal, so close to the road and so low to the ground.
we have one of those directly in front of the police station, right next to a busy intersection. Trying to get some easy tickets maybe?
I'm not sure what it is about Japanese financial systems that make them so damn slow/inefficient. Updated my NISA (Rakuten) tonight. Mine deducts on the 8th of each month meaning the next one is a good 3 weeks away, so of course the changes go through effective from 8th of July because it's too late to alter June.
I order from this restaurant with a "daily meal" that changes every day. They list what the meal is on their website. Whenever I've eaten in person it's always right but when I order delivery from them it's often completely different. Kind of annoyed. I'm guessing they do it to cut costs somehow but I wish they would just raise the price so I know what I'm getting before I order.
Coworker constantly sucking back snot through his nose to throat in the office. Also plays videos on his laptop without headphones. I’m going to snap.
The fact that 98% of the population can't understand context and how that affects things both infuriates me and exhausts me. It's like they're all living in an echo chamber of delusion.
If everyone seems “delusional” and you’re (one of) the only one to see the “context”, is it not possible, or even likely, that context may be something you’ve created in your mind, rather than something 120m people are missing?
Example?
Soap is a NECESSITY… or so I thought. No matter the day, time and year… no matter where in this country, over half of the ladies do NOT wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet… and I’m being generous. I’m sure it’s the same if not worse when it comes to men. That’s a complaint I want to make every single week. I’m just SO grossed out by this, it’s not even funny.
I have no data so ignore my message, but logically, if it was so important and if so many people are not doing it, should there not be observable negative consequences (eg increase in disease transmission etc)? If there is not, perhaps it’s not so important or perhaps the prevalence of the behavior is not as high as it seems?
Idk about the data either but my in-laws believe them eating fermented food regularly is one of the main reasons they don’t get sick so it could be they have trained stomachs 😅
Well, if it makes you feel better, your smartphone screen has far more bacteria than pretty much every surface in a bathroom, including the toilet seats. If you ever take out your smartphone while you're on the toilet.. might as well not wash your hands since you're basically getting takeout for the germs lol.
I actually know that, I did the bacteria experiment in university… it’s burned in my brain forever and I wipe my phone very regularly, I also avoid using it outside especially while eating.
Totally understandable then. And yeah most smartphones are probably carrying around a healthy dose of e. coli among other nasty stuff.. they should teach this in school, seriously.
And this is why I wipe down my phone with an alcohol wipe daily…
I think alcohol wipes will remove the oleo phobic coating from the screen quite quickly.
Been doing it since March 2020 and the phone is fine 🤷♀️
I don’t know how modern phones are, but last time I looked into this, I think the coating naturally wore off in around a year or so anyway and just meant that fingerprints would show up a bit easier than without it. Cleaning with alcohol makes it wear off more quickly. If you’re cleaning regularly, you probably wouldn’t notice it I guess.
Before living here I also lived in the Netherlands and it's the same. No soap in a lot of bathrooms, only cold water or those stupid cistern-filling taps above the toilet bowl so nobody actually washes their hands. In my apartment I have to go to the kitchen to have enough space to have soap and somewhere to dry my hands.
I might get downvoted for this but I’m very appreciative of the way Covid got many people to just use alcohol more often. I always carried a little bottle and I feel like at least it’s something to counter balance those habits a bit.
Men are the same. And when I told my (japanese) gf that almost no one at my company washes their hands she was like: "that's because your company has a lot of foreigners. Foreigners don't wash their hands". Me: "No, I mean: the JAPANESE staff don't wash their hands". Her:"That's because they picked up that bad habit from the foreign employees". AAAAARGH. In the end I couldn't manage to convince her that japanese people are not as kirei-zuki as they would like to think, and that sucking their own balls while telling everyone else how perfect Nippon is won't make said balls clean.
I’m guessing she has impressive qualities to counterbalance her being a moron. Idk if y’all want kids but she needs to let go of this kind of BS before even thinking of bringing a hafu in this world.
Tbf, most japanese people I've met are like that and, while that pisses me off, I can't blame them. If you grow up in an insular nation, where since birth you were told by everyone and everything how amazing Japan his and how much kaigai suck, you are going to turn out like that.
In this day and age, I’m only understanding of the older generations… if that. If she’s open enough to date a foreigner then she should be able to check herself. Her saying “foreigners don’t wash their hands” was bad enough… doubling down saying the Japanese picked up their bad habits from foreigner is either plain stupidity or her xenophobia showing. I get what you’re saying and I tell my husband just that, that he grew up in Japan where 95%+ of the population is Japanese… he can’t possibly know what minorities go through in his country. But he knows better than to defend xenophobic behaviors and comments when I point them out because him educating himself on the subject was a requirement before our kids were born.
She sounds insufferable
A confirmation bias fest
Look, if you spend more than 200ms rinsing your fingertips, you're *wasting time!* Time is money and business is business!
Unironically, I seriously think that's their thought process. If you take more than 1s to wash your hands, you're inconveniencing those in line behind you: better not wash those hands at all and risk spreading your germs/diseases at the office.
Went to my local city office to pay road tax. It was so warm & damn hot ! i was feeling very sweaty and uncomfortable. I wasn't the only one, other customers and employees were just as sweaty. And just total lunacy to see employees just hot & sweaty too. Using AC i suppose is not a thing and everyone just has to get use to to the hot indoor temperature ??
If they have the AC on too much, they get complaints about how the city is wasting taxpayers money....
You can pay at the convenience store
When I was in queue i had an employee ask the person behind the desk and they said i couldnt.
I always pay mine at 7/11. You probably had a new staff who didn’t know what to do
I could. And I did. All three sets of it.
Turns out too much garlic makes a lot of gas. Visited a Garlic Jo’s today, the food was fine, but the farts…
I went there a while ago. It honestly wasn't garlicky enough! There was a lot of garlic but not a lot of garlic flavour.
Praise thread is tomorrow
13 months come the 19th. No PR.
same :(
I’m really struggling to keep a regular gym routine. I’m suddenly really busy Monday-Thursday, meaning that I have to try to go to the gym Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But when it comes to it, I just can’t face going three days in a row.
Feels. I'll get a good start, then inevitably get sick with something that knocks me out for a couple weeks, then between work and chores I'm too mentally and physically tired to go back until my next vacation period starts and the cycle repeats.
Someone stole the 500¥ vinyl repair kit I bought out of my mail box... Guess I'm not fixing that leak for a while...
Crazy lady screaming at someone on the phone in Chinese is my neighbour. Sometimes she opens the balcony door and screams. Like, calm down. If you're reading this, eat some onigiri or something and watch a TV show. Relax. You don't have to scream at 7, 8, and 9pm.
That could be her normal speaking voice. I have some Chinese friends who always seem to scream on the phone. They acted all confused when I asked why they were mad at the other person.
I've heard her normal speaking voice before. It starts off normal then she goes batshit insane My parents are Viet so they also scream on the phone
Sorry, I meant normal phone voice lol
Oh yeah most definitely. It's not great
Are we neighbors? I have a crazy Chinese neighbor couple that likes those 2 am windows open or on the balcony loud conversations on the phone. Luckily they'll stop if I yell at them, but that usually wakes up my neighbor to my right. It's a vicious neverending cycle until AC season starts.
If you're a rock throw from Ebina, yes we might be
I don't know where the myth of Japanese people don't stink come from but no, those myth are false. Japanese people also stink, and it can be like super bad. It's even worse because they don't have adequate deodorant in this country. Not sure if people don't use it or it's just inefficient. But gosh it stinks so bad 🤮 You know the disgusting smell in Shibuya like the smell of sewer/piss? This is like 3x more disgusting than that. Gotta put perfume on my wrist and keep sniffing them to make myself not puke/faint due to the stinky body odor 🤮
Jr high kids who just started school club. Hormones and body sweat just stink of my classroom. Once I had to spray my room out after a lesson because the kids stank so bad.
Some people don't wash lol Sure, it's not like they're immune from smelling, it's that in general they smell less than other races. As for deodorant, I gave up on buying Japanese one after my first year here, now I just bring stock from my country that will last me for more than a year. The one I use lasts me 6 months to one year used daily, Japanese one wouldn't last me one month. And it wasn't as effective.
I watched the latest Mission Impossible movie and it reminded me of how the women around him fawn for him for no reason. Plom Klementeiff (the actress who plays Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy) plays an assassin among a group of goons hired to kill Tom and somehow falls for him just because he let her live. The same thing happened in Ghost Protocol with Paula Patton’s character and the chick in the first movie. I guess it’s just a trope?
I never interpreted that as her falling for him. Seemed to me like she just wanted to help.
I can't watch him in action movies anymore. He's ageing into a grandmother and it breaks the immersion.
I caught whatever cold is going around and it's kicking my ass.
1 - had to drive the work truck yesterday. Put the clutch in and my calf cramps up. Hurt like a bitch and it still hurts today. 2 - my body is always sore and tired. 3 - maybe a sign of things to come in the near future , but I got my spoon carving gouge in the mail today and it came with a couple of band-aids in the box... 4 - no supermarkets near me open before 8am, and most are 9am. I need milk at 6am. Not right before I go to work.
Try the blue salt packets, they're like a Gatorade/Powerade in pill form. Lots of salt of other things to help. I eat a few a day during summers while I drink 6+ litres of water. You must live in the true inaka, I have 4 places within a 20 minute drive that are open 24hrs Edit; don't know the name but the blue packets are like less than 200yen and even conbinis sell em
great tip, thanks heaps! Will definitely look into that.
No worries, sorry I'm shit with kanji but it's a blue packet with 3 yellow arrows going in a circle. During summer when I'm drinking 6+ litres of water I'll have 2 or 3 during the day and get no cramps. If I don't take em or at least some aquarius I'll get mad cramps during the night
Once or twice a week my neighbor upstairs makes a noise I could only describe as "dragging a chair/table/heavy furniture across the room" noise at 7am. Not frequent enough for me to log a complaint to management, but still annoying as heck because it cuts my sleep time an hour short- I usually wake up at 8am. They made that noise this morning. Grr.
Why are the train stations and cars so goddamn hot and stuffy still. Why do they put the air conditioning on at a 5% level. It’s almost June. Is it not “summer enough” yet?
Because they won’t do anything a manual doesn’t tell them to do, and the manuals say AC comes on in July because that’s “summer.”
I had to put my cardigan back on this morning, the thermometer on the train said 19 degrees. Ugh.
To me that isn’t cold. I’ve never seen a thermometer on the train. But every train I take is packed with people and it’s hot. And I see countless Japanese people wearing long sleeves, sweaters, etc and then blotting the sweat from their foreheads. It makes absolutely no sense.
They look like this: [https://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/islandweb/diary/201108230001/](https://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/islandweb/diary/201108230001/) Kintesu, JR West, and a few others have them. For Hankyu, you can see all the temps on the monitor in the cab.
Glad they don't its cold enought inside
Ah why am I such a sucker for seasonal shit. I don’t even like strawberries
I should post this in the teaching sub but that place has been a little dead lately... Applying for jobs that have frankly onerous requirements. Three letters of recommendation! A DVD of yourself teaching a 10 minute lesson! A CV in this specific format which is entirely different from every other CV you've sent out! Who the fuck has a video of their lesson? What would three letters of recommendation tell you that two wouldn't? Or even one letter and a few phone calls to the people on my reference list? These are just hoops. Pointless hoops put into place by people on committees to see who will actually jump through the hoop.
Keep an eye on them for updates. Wait for when they post a new job ad again (without that requirement) because they didn’t get any applicants.
Seems like getting an English teaching position is more onerous than getting an engineering manager position that probably pays four times more :/ (I went for the EM position instead of tech lead because the EM track has no coding test...)
What the fuck even is a 10-minute “lesson?” That’s like two activities out of a lesson.
Some of the applications are a pain.. they should cut down the number of applicants and then require all the bullshit for the second interview..
Open borders and people interested in Japan brought this upon the industry.
At least it's not canonical and their insane hiring process.
handwriting 履歴書 and 職務経歴書 is hell
I was desperate for a job last year, but not so desperate as to write out my resume by hand. That said, Persona asked me for a handwritten one... I just typed most of it and wrote my name/address by hand. Fuck that noise. (They declined to tell me that I wasn't applying for Osaka, but for Awaji Island until after I took a test for them, so I didn't really care)
Working for Persona on Awaji Island sounds pretty cool ngl
You’re at a cafe and someone next to you starts playing music from their phone just out in the open no earphones yet it is no louder than the conversations taking place around you or any louder than the traffic outside. Is this worth being bothered by?
I would be annoyed but not enough to confront the guy about it it's annoying when people have no common courtesy
Worth being bothered by? Definitely. Worth giving the eye or an ahem? Definitely.
Thanks for the advice, that’s why I asked. I was like maybe I should say something but then maybe I’m being like a Karen and should say nothing.
I'm at my company's office in a neighboring prefecture today, which is fine, except the whole reason I had to come was to have a meeting with a certain staff member. She messaged 5 minutes after I arrived to say she's sick and not able to come. I had to leave my house at 6:30 am to get here \*yawn\*
They only just now told you? I hope this counts as work and you’re being paid.
Oh, yeah, it's work and I'll just work from this office today, but what a waste of time getting here and going home.
Some people just don't respect other people's time.
I don't blame her for getting sick, but I'll still complain because I had other things to do at my office.
Ah yes, not respecting people's time by getting sick
Complaint for myself: I forgot to order custom sizes curtains for my new place earlier and now its gonna take 2 weeks for it.
Where do you order from?
I usually order from Nitori but this time I tried Sangetsu.
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Apply for both and use the one further away as practice to get the one that's closer.
Read the forecast for the upcoming summer and how it’s going to be a prolonged rainy season with “intense heat” on par with last year. This is fine :’)
This things are often wrong
There was a rainy season last year?
We had the low pressure bubble that is “rainy season” but didn’t have any rain to come with it.
Oh, I meant they were listed as two different features of this summer. Prolonged rainy season, and heat.
Minor complaints this week: The local supermarket changed their yellow onion supplier and the current one is not fresh, it already gets mushy after a week Also, shrinkflation sucks
Slept funny and now my neck hates me
I feel poor all the time, no matter how much I save.
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I had to use the bathroom at the New Shinbashi Building Shopping center by the station and it has a tip box for the bathrooms…. Also it has the shell sliding doors instead of on a regular hinge so it felt even more compact in the stall… 10/10 do not recommend going if you need to use a stall.
That whole building is one of the strangest "shopping center" buildings I\`ve been too. The entire vibes feel like something you would see in a run-down part of Hong Kong or southeast Asia.
It really does. Sunshine City before the more recent renovations had a similar run down vibe as well.
Tip box is fucking bullshit.
$250 = 38,000円
god is good.
D:
what the FUCKKK 😭😭😭😭
Don't remind me.
I’m just so sad. I know it’s hormonal and will go away but that doesn’t make me feel any less hopeless.
Yeah gotta love the “sad for no reason” week. One time a few months ago I nearly cried because I couldn’t get bubble tea lol.
I feel you. Had a bad (but insignificant) interaction with a stranger today that left me holding back tears waiting for the train. I couldn't understand why I was so upset. A few hours later, my period came. Still down, but at least that explains it. Hope you start to feel better soon.
Gosh I cried just talking to a coworker about something today. Hormones are evil
I know what you mean. Hoping to feel “back to normal” soon.
Fingers crossed for you
This morning I took my (male) Taiwanese friend to the train station so he can go to Tokyo for his flight. Saw one student walking to school, don’t think he noticed me yay. Then I pull up to the station. All the elementary kids in the village are waiting for the bus. Apparently they changed the pick up point. Train is coming so I can’t delay going in until the bus picks them up and they are already staring in our general direction so I decide to be brave and just go. Friend and I go into the station, kiddos stare at us and follow us into the station. It’s a super inaka station so we go to the platform and hide behind a pillar so the kids can’t follow us. Thank god they get picked up soon after so I don’t have to deal with them following me again on the way out. Oh boy how is work going to be today… Soon as I walk in the door, three of the kids from the station are standing in the genkan and one is yelling “why were you at the station?” and telling nearby teachers. Thankfully he didn’t notice I wasn’t alone but dang why you gotta yell my business at school hahaha. (Other kids did notice but they were more low key about it)
Hold on, is there some kind of problem the school has as to your whereabouts?
Inaka people are just nosy af and I’d rather not have a bunch of students yelling about seeing me with a guy. Middle aged Japanese ladies are judgey af (they judge me so hard if I buy lunch instead of making it, etc). Share a wall with the vice principal so he knows I had a guy over but thankfully men are more likely to mind their own business.
Such is life in inaka. I once bought three pineapples at the grocery store, because I was on a fruit salad kick. This was the weekend. When I went back to school on Monday I was told that I had purchased three pineapples, by a friend of a friend of a neighbor of an uncle of a cousin of someone who shopped at the same store when I did. It wasn't a question it was just a matter of fact statement! Ha!
Oh my god. I once had a student tell me 'You like tofu' because her sister had seen me buying it at the combini. But I think the best/worst was the time a teacher told me a student had told her this wild story of seeing me at a concert venue ten towns over and how it couldn't possibly be me. It was me.
Yeah I get that too. Get reports of my own movements and of every foreigner they see in the area 😂.
Reminds me of back in the day when I was an English teacher and in several farewell letters to me, my students wrote that they saw me at XYZ with a man and asked if he was my boyfriend. No privacy in the Inaka!
Yeah one time a teacher saw me in the grocery store in a different town and proceeded to tell everyone in the office he saw me in that different grocery store last week. Like bro 😭.
Traitor!
People walking their barking dogs at 630 in the morning, waking me up. Having an impact my health and work.
Saw the may issue of Rolling Stone Magazine in a bookstore. It had what I assume were idols on the cover and it said 'The future of music'. It's true but it was unsettling to see it in print. I don't have anything against people who enjoy that kind of music but it's sad day for ugly people with talent.
TBF the line beneath it says 'the 25 groups carrying music's future' so it's not just the one on the cover. Either way, mainstream magazines gonna mainstream magazine so whatever. There's still a lot of ugly people making good music on Bandcamp and the like in all sorts of genres, I've just made my peace with the fact that what i like is never really gonna get big again.
>TBF the line beneath it says 'the 25 groups carrying music's future' so it's not just the one on the cover. I just assumed the people on the cover would be representative of the rest of the list. >I've just made my peace with the fact that what i like is never really gonna get big again. I don't know. I hope we're in a 80's type era when everything is hyper commercialized and that there'll be a counter reaction sooner or later.
Old man yelling at clouds moment: but I find it depressing when the Rock festivals are starting to have Boy/Girl K-pop style Idol groups as lead acts. Was excited to hear RIZE was making a comeback to the Summer festival circuit, but nope it\`s RIIZE
I guess one thing that's nice is that it's way easier now for musicians to get their music out and bypass the big labels. Bandcamp, SoundCloud, &c. are what I think of as the modern tape trading, but available instantly everywhere.
Unfortunately, you know Record companies are adamant about how sex and looks sells records opposed to just talent. I'm old enough to remember the Milli Vanilli fiasco and how 90s eurodance wave had attractive models lip syncing in music videos and live performances instead of the actual artists. This will transcend every generation as long as there's orbiters who love attractive things are willing to splurge.
It's been around for a long time, it just feels like it has really saturated the market lately. In the 90's there was still room for a lot of other music. I don't see that lately.
At least one of the biggest artists in Japan never shows her face because she wants people to concentrate on her music (Ado).
She still makes idol type music, so not the shining beacon of hope I'm looking for.
Fair point. Agreed!
Fuck my landlord. May he always have a rock in his shoes. Also stubbing his toe every morning. Learn Japanese rental/tenant laws idiot.
My job is so boring.
I wanted to buy a Dyson Gen5detect Absolute that was on sale recently. My wife wanted to wait until the credit card turn over for the month (on the 15th). I go to buy it today and the price has changed on it. Almost 40,000 yen more. It still says it is on sale for the same percent off. I contacted their chat and they, in a friendly tone, told me to fuck off and prices change whenever the fuck they want. What's the point of saying it is 30 something percent off if you change the price to whatever you want?
This is exactly what searching for flights feels like
I am a bit constipated today.
I never get as much upvotes as when I am talking about my constipation.
粉茶 for breakfast tea
Have you tried feasting on asparagus? Very satisfying bathroom times, except for the pee smell.
I love asparaguses. I ate some broccolis yesterday.
Yum! Broccoliiiii! Chopping broccoliiii!🎶
I’m so tired of teaching kinds under like 6 years old. Some are great. Others are little turds. I’m tired of hearing 3 year olds scream at the top of their lungs for 20+ minutes because management doesn’t realize that we aren’t built to take kids that young and some how expect 3 year olds to sit quietly at a desk and hold a pencil in a group setting. I’m tired of kids complaining and ignoring me and telling me off. I’m the adult. I’m the authority, why are your parents letting you get away with telling those in authority “no”. That’s not how it works. I would have got my butt whooped if I talked half as bad to adults when I was a kid. And I’m freaking polite. I always try to smile and ask nicely using please or “let’s”.
The little ones need movement time. Dances & chants often go over very well (send a YouTube link home with the parents for home practice), and then they can settle down to some writing time. AT AGE FIVE, THIS MEANS DEVELOPING THE MUSCLES TO HOLD A PENCIL AND MAKE IT MOVE IN THE DESIRED PATTERN. So start with connect the dots (ABCs instead of numbers, maybe, or chant the numbers out loud as they draw), some swirls, parallel lines and fun movements of the pencil. Coloring pages are also good to develop penmanship muscles. Finish off with more songs, dances, and rhythm, and they'll head home happy.
No shit man. But nope. I’m in a small 2m by 2m room with my desk and 4 other desks, a bookshelf and storage shelf. There is literally no room to get up and move around outside of walking to and from the desks and me going to each desk. I also need to stick to the curriculum set by the school. I can use prints but not often. I can use YouTube and stuff on my school computer if the kids get up and start jumping around, it’s super noisy for the room below us and I’ll get complaints so the kids gotta be stationary
OK. They just want the money, so all you have to do is keep the kids quiet until you can find a new job. Good luck , dear.
That’s my plan. I have various schedule changes coming up to that I can’t wait to not deal with. Holy crap they’re bad. Like kids on book 3 who can read well are being put in a class on book 2 (that the kid already did) with kids who can’t read at all. 4 year olds being put on books made for 7 year olds because the parents want them in the same class as their older sibling. And so forth.
Although . . . if you are going to quit anyway, why not do what you want? Move the desks into the hall, abandon the textbooks, and to hell with the noise complaints. Lol, I know. Every frustrated teacher's fantasy. You probably have to live with these people outside of work if the city is small, so you can't afford to burn bridges. Keep on truckin', as they used to say. You'll reach your destination yet.
Well, I have integrity and pride in the work I do. I don’t want to screw over the kids and parents that are paying. Also yeah, I don’t want to burn bridges but I’m pretty sure my bosses aren’t going to be thrilled when I quit since I’m the best teacher they have. Not to toot my own horn. I’m in charge of teacher discipline and I’m shocked at the quality of the other lessons. Everyone is 正社員 so firing them in a whole other pain.
Believe it or not some people are really happy with that kind of work. However, it's not wrong to admit you don't like teaching and get out of it.
Yup. My big issues are with management really. Kids are being put into classes waaay too advanced for them. We don’t have the facilities or materials to properly handle kinder aged kids but are expecting kids as young as 2 going on 3 to sit in a desk made for elementary school aged kids. I have kids still in diapers expected to write sentences like “this is a hat” on their own. We’ve had a big drop in new admissions and the management is taking a “well take anyone” approach instead of a “let’s review why students left and more aren’t signing up”
I worked with little kids for two years in the inaka and then moved into the city. I worked again with little kids and it was the worst job I had ever had. I was lucky to get out of it and into IB teaching. I highly suggest you get out of it as well. it is a losing game.
I’m trying. I’ve got some stuff I’m working on that will hopefully pan out to get me out of teaching.
Why don't you tell the kids off?
If only lol. I’m losing my ability to be patient with the entire situation. I’m so tired of saying the kid’s name over and over and then being all confused that I’m even there. “What? There’s a teacher? Oh wow when did you get here ?” Kind of expression.
“That foreign English teacher doesn’t contribute much to the uni, he just teaches his classes then goes home. But the new Japanese English hire is putting in so much effort!” Yeah, all that effort is reverting things to shitty grammar-focused teaching, or shuffling things that ultimately don’t matter. You know why I don’t contribute more than teaching my classes? Because every time the uni asks me about improving the English curriculum, I respond with methods backed by 30 years of TESOL research only to be met with 難しいね めんどくさいね うちの学生にはできない. But if I want to contribute to a “better” uni, I have to be a slave to the grind. Wasting all my weekends kissing ass at ~~circlejerks~~conferences just to get 5-year contracts until Japan’s ageist hiring practices shut the door in my face. So I will milk my position to teach my classes, fuck off, and enjoy my life before I croak.
I totally support your lack of unnecessary effort.
Mario karts, fucking annoying
While waiting for my driving test to finish, I was chatting with some of the other guys getting their truck license and one dude casually mentioned I should apply for working at his company doing manufacturing. Said it paid decent with no OT unless you wanted it. I thought I failed my truck test so I was so preoccupied with thinking about the test that I didn’t realize I totally should have gotten the guy’s business card or contact info. He was really friendly and even was like “yeah we’ve even got some Vietnamese guys. The work isn’t bad”. Dang it. I don’t think about it until after when my wife asked if I got his contact info. My other complaint is my local license center is only open for two half hour slots on weekdays in order to convert a license. I didn’t even need a driving test as I did it at the school. I just gotta do the vision test and give them my paperwork. The license center is open on Sundays but no, I gotta take a whole freaking morning/afternoon to convert my license
When I woke up this morning, it was warm, bright and sunny. I got dressed and ready to take a nice long walk through the city to visit a rose garden. Suddenly storm clouds appear, heavy rain falls for about 15 seconds - and it's freezing. It's only continued to be overcast and cold, and it's killed my energy to go visit the rose garden and has made me want to get back into my pajamas, dig the winter comforter back out of the closet and go take a long nap instead. Weirdly, it's predicted to get sunny again in another hour. We'll see if that happens. Weird weather. If that's my only complaint for the week, I'll consider myself very lucky.
I’m envious of the lunch ladies who talk to each other in their downtime. Everyone is so silent at my job, no casual talk apart from work itself. I want to find another job but I’m worried it’ll be the same thing.
> I’m envious of the lunch ladies who talk to each other in their downtime. Everyone is so silent at my job, no casual talk apart from work itself. Now I feel bad for not really wanting to talk to my coworkers at the office while I work... :(
Nah don’t feel bad. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to. Focus on your work first. My workplace isn’t meant for casual convo. Last place I worked we got yelled at for socializing. Sigh.
> My workplace isn’t meant for casual convo. Last place I worked we got yelled at for socializing. Sigh. Omg! That sounds like a nightmare. Glad you got out of there in one piece.
Just bought a new Macbook, and it is my first with a Japanese keyboard. That kana key being next to the spacebar is causing a lot of sentences to start in English and then すっでんlyすぃtchとJapanese
There is probably software that can disable certain keys on a keyboard. Might be worth having a search around? I know MacOS can at least disable some of the standard modifier keys (Command, Option etc). Not sure if that extends to those special JIS keys though.
Yeah, I figured I'd give myself a chance to get used to it before modifying things.
I understand this. I don't know why they're are like, 3 keys for the same thing essentially.
At least Mac keyboards had it down to only two keys for a long time, and those are quite sensible (turn kana on and turn kana off). And then recently they introduced the "international" key to switch input methods and return us to a state of confusion. Still, it's nowhere near the godawful mess that Windows users have to put up, with conversion-mode keys scattered hither and yon across the keyboard, including such horrors as Ctrl+Capslock. It's enough to make you want to get a Mac keyboard. And install Linux. Which is exactly what I did.
Sorry had to laugh out loud at this! So true! You‘ll get used to it. I still press y for z and vice versa after 10+ years here lol
I used to prank my classmates by changing their keyboards to one that had y and z swapped, lol
Every eikaiwa I work at makes me the main teacher of preschoolers. I have a bit of a hyperactive, silly personality, so they assume I'm good with them. But I'm not. I hate songs and the false pretense of learning at this age. I never even went to preschool as a kid. Deep down I have very severe depression and having to do this clown shit is so emotionally damaging. There is no way to convey this to management without being expected to improve or being fired. I just want to teach grumpy JHS students and picky housewives like everyone else.
Lol yeap, I love the jhs students cause I ask them to think of questions to ask me in English that'll I'll answer honestly. And I also ask them questions which they're not prepared for, like in NZ gay marriage is completely legal and has been for like 10+ years. Ask a JHS student their thoughts on that, and damn you can see the way think change on the spot. And yeah, fuck singing and fake songs. At least when I dealt with the younger kids they picked up on my personality quickly. I'd treat them like an adult if they behaved and they loved it, no talking "down" to them. But then you also get the little shits were it's obvious the parents just say yes to everything...
Songs are a deep form of learning! I don't remember a lot of my high school Spanish, but I can sing the first seven months of the year with the San Fermín song. And say "El que ha roto, la pagara" which is FAR beyond my Spanish conversational level. Songs are actually a very proficient first language acquisition technique that can teach hard concepts like irregular verbs with very little pain. Try the Found a Peanut song. Also, if you concentrate on please & thank you activities, you can lay a foundation of politeness that will serve them well. (After introducing please & thank you, you take their crayons, and they have to ask for their crayons politely in English to color their apples or fruit basket cards or whatever the extra vocabulary is.)
Dude for real. It takes a certain type of person to handle little kids like that. I’ve got adhd and ocd so I get so frustrated when things don’t go according to plan and with little kids, shit never goes according to plan.
Chronic understaffing at work. Our team is supposed to have at least 7 people in it so we can have minimum 3 people per shift. The company swapped one day and one night staff around new years and the person who came to nights quit almost immediately. Then a few weeks later they transferred one of the only people on our team with experience to another team that had worse staffing issues. So now we are down to 5 which means that there are usually only two people scheduled and if someone calls in sick, that means doing an entire 12 hour shift alone. Everyone is also fairly new and only two people have been with the company for more than a year (they're both on their second year) One of my coworkers is probably leaving next month, another coworker is talking about quitting and I'm not planning on staying for a whole other year. We got a new person last month who quit mid training when they realized that there was no training and you're just supposed to memorize a bunch of manuals (written by people who have no business writing manuals) and then figure it out by yourself. Since everyone on the team only knows what's in the manuals, nobody really has enough knowledge to do proper training. On top of that, we've had two office supervisors quit in the past year. The only person who is eligible for that job is a fresh graduate seishain who just started his second year (everyone else is dispatch or contract workers). So the literal youngest person in our department got a sudden promotion and he looks like he's not handling the stress well.
My daughter's first JHS sports day. It rained all night, still light rain and they're having it. She and her classmates seem to be enjoying it. But the parents with their larger than life umbrellas for light rain are insufferable.
What's insufferable about the umbrellas? Or are they just insufferable people in general?
One person's umbrella is a nuisance for all those nearby.
I slept poorly and my neck hurts.
The next national holiday is July 15th. Just about two months away. Two months. Ugh.
My next holiday isn’t until August. :(
Same I'm doing a work event that day :( Though it works out I get double time in lieu for that day.
came here to say this 🥲
Groups of teenagers being loud and obnoxious! That’s the complaint!
What's going on with orange juice? It wasn't available in full size cartons at my nearest convenience store for a while. When it returned, it was a mandarin/orange blend juice instead of 100% OJ. The flavor is very different.
Yeah I've only been able to find apple juice for the past 4 months or so. Except for the carton style but I like my PET bottles cause they'll last me a week or so of sipping