Many stay-at-home moms (including my mom) seemed to enjoy her visit. She and my mom talked a lot, sometimes for hours (I still can't figure out how she completed her job when she spent so much time with one person). They chatted about recent events, like the daughter of the fisherman gave birth, the great-grandpa of the liquor shop died of cancer, a newly opened restaurant in the nearest town sucked, and sometimes shared even personal struggles or family matters. It really helped a lot of people combat mental struggles caused by the isolation of being traditional stay-at-home wives in a super rural area. The only downside was anything you shared with her would be spread in the entire village before dawn.
(I mention this so more people can know the list exists, and hopefully email us more nominations)
Have you thought about sourcing these by looking at the most favorited comments per week?
It's a better service than FB or Instagram that depress because people only show their good sides there... As you said, she was an essential part of the community ;-)
Sadly it's not only that. Social networks are "half-duplex" where you most likely to broadcast or consume at a time. it's not a true dialog. it made FOMO a thing. and worse, it's not only used for showing good, But it's being used to make complicated world events into bite-size good/bad dividing humanity instead of embracing and considering the complexity.
Surprisingly enough, I just looked the scheme up for this comment, and it's still active:
- https://yakult.com.sg/yakult-lady-agent/
- https://sg.news.yahoo.com/memory-makers-singapores-first-yak...
The Yahoo article could help explain some of the economics behind it.
Typical markup in the USA is 100% from wholesaler to retail. Running brick and mortar is very expensive. So if Walgreens were selling this, the wholesale price would be $1.25. I think it reasonable to expect the Yakult Ladies are pulling in the same $1.25 per package that walgreens gets.
The key, I think, is "Most of them are self-employed". Its a gig economy idea. You have to eat. If you're walking home from the store anyway (or kids school or on the way home from work or whatever), you may as well deliver packages for $1.25 each on the way home. You're walking home anyway, you may as well make free money on the walk.
It also mentions that it was done to drive sales.
Edit: yep, appears Yakult has just kicked off an ad campaign putting Yakult Ladies front and center [0]
Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me.
Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.
https://youtu.be/IiU3Nk16BLQ?t=664
I know my neck of the woods has a not-for-profit called Meals on Wheels that does something similar.
So these mobile supermarkets are as convenient as it gets.
> This website is produced by BBC Global News Ltd, a commercial company that is part of BBC Studios, owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. The money we make from it is re-invested to help fund the BBC’s international journalism.
If you want healthy bacteria, eat some yoghurt.
These are all interesting to me. But of late, I've honed in on the challenge faced by those who are transitioning from one stage of life or circumstance to another. While working and raising a family, work-related activities such as Toastmasters and family-related ones like church or scouts or athletics, may drive participation in groups. But moving from that through a divorce or RIF or retirement may end previous activities and leave a person with no idea what to do next.
HN’s interest in this article is so “thing vs Japanese thing”
It does. These kind of small scale food delivery services exist both in charitable and commercial form across North America and Europe. I know several "Meals on Wheels" workers who are basically half-timing as social service workers.
This is the stereotypical weekly "bucolic Japanese neighborhood social life" story that does actually exist in every place.
So there is a US equivalent, but it would have been interesting to read about them too.
I thought it was well established that interacting with an actual human was generally preferred to whatever we have to use now.
The automation exists to save money on labour, not to make our lives more convenient
I’m not well travelled but, Canada just feels like home of course, and Italy didn’t feel strange in the slightest.
Japan was like being transported to a different world.
Guatemala was as well but, getting picked up by a bodyguard at the airport and driving past slums on the way to a gated community of mansions left a sour taste that still lingers.
> a network of women delivering probiotic milk drinks has become a vital source of routine, connection and care.
So, yoghurt deliveries will fix the loneliness problem in Japan? Seriously? Are the people at BBC drunk?
You only need to watch some youtube videos to realise that what BBC writes, is narrating things very oddly. Yoghurt deliveries will NOT fix the issue of isolated people. Japan's culture is also very unique, but this is still a somewhat more global issue; South Korea is in a somewhat comparable situation, for instance. A lot of this ties into work culture, too; in Japan even more than in South Korea.
My long term prediction is that we we'll be taking curator-like roles much more seriously due to automation, as having human in the loop is not only needed for debugging automation issues but maintaining healthy society loops as well.
This is not a new argument either. Since the inception of cities we know that connection is being lost in extreme efficiency. Ladies delivering yogurt is just trading efficiency for connection.
They don't eat yogurt or dairy in general.
They eat less dairy, but hardly none. I have heard people say that a scoop of ice cream or a glass of milk each day is not a problem, but more can be. Intolerance also seems to increase with age, so younger people can consume more dairy.
A 1975 study in Japan puts intolerance (unable to drink 200ml of milk comfortably) at 19% of the population. I would suspect that massive exposure over the past 50 years has lowered that percentage significantly.
Most yogurt cultures reduces lactose content of the milk base during fermentation. Some cultures like the one Yakult uses supports increased lactose digestion in humans. At the same time lactose intolerance is not binary but a spectrum.
Case in video: Chinese and milk tea
Lactose intolerance is not absolute.
I think it's a totally legitimate thing to ponder and on most internet forums you'd just be ridiculed for it. OP even qualified it by saying they don't have anything against human connection per se.
> Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem.
But then I realized we differed on what the root problem/solution were.
What economic/social forces are making it so that the elderly get their emotional needs met through gig workers instead of their own families?
Another point the article doesn't mention is the emotional toll this likely has on the workers. Having once worked a role where I regularly helped the elderly and got to know the same individuals over some years, it was a constant churn of disappointment when they'd inevitably die.
you're reading the title wrong, they aren't "trying to solve the loneliness epidemic," they are trying to sell yogurt at a profit. In so doing, their sales force is ameliorating some of the loneliness their clients feel as a side effect. You could say that they are monetizing loneliness if that's the reason people are buying their products, for the visits and not for the yogurt.
Life is what you make of it, whether you’re a robot or a human.
wild take.
Hannah Arendt explicitly notes that the true aim of totalitarian ideologies is not merely to change political structures, but to achieve "the transformation of human nature itself". When regimes seek total domination over a population, human spontaneity and the unpredictable nature of our social relationships become the greatest obstacles.
To achieve total control, these systems attempt to fabricate a new kind of human species. Arendt observes that concentration camps functioned literally as "laboratories" to test these changes in human nature. The objective was to eliminate human spontaneity and transform the human personality into a mere "thing," reducing individuals to a predictable "bundle of reactions". Arendt compares the success of this psychological rewiring to Pavlov’s dog, noting that conditioning a creature to abandon its natural, spontaneous instincts creates a "perverted animal".
James C. Scott traces a similar impulse in "high-modernist" ideology, which champions the "mastery of nature (including human nature)" through the rational, scientific design of social order. This kind of extreme social engineering requires stripping people of their distinctive personalities, histories, and organic community ties, treating them instead as abstract, interchangeable "generic subjects".
When human beings are placed in environments designed to severely restrict their organic social interactions and enforce rigid functional control, they suffer. Such environments foster a kind of "institutional neurosis" characterized by apathy, withdrawal, and a loss of initiative.
Paulo Freire similarly observes that the drive to completely control people—to "in-animate" them and transform them from living beings into inanimate "things"—is the essence of oppression. He argues that attempting to turn men and women into "automatons" directly negates our fundamental "ontological vocation to be more fully human".
If we were to successfully "rewire" ourselves to no longer need others, we would be executing the very project that authoritarian regimes have historically attempted through terror and indoctrination.
Our "flawed" social dependency and spontaneous need for one another are exactly what guarantee our freedom. To engineer that vulnerability out of the human psyche would not solve the problem of loneliness; it would simply reduce us to isolated, predictable mechanisms, destroying our humanity in the process.
Either way, editing away the need for social connections from humans seems to be quite a long way from our current level of technology, so it's not really worth considering as something that can actually be done. There's a philosophical discussion worth having despite that though.
Just think of all the value we could add.
I think this need for social interaction is harmful. We did see this in action during the COVID pandemic. So many people who weren’t able to abide by a short lockdown. Lives were lost due to our pathological need for social interaction.
Imagine how many communicable deceases we could eliminate by simply having a 3 month lockdown every other year.
My 2 cents - mountains and nature and activities in them are always beautiful, as in it doesn't get boring or mundane, not for anybody I know. Working out on oneself, experiencing various adventures, backpacking around the world, sports, adrenaline/risky activities that make you feel alive, seeing cultures and history and food... those are done for oneself and they are absolutely 100% fulfilling that no career could ever deliver.
Saying above as one such person, and also father of 2 amazing kids (and a pretty decent wife to complement) whom I love more than anything. But I don't live for them despite doing various hard sacrifices for them, I live for me and do those things for me, to be happy, content, recharged, better father and husband and when looking back at my life being fine with various choices made.
But it's a good question. My answer is social contact sharpens our mind. Without it, we would be stupider. And God knows we're stupid enough as it is without degrading our intellectual faculties further.
At a basic level, loners will get hunted down by tribes because they are easy prey and because their behavior can be misconstrued or spun by grifters as nefarious because they are different.
I am one such person, and there are others. I consider it a personality strength, although of course it comes with side effects. Minority but not tiny.
This sadly is the default zeitgeist within Liberalism as a political philosophy - which is why elites across the world treat humans as cannon fodder. They'd sell them a "dream" and destroy them and communities they're part of in order to create cheap labourers and needy consumers.Once that has passed, they'll throw them under the bus.
Once our overlords get AI/Robots to work for them, we'll quickly see mass-eugenics (positive & negative) programs instituted across the world.
As Dugin et.al note, this is infact the central flaw in modernity - which was moderated occasionally by nationalism, fascism and communism - but ultimately all within the same broad loci.
By contrast, many humans can't even understand the thrust of an argument and so discussion is wasted on them. There's nothing more frustrating than making an argument of some meaning and having someone misunderstand it entirely. Avoiding that requires some degree of rhetorical skill and communication and a sufficiently receptive audience. I have no problem talking to my friends like this, but there is a time-subject-partner matching problem. I want to discuss Analects 13.18 now, and my friend who can give me context is putting his son to sleep[0]. So I talk to Opus 4.6 and DeepSeek about what I think it is and I get quite far in understanding why my (seemingly novel) interpretation is unlikely to be correct.
So machines are very useful in discussion and so on. However, I don't think they serve much of a purpose in assuaging loneliness. The reality of life is that it is most successful when it can organize into larger blocks: the cell, the organ, the body, the community, the state. And so I think our eusocial nature is strongly adaptive[1]. Perhaps with sufficiently advanced AI, a single person could exert sufficient power. Nothing in theory stopping that but I have other opposition to that (monocultures are non-adaptive, etc.). So removing our dependence on social connections will probably weaken us.
So given that that is the case, I think people over-prescribe solutions in a way that is razor-targeted to themselves[2]. As someone who is not lonely and quite socially fulfilled, I find that a lot of these prescriptions turn out to come from some other axioms which I feel are unnecessary. For instance, one trend is "why do they have to get their needs met from delivery man?" and I think that's silly. When I was a child, we kids "had a relationship with" or "had some of our needs met" by the school guard in that he was a civic ally of ours. He was usually opposed to our actions tactically but ultimately aligned. Our final exams in India are very important and one day one of my classmates, who was particularly scatterbrained, was late for one and he took him to the exam hall on his bike.
I don't think there's any reason to proscribe that social interactions should be within one's own immediate sphere. Our apartment building in San Francisco has social interactions that I think are normal in a civil society[3] - for the most part I interact there with strangers. Some I have helped or been helped by without ever having seen their faces. I think there is a joy I get from my direct family, and then my extended family and friends, and my communities, and my society, and as someone whose life is fairly joyful I'd say that looking around, (and with apologies to Tolstoy), "Happy people are all alike; each unhappy person is unhappy in their own way".
0: He did respond in the morning and it was very helpful. Turns out I misread the relationship Shen Zhuliang and Confucius had.
1: In fact, I'm of the opinion that pro-sociality is probably The Adaptive Trait. I recently picked up Darwin's Cathedral and am approximately 3 pages in and I already feel a kindred spirit behind that book.
2: Can we help it? Almost everyone has heard an expert or professor go "I believe that X is the most important thing that everyone should learn" and X always happens to be what they're studying - well obviously they believe that, otherwise they wouldn't be studying it.
3: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
That's a good idea btw - here are some of the most-favorited comments from this past week:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47258500
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238442
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237467
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232961
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226535
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214629
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47210627
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206393
Only a couple of those were already in /highlights.
I'm not sure yet whether this is good enough to be an automatic feed into /highlights but I could imagine adding aggregated /favorites pages to https://news.ycombinator.com/lists.
Would love to see it as /favorites in the lists page!
The person being circumcized doesn't usually get to decide or even understand what's going on.
Yakult ladies aren’t classified as full-time employees, but kojin jigyo usha (roughly “sole proprietors”), essentially making them owners of bicycle-sized franchises. They purchase product from Yakult and make a profit based on what they can sell. Yakult says the average earnings of a Yakult lady are roughly $682 USD a month, compared to an average of $1,774 per month for Japanese women broadly. In Yahoo Answers forums, Yakult ladies claim wildly different profits: Some say they work only three hours a day and make more than the company average. Others claim to work far more, selling roughly $2,700 worth of product in a month to take home about $600, roughly a 22 percent cut.
...
As I left the Yakult center, my baby clamoring for her nap, I felt oddly disillusioned — not by the women themselves, or even the no-nonsense manager, but by the corporate trappings of their work. Before I looked into it, I had swallowed the lighthearted, easy glow of Yakult’s promotional videos, which recalled my own experience when I was a kid. I would like to believe selling probiotic milk drinks is just an aside to Yakult ladies’ main mission of maternal care in the community. In the fluorescent lighting of the Yakult center, I saw their labor.
And if it is an ad, doesn't the FTC require it to be labelled as such?
There was a case where UK based influencer got into FTC trouble for the CSGO Lotto gambling site. He was promoting it without disclosing he had a stake in the site.
Tbh often I see going out and being social as a kind of pre-payment so I can be a shut-in nerd for the other day of the weekend without feeling bad.
My point is that even if you were a robot, if you had feelings. you wouldn't be spared. So are you asking the lack of feelings?
And even if that's the case then, there are people who had gone into accidents who lost their feelings/emotional part of the brain. They sucked at making decisions because I remember reading how the person binge watched shows instead of watching his son's football games, how he couldn't decide what is more important, buying a stapler or filing his taxes (I can be wrong about this one but something similar related to pencils) but my point is that he couldn't make good decisions. He couldn't really compare between two decisions.
Now look at robots, look at LLM's. They can't decide if a car is 50m away then should it be drove or should you walk. They are essentially just a corpus of human data congested into a servant while being nothing more than auto correct on steroids in its true form.
Humanity has its flaws. I absolutely agree. But I think that the reason we have good is also because humanity has flaws. Much of my morality stems from the fact that if I die and I am gonna die someday, that's for sure, then what's my footprint on the world no matter how tiny and questions like these. I suppose every human feels that way.
A robot has no purpose other than being spawned in to create something brittle like yet-another-crud-app.
Perhaps one can argue that humanity is the same seeing the horrors we unleash on each other and tbh we humans have just spawned here and we weren't asked by anyone to exist in our form or not.
But at some point, we do have free-will and freedom no matter how tiny might it seem in algorithms the size of mountains and we can exercise it to bring meaningful change maybe.
I'd rather be human and go watch my children's football game in future rather than be robot. Maybe the surrounding and family and the community as say even hackernews around us give some meaning as we bump into each other.
This is one of the biggest reasons I'd rather be a robot. The anguish they cause me do not help me.
> He couldn't really compare between two decisions.
Such is life without a ground truth to decide your priorities. There are hopefully other source of that than emotions.
> A robot has no purpose other than being spawned in to create something brittle like yet-another-crud-app.
Neither do humans.
If being a robot is shit, but being human is also shit, then then I can only really conclude that it's better to not be at all.
Sadly, Even if you live a life based on some ground base of morals, those morals come from the inevitability of death personally as I said in previous comment. I am not hopeful about it and science isn't either seeing the experiments of those people that I mentioned.
> Neither do humans.If being a robot is shit, but being human is also shit, then then I can only really conclude that it's better to not be at all.
That is another point I touched (in the next paragraph). We humans are also just like random particles fwiw but I believe that no matter how small action we take , it can have consequences.
At some point tho, I sometimes hate the world too (how could you not) but not enough to not be at all. If anything I maybe hate myself if say I am not being productive or anything more than I hate the world, which has been quite a bit kind to me too and some people are bad too yeah. It's a mix of both.
So although I don't have quite the answer. I believe that at some point, we have to accept our own autonomy and act towards what we want whether in personal life or the changes we want in the world. Even if we don't use that freedom at times and the life cycle of day feels weird.
It's still nice knowing that we can have freedom maybe. But I think that everyone wings it in life at some point or another. Maybe some wing better than others but the only thing is probably keep trying at some point and happiness comes along the way too, I am not that sure if I am the right person to be the person talking about these stuff right now haha :) but these are just some opinions I hold.
> sports
> seeing cultures and history and food
All of these things still require interaction with other people? If you remove all the others you also don't get to enjoy the things that you claim to enjoy by yourself
Being able to hike the mountains without the equipment that others have tried/tested/packaged/sold is not possible either.
Imagine that you're traveling space and you get stuck on an empty planet, that's the logical conclusion of "removing the need for human connection"
Having gone through divorce/empty nest and working remotely it's been quite challenging to avoid depression.
I love my husband dearly, and I’d morn him if he vanished, but it wouldn’t make my life hard to live by any means - I lived just fine before him, and I’ll live just fine after him. I didn’t marry him because I needed somebody, I married him because I wanted him. I love him and I’m lucky to have him, but I also love myself and am lucky to be me - and as I said, that was true before I met him, and it’ll be true after he’s gone.
I don’t need someone else to make my worthwhile, or to make my life worth living - I am sufficient. He’s a (much welcomed and deeply appreciated) bonus.
What you’re describing sounds like romanticizing mental illness to me.
You can learn from AI. Just because it comes from another human you doing have to socialize with that human.
>Creating requires materials and methods created by other humans.
You can AI generate these materials. And even if you don't, downloading an image or using a method from someone else does not require socialize with them.
Try learning to box from an AI.
> You can AI generate these materials
Um...no...I meant actual material things that you use to create what you want. The supply chains that manufacture the materials necessary for you to "create" all require social interaction at multiple levels throughout the process.
Sorry, your depressing anti-social hermit paradise can't exist.
It’s not that GDP is a poor measure, just that it is isolated as the only measure most policy is based on improving rather than being one metric in a portfolio of related metrics that balance technological progress, accumulation of wealth, and human thriving.
As Gary Stephenson rightly points out the culture of Economics in modern practice is not one of open query and scientific skepticism, but of proselytizing. More akin to a religion than a science.
I mean, not to be political, but there's probably a place somewhere on Earth selling 10 standard chicken eggs for 540 local coins that's equivalent to $0.01 by the official government rates then-and-there, and the idea of GDP being meaningful means they must be either producing something like thousands of eggs per hour per employee or they live with something like a single pieces of chocolate worth of calories per day. And it's really not like that.
I'm sure GDP figures normalized on local consumer price index will have its own flaws, but especially USD-normalized GDP feels wrong to me in that regards.
My take on Economists is that they keep desperately trying to make people understand that prices are set by supply vs demand dynamics, while society keeps refusing to understand it.
- private individuals can still afford to run their own stores and cafes. In Oslo it's all commercial "food concepts" and chains. Authentic is unwanted - a Japanese restaurant trying to be authentic was recently kicked out of their place recently for not cutting corners to make a good enough profit - the property owner took a % of every sale + alcohol sales and wasn't happy, so they fabricated reasons to cancel the contract. Eating out in Japan is affordable even on a Japanese salary and I have access to basically any cuisine you can imagine - and the foreign food is often made by immigrants from that country (with some exceptions). In Norway the biggest thing in tacos is currently a Swedish chain. In Japan I can befriend my local restaurant owners.
- niche interests are hard in Norway. Everyone in your circle shows up for the once a year interesting artist that isn't already a huge pop artist on a LiveNation tour. Tariffs are high (yes, watching the whole "who pays tariffs" debate has been mind numbing), effectively 25-50% including fees, so you feel punished for being interested in anything not local. Which is everything.
- public transport in Japan is generally great. public transport in Norway is horrible. The goal is to be rich enough to avoid it and just drive, even if parking in the city is easily 50$ for a few hours if you are unlucky. Delays all the time, but no fixes, just finger pointing. They stopped publishing statistics on how often trains were late, and didn't classify cancelled trains as delayed when they did publish stats. It's all just lies and deception to try to stop the public from being mad.
- I have access to basically all the culture I want, both Japanese and western. Everyone wants to stop by Japan. Not Norway. local culture in Norway is better than before but still pretty dead. Everyone just consumes American culture. There are cool Norwegian bands and a few good movies but that's about it. When I say this I am often asked "isn't Norway a heavy metal country" and yes sure, but it is still a small niche. I don't know anyone my age who partakes.
- the Norwegian hobby is football, walks in nature, or alcohol. I read somewhere that Norwegians drink as much Brits, but in a single weekend instead of averaged over a week. It makes sense to me. All my non tech friends' hobbies were basically going out and getting hammered. There are of course other hobbies and this is slight hyperbole to make a point, but in general everyone just gets drunk. 200 years ago there probably wasn't much better to do during winter, go figure. Alcohol is also a very big hobby in Japan, probably bigger than Norway. But there's more things outside alcohol as well.
- loads of crime in Oslo, recently a lot of youth violence, including random robberies with stabbing. Much less of that in Japan. In Japan I will frequently find myself walking streets at night with women I do but know when I'm heading home. In Norway female friends would often call me in those situations just so they could communicate to the stranger that someone would know if they tried to do something. Never seen that here.
- less individualism is good, to a certain degree. People consider others around them, and it makes things easier. In Norway, watching videos on speaker has almost become normalized on the train post-covid, especially among kids who had their formative years in quarantine.
- there is less enshittification, app-ism, and x-as-a-service in my everyday life. It doesn't feel like people are trying to cut corners to squeeze a larger profit from me. Japan is a very capitalistic country, but it doesn't feel as doomed as the west. Yet.
Most of these problems "fixed" by Japan are related to economy of scale. Some are policy related, and some is culture. In Japan I have any hobby I want at my fingertips because there are enough people to support anything. Ordering online doesn't cost a fortune in fees. Public transport is good for many reasons, and still affordable because there are many paying for it. Even when I was a student here I could afford to live in a relatively dingy but completely ok apartment where I could be most places I wanted to go within 30 min.
I feel fulfilled and that i have no excuse not to check out anything I'm curious about. Norwegians are told they live in the best country and are the best their entire life, and I suspect this is why if you complain many Norwegians ignore it assuming it can't get better than this. If anything my takeaway is that going abroad and seeing other cultures really made me see that the worldview I grew up with was incomplete and prone to make me satisfied with what I had.
Don't get me wrong, Norway is a great place to start a family or grow old. It's a good place to live a life that's centered around a family. The nature is beautiful, and frankly I like the snow and freezing weather - it's cozy! But Japan offers almost all of the same, only with all the benefits of scale :D.
Finally. Biases:
- IT job makes my life comfortable by Japanese standards, but not by much. I don't work at an international company. Japanese people also seem to generally live very fulfilling lives, although the rumours regarding black companies and similar are definitely true.
- I have a nice and mature work environment that doesn't make me hate waking up
- I have only lived in cities orders of magnitude bigger than Norways Capitol while in Japan
- I have put a lot of (mostly passive) effort into learning about the country I moved to, and I know people who didn't who have had nasty surprises. You also should do your best at adjusting to how things work here and embrace it. I have had 0 surprises since I moved here. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. I make tonnes.
- I was also somewhat into the culture, so it's not like I was transplanted into a completely foreign culture. I had things I wanted to see here. You can tell Japan has done a good job soft power-wise.
- my Japanese reading isn't as good as it should be and so I don't have a habit of following local news, which makes me blind to a lot of smaller issues that are a more more visible to me in Norway
The biggest thing I personally miss is Norwegian friends, and the European hacker culture. There are tinkerers and hackers here but it's not really the same.
Yeah, I've been to Alabama. The absolute poorest areas of Canada are better than basically 100% of Alabama.
GDP is a myth, especially for largely illusory economies like the US where it's all a shell game of fake money, debt spending and the plutocrats that control almost all of the wealth.
People tend to pay more attention to trade than investment, but investment flows are just as important. A trade deficit often means that foreign investors are buying and a trade surplus goes along with people investing in foreign countries.
> This website is produced by BBC Global News Ltd, a commercial company that is part of BBC Studios, owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. The money we make from it is re-invested to help fund the BBC’s international journalism.
If the fee is mandatory, it works similar to a tax, in which case it would be more correct than incorrect to say the BBC is state funded.
How much media can or rather may diverge from state opinion depends country to country.
How is that different from being state-funded? Everything state-funded is paid for by the general public, through taxes. That's part of what being a state is: an organization that forces people to pay taxes and directs them to various programs.
Are you claiming that the TV license fee isn't a tax? It's money that the state makes you pay so that it can fund something.
Furthermore the state isn't in charge of administering it anyway, it's a civil matter brought about by the BBC (or rather the company which is subcontracted to enforce licencing). The BBC has the authority to do this based on the Royal Charter that governs it, that doesn't make it "state funded" or a "state broadcaster".
There are plenty of taxes that only some people have to pay, for example, the fee to register a car.
> Furthermore the state isn't in charge of administering it anyway, it's a civil matter brought about by the BBC (or rather the company which is subcontracted to enforce licencing). The BBC has the authority to do this based on the Royal Charter that governs it
I'm trouble understanding how this doesn't make it part of the state? It is a 100% state-owned entity to which the state has granted (in a "Royal Charter") the ability to collect taxes... the distinction you're trying to draw seems meaningless to me.
Sure there may be two separate entities, one called "The UK Government" and one called "The BBC" where neither is part of the other, but structurally I don't see how you can claim that they're not both part of "the State" in general.
The enforcers work for neither the BBC nor the government but are subcontracted out.
I am not British so I could be wrong however. If you have evidence that the BBC lacks autonomy when it comes to foreign policy or to the royal family please share it with the rest of us.
As for supposed autonomy from the government... Watch BBC News, you can always get a good idea of who the UK will go to war with next... Before it happens. Their coverage of the Troubles was also reflective of the British government.
I think you'll find that for most of these things, you can get them in New York City. Lots of small local shops, everything is within walking distance or a few stops away on the subway. It is not as safe as most parts of Japan, but its still pretty safe compared to most big cities in the US, and I've seen many people walking around alone at night in Central Park, which is surprisingly quiet and peaceful then.
They'll be a lot of things you'll miss. The Golden Gai is not a tourist hot spot for nothing; that's not to say that New York does not have a million cool local bars you can run into by accident, great food prepared with care by chefs, diverse groups for any interest you could think of, and certainly more than Japan every single possible cuisine from everywhere in the world at high quality.
And while you might miss the Japanese rent, you are not going to miss the Japanese wages. Its true, you have to work in tech or finance to live in Manhattan for the most part, and Brooklyn seems to be filled with trust-fund babies struggling to launch their career in arts (though I've met a few who are doing decently well as video fx artists and UX designers), but if you do manage to secure a decent wage, life will be similar enough, and things will feel affordable, even if they are not by any other standard.
For me as a non-American, America isn't currently an option as a place to live due to safety and unstable political climate, but I have American friends who I use to compare Japan life to life in an urban part of the states. I have never lived in New York nor stepped outside JFK (skyline looked cool though!), so I wouldn't know, but seems like there is some good accessibility of cool places, at least in big financial centers.
I have a friend who _loves_ the US and has been trying to get a job there ever since he graduated, but he has been unsuccessful. He has been screwed over by COVID and the layoffs that followed, basically nobody was interested in sponsoring visas. In many ways we were in a similar situation, trying to escape our home country for something more interesting. I hope he succeeds.
But you seem to be happy at a local company. Do you think you're lucky, have very low demands or have working conditions changed?
I think I'm relatively lucky. Some luck is required to get established in the IT industry I think, especially the smaller, foreign friendly one. I think the hardest problem facing people who want to move here is getting a foot inside the door. To me it seems most people who have lived here long enough have been able to establish a life they like.
Working conditions have changed, but slowly. It seems most of the change is in new companies, while the old still lag behind. But I've heard good things about certain game companies.
This is the #1 reason I loved visiting Japan so much: it's a country full of people that understand their implicit societal obligation to not unduly burden others. Meanwhile in the US people seem to be increasingly flouting basic decorum while driving, queuing, and generally existing in public spaces then doubling down on it when called out. My pet theory is that we're still feeling a rebound effect of COVID cabin fever but who knows.
Do you speak japanese well? I assume without you only get by in certain bubbles in big cities?
You are correct in that getting by without Japanese only works in big city bubbles. Even then, knowing some Japanese really unlocks a lot for you. Many get stuck in foreigner bubbles, even if they speak the language somewhat
I have heard that Japan has a very negative connotation of foreigners (even more so than current form of America) so I am interested to hear your thoughts on that.
I am able to see some similarities with Japan within my own country as well, namely the idea of everything being close. I can't speak about food but being vegetarian, and my country primarily being so too. I actually love our own cultural cuisine. (Anecdotally I watched I think JaidenAnimations where she had issues in japan about some vegan aspects but yeah)
I believe that Japan's Anime/Culture's soft power is really underestimated maybe as it becomes a tourist hub because of that. I am not a big Anime fan but I have watched Animes like Death note, AOT and Yu Yu Hakusho and I was a big fan of Dragon ball growing up :D and many of my friends love anime.
I think that at some point, my conclusion is that Japan and (many South Asian countries) have all some plus/minuses but the quality of life in these countries can be decent if you earn good and have a good work-life balance.
On the other hand, if you don't, then I feel like I have heard too many stories of toxic work culture as well.
Whereas on the sweden/norway side of things, I feel like the subsidies by govt. and other things actually make you feel comfortable being between jobs and imo on average, has nothing like the japanese work culture in the sense that I haven't heard of toxicity in the same sense as japan but I'd love to know your opinion as well. And another reason is that this also makes people more likely to take more risks without worrying too much which might explain why the swedes have the most billionaires per capita.
So my conclusion is that A good job (work-culture) in Japan (South Asia in general?) >= Normalcy in Norway > Toxic job in Japan. Am I right in my assessment or is there more to it that I may have missed?
> less enshittification
Unfortunately, in many countries, buying a used car is a gamble. Not in Japan because people are more honest, and it is a high trust society. It is hard to explain the magic of Japanese culture to people who have not experienced it first hand, but it is life changing for many.
Mostly it is a high trust society and it makes things a _lot easier_. It feels so good to let down my guard. Of course, there are tonnes of people that want things from you (anyone who has lived here will tell you about the mt. fuji cult), the general "if things are too good to be true they are" rule still works well here. But trusting that things work just hits different.
> I have heard that Japan has a very negative connotation of foreigners
All of the reactionary screed that you are seeing on YouTube or reading from low quality news sources about negative reactions to foreigners can be generally ignored. It is not the reality on the ground. Yes, there will be isolated incidents by assholes, but they are far, far less than 1% of common interactions. Also, if you speak even a tiny amount of Japanese (100+ words) and make an effort to speak Japanese and be polite, they will immediately see that you are not some annoying tourist and treat you better.
> I am able to see some similarities with Japan within my own country as well, namely the idea of everything being close. I can't speak about food but being vegetarian, and my country primarily being so too. I actually love our own cultural cuisine.
> In all rich (non-micro-state) countries, outside of big cities, they are all driving nations
I think this is a key takeaway. Urban life is a city thing no matter where you live. Of course, if you lived in Tokyo, you could live an hour away from things and still live in a city with good public transport (Saitama, yokohama, chiba, etc). But then you could probably afford a house with a car as well. Seems like a nice life.
I live in India and we have a very vegetarian society comparatively to the rest of world and our cuisine is developed with this in mind.
From Samosas and gol gappas to Pav bhaji to Shahi Paneer to the more European style cuisine like french fries, burgers and even the Chinese cuisine like spring roll, finger chips and momos are all vegetarian food.
And I can eat all of this by moving like what 100-200 meters, there's a shop which makes these foods and before that there comes a locally owned convenience store and also an shop owned by an uncle who used to work in our military and they have specific canteens where they can buy things from cheap (as a sort of thank you to service to nation)
And I live in a random city within India where my family has been living for generations at this point. The place I eat my fries, they are a couple who make food and I have seen them eating their own food so they are a foodie too.
So its absolutely sad to me to see some people pick some videos on the internet and portray it as bad when its actually really cool :<
Another point is that street food is one of the cheapest here. I can eat till my heart desires in less than 3-4$. Usually when I eat something from outside, it costs 2$.
I think my point is that this is genuinely a really great place for vegetarian food and Indian cuisine is very spicy.
For what its worth tho I should mention that I used to eat eggs/egg rolls sometimes but I used to eat them so few that I have just stopped eating them for the most part now.
> All of the reactionary screed that you are seeing on YouTube or reading from low quality news sources about negative reactions to foreigners can be generally ignored. It is not the reality on the ground. Yes, there will be isolated incidents by assholes, but they are far, far less than 1% of common interactions. Also, if you speak even a tiny amount of Japanese (100+ words) and make an effort to speak Japanese and be polite, they will immediately see that you are not some annoying tourist and treat you better.
Yeah, I do get that in the sense that certain negative aspects of a country which doesn't reflect the ground truth can be shown to everybody on youtube. I do realize this point.
I'd say the same is true for India as well even within the northern and southern state where Northern Indians prefer Southern Indians to speak Hindi and Southern prefer if Northern Indians speak Kannada and the local language. And both might want somewhat of the same thing if you are foreigner as well.
Here we are more likely to take selfies with foreigners (I have never seen one in my city fwiw) so I am curious if japan feels the same way or is there something more to it?
This is not true at all. It's rumors people spread on Twitter based on news articles about overtourism causing issues. I suspect it is somewhat caused by westerners trying to understand through their own worldview - foreigner hate is a hot topic in basically the entire west at the moment, so it is easy for us to make the connection that "Overtourism is bad so they hate us". Yes, some are exhausted. I lived in Kyoto for a while and some of them are fed up. Tokyo as well - golden gai (a bar area) has definitely changed. People turn their brain off when they are on holiday and don't behave, and this is just human nature. We have towns with overtourism issues in Norway as well, I have seen Norwegians crack and have meltdowns over it before.
Frankly most Japanese are just happy you care about their country. If you speak a bit, they love to show you stuff. They are proud of their country, but also happy to be recognized for it. Most are super kind, and I've had so many good experiences. The only time I had a bad experience, we were rejected from a completely empty restaurant. They thought we were American (we were in Nagasaki), and the second they heard European they called us back.
> I am able to see some similarities with Japan within my own country as well, namely the idea of everything being close. I can't speak about food but being vegetarian, and my country primarily being so too. I actually love our own cultural cuisine. (Anecdotally I watched I think JaidenAnimations where she had issues in japan about some vegan aspects but yeah)
Vegan food in _Tokyo_ is easier nowadays but still hard. You need to know your way around.
> [good, bad sides, work culture]
Yeah. I think it makes best sense to try living there if you have an interest in the culture you'd like to explore. The horror stories are real.
> [Sweden, Norway]
Great countries, but not much buying power. Everyone is expected to buy apartments as they are the best investment objects, and pay mortgages. But apartments are so expensive, you don't really have much left at the end of the month. I certainly feel wealthier than my friends, even though they earn much more than me, but I also don't have a mortgage (yet).
> A good job (work-culture) in Japan (South Asia in general?) >= Normalcy in Norway > Toxic job in Japan
Sounds about right. It depends on what you like. As I wrote, if you are family oriented Norway is probably good. A good wage in Norway will definitely give you a great life. But you end up spending all that money on simply getting to places with interesting things (UK, Europe), or importing the stuff to you.
> Here we are more likely to take selfies with foreigners (I have never seen one in my city fwiw) so I am curious if japan feels the same way or is there something more to it?
This seems to be the most important factor to me at times too so can you tell me more about it too perhaps?
Renting apartments is also relatively affordable. I rented a standard 1k(bedroom + kitchen in the hallway) 14sqm apartment near the yamanote line (look it up "Tokyo 1k apartment" and you will see some floormaps). This cost 85k yen/mo, or ~650 USD in 2022 money.
When it comes to the free houses (akiya), there is apparently often a catch that you are expected to renovate them within a deadline, so you don't just get free property.
Greg from "Life Where I'm From" is a reputable source, and he has a lot of experience with property "out in the sticks". I recommend watching this, and maybe some other videos he has made regarding Nikko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3I9KXkJFPU
The "free houses" you have heard about are called akiya (空き家). There are countless YouTube videos and blog posts to learn about how it works. You are basically buying an abandoned home from a local gov't agency.