Game plan: 1,2 out 1 in

Not my collection exactly, but you get the idea.

I am in trouble. Between my $50/yr Playstation Plus and $50/yr Xbox Gold memberships, I have a flood of games. I'm reaching the 200-game mark of free games for both systems, and there are still attractive games out there that I want to buy. Also, with summer hitting, my dedication to the hobby is going to drop. My plan to keep my collection from spiraling out of control is to beat-and-delete 2 downloaded free games, and then finish-and-sell 1 disc-based game before I pay for a new game, of course avoiding the full 59.99 at all costs (<-- see what I did there?). Techbargains.com is a great place to make sure not to pay full price for games. There are 2 titles I'm looking forward to: Final Fantasy XV and Rainbow Six.

Choosing 6 games from my expanding library is no problem, but this leads me to minimizing collections. I've moved in and out of the USA to Korea, Thailand and Japan, in addition to 4 addresses in Washington. Every time, my collections become more of a burden, and loses both financial and sentimental value. 7 years ago, before Thailand, I threw away 150 DVD cases and almost 100 game cases, reducing it to two DVD binders. In the 10 years I've pinged around Asia and Washington, I've never had the bookshelf to proudly display my library of titles. I am glad I made the decision to ditch the two boxes of plastic. DVDs were replaced by BluRays, and now it's all digital; you can use that space to hang photos, or art that you traded with a friend, or drawings from loved ones!

Impressive collection, but let's calm the fuzz down, here...

Games are much more time-consuming than movies, so it's incredibly unlikely that you'll have time to go back through your old favorites with 10- to 100-hour stories. If you're keeping it as a collector's item: more power to ya! But, there is a dearth of free-or-near-free games out there, through the console subscription services, and also emulation. So before you buy another bookshelf or storage bin for that musty collection of games or movies, get some loved ones together and reminisce over your favorite scenes and moments, and then sell/donate those puppies!! Your investment in a collection makes you want to build it more and more: when do you stop?

At this point, I've made my case for movie and game collections; I still have an art collection of stuff I purchased overseas. These two plastic bins have been cumbersome to move, leave with friends, and otherwise store, and I've never had a chance to display most of it. This is my own hypocrisy and burden I refuse to part with.

However, you may still find another collection to minimize with my 3 out, 1 in policy. What's your collection?

Finding an apartment in Japan

If you are flying into Japan on a contract you signed back at home, you've probably been offered an apartment. It's nice to have the peace of mind that you'll have a place to stay upon arrival, but a little knowledge about your options will have more of that paycheck going to what you want to do. 

 Your first option is to stay in a guesthouse. When I first heard the term, I pictured a lodge or hostel. They're generally more laid out like dorms, and the units may or may not have a bathroom attached. The two big companies I know of are Oakhouse and Sakura House. These are probably the best options for a few months in Nippon. There is a nonrefundable management fee if you don't catch one of their (ad) campaigns, your base rent, and then a packaged utility fee. The utility fee is usually the only overpriced component of this, but your unit is furnished. Your internet connection, however, may be strictly limited. This means that certain ports may be blocked, preventing your favorite apps and downloads. 

Oak Mansion in Futamatagawa, Yokohama - 65,000

 The total difference for me was still roughly 20,000 yen ($195). Obviously, this depends on your region and distance from the train station. I paid 65,000 ($630) for a tiny room, with a single-element burner, fridge, microwave and bathroom, utilities included. However, it was a 15 minute walk to the station, then 10 minutes away from the main hub by train. 

 It is worth noting that most Japanese companies pay your transportation costs, so if you don't mind standing or bringing a book, you have better control over rent.

Programmable bath with reheat/temp/water level/timer

 Option 2: Urban Renaissance. The name is epic, but this is a service by the Japanese government that tosses the traditional Japanese apartment experience out the window. With UR, you can enter and leave your unit with 2 weeks’ notice, there's no gift money, no required guarantor, and the deposit is only 3 months. 

6jo (6 tatami-mat room) - roughly 12' x 9'

 You may or may not have heard that the regular process for an apartment is gift money (you basically give a month's worth of rent to the manager as a thank you,) key money (up to 6x rent, refundable), and a deposit. Basically, you'll need up to 8x the advertised monthly rent to do it the Japanese way. PLUS a guarantor, which a lot of schools don't actually do. UR cuts that down to 4 months, all refundable, minus a chunk of your deposit (less than 5% in my experience).

Separate toilet room...if you've never, you should.

UR helps both Japanese citizens and foreigners, though getting an agent that speaks English is tricky, even in the second largest city of Yokohama. All of the emergency information, maintenance, comes in Japanese/English manuals, though. You'll need to set up your internet, power, water and gas in Japanese.

Kitchens, hallways - 1LDK was 85,000

What is the tradeoff? UR is the absolute most flexible and cheapest, but your unit is bare, often without even an AC/heater or bedroom ceiling light. The furniture problem is best solved by scanning craigslist for both free furniture and 10,000-20,000 ($100-195) moving truck services. Another choice is to join the Yahoo Group [tokyofreecycle]. You’ll get lists of who is getting rid of what, and where they are giving it away.  It's stressful, but if you're planning to stay in Japan longer than half a year (most contracts are a year), then this is the way to go.

Back home: now what?

As of writing, I have been back in lovely Seattle for 4 whole days. Yokohama was still pretty cold and rainy, and Seattle has had 2 sunnier, warmer days. Dat Northwest climate, dho...the summer will be warm and sometimes breezy, the beach barbecues and camping trips, and some quality bike trails. Yokohama has all of this, but now I know people who drive and, more importantly, eat as much as I do! What's on my plate now, though? Probably the priorities of any person returning home: find a place to live, find a job, see loved ones again. Sounds pretty standard, right?

This house! Almost 10 years ago, with Aaron and Jaaron

Place found! I'm lucky enough to have beds around the world where I am welcome to stay. Teaching English for as long as I have, I've made connections with students and traveling friends; a "couch passport," if you will. The latest was meeting a co-worker's family the night before I left Japan. She has a large family, and, although none of the parents, two sisters or brother speaks English, I wasn't the only non-Japanese person at that table. I've been hosted by families before, but this impromptu party and welcoming into their family was one of the best experiences in Japan, and happened at the end of my 2.5 years there. Timing is interesting.

This time, however, my roost is with my second family that's down the street from where I spent my childhood. This is where I've spent 3 of the last 4 Christmases, and it was the hangout house during high school and university. I'll be here for at least a month until I get that first paycheck. The next goal is to move within biking distance of work.

My last day 3 years ago. Now I'm coming back for the sequel!

Job potentially found! In a few days, I'll be meeting a hiring manager at my previous school to see how I can help! From Japan, I had made a goal of working for Amazon, in some kind of Japan-US liaising position, which eventually turned into general marketing. I had the idea that a) I needed a break from teaching, b) I didn't want to lose the salary, c) I want to transfer my personal skills into something new. However, one of the benefits of staying in the same career is knowing the right people and making interviews formalities rather than evaluative tests. Good friends and fellow teachers have referred me for my last 3 jobs in the last 5 years, and I am thankful for that. Even if I still go for Amazon or Nintendo, no one can diss me for applying from a safe (read: employed) position.

Loved ones have been contacted or called, and everything is more or less the same. People around me are moving upward!

Other to-dos are maintaining a frugal lifestyle without too much help from my families, selling and downsizing my 10 boxes of possessions, getting comfortable with my bike in a different setting, and lowering my carb intake. I'd like to think these are realistic, attainable goals for the near future. What are your living, working, and relationship goals? Is there anything I missed?

My take on the state of English in Japan

These are not my students nor the school I worked at.

Yes, this is another critical article about English in Japan by an ESL teacher who taught in Japan for  2.5 years. I want you to just think about how we can change the system, rather than simply getting offended and walking away.

Here are some issues that plague English education in Japan:

Systemic underconfidence. That's not a word, but I just made it one. "My English isn't good, but...Excuse my poor English. I don't speak English." Guess what? The majority of English speakers don't speak it natively! According to Wikipedia, there are roughly 400 million people, or ~5% of the people on earth, who speak English natively and 1.1 BILLION who speak English non-natively. Sorry, students, you're not allowed to run away from English because "it isn't good."

See, look, Japan...you are orange (10-15% speakers)

1 in 5 people on earth speaks English. This means that English speakers are a little better prepared to understand English from multiple cultures, with multiple accents, and from different levels. If you think about it, 'perfect English' is impossible, so it's a waste of time to want to speak perfect English.

My advice for underconfidence is to lower your expectations. With Japanese language especially, students study kanji and take tests for 12 years (elementary through high school) and still forget how to read and write characters. When Japanese adults still have holes in their first language skills, how can they expect not to have holes in their English ability?

Even Princess Aiko is pissed off about her Eiken results

Speaking of expectations, another problem with English education in Japan (and Korea) is that the goals are out of reach for almost everyone. There was a recent article that pointed out that "about 87 percent failed to reach the goal of high school graduate level in writing and speaking" I'm going to say that when you get as high as 20% failure rate, it's time to ask yourself if you really want people to pass your test. This is a 90% failure rate and the Japanese Ministry of Education, or whoever is in charge of this disappointing statistic to wake up and look at changing goals.

I've seen and administered the Eiken (Test of English Ability) and can tell you that parts of it are in need of some tweaking. Try your best to explain the difference between authentic, genuine, legitimate and original. Now reward the genius who knows the answer with 1 measly point, out of 100 questions. 

William Shakespeare is a timeless writer of classics, and his work should be shared, studied and enjoyed. However, reading it in Middle English is an unnecessary burden, especially for non-native speakers. Let's get comfortable with modern English first.

The speaking portion of the Eiken is also poorly weighted. The reading/writing/listening part is 100 minutes, and is about environmental issues and business, among other subjects. The speaking portion of the Eiken is 3-7 minutes. Students read a paragraph for pronunciation, answer a question related to it, then talk about a picture. Then, there are 2 questions that require 2 sentences each. The questions are so specific that there are literally 5 answers for students to give, written in the grader's guide and points that you're supposed to award. For example,
in this picture:

(The) Two men are (ice) skating in a birdbath. (5 points)

Two men are (ice) skating. (4 points)

They are (ice) skating. (3 points)

It's snowing. (2 points)

But if a returnee rolls into your room, with no accent and says "Joseph and Larry are skating around the bowl in momentum to prepare for a triple-axle twist," then we're encouraged to grade especially harshly. Should the kid have said 'spin' instead of 'twist?' Sure. But that kid is fluent, and if Eiken wants to artificially knock off points to even out with someone who put in hard work to know the answer patterns, then we have to ask just what is Eiken testing for?

I think the speaking portion should be longer, even if the questions are easy. Let's give students a buffer of easy questions to reduce the anxiety, which is probably the main killer. 

It's hard to get motivation to do things when you, other people and tests tell you that you suck at it. 

Some will try and blame teachers, but when the government traps us into meeting the way-too-high standards of a poorly-balanced test, then it's the classic battle of administration-vs-teacher, and talent is wasted.

I was very lucky in my time in Japan to teach with incredibly knowledgeable English teachers who were talented and creative. It's often left to the natively speaking teachers to have the 'fun' lessons, and the Japanese teachers do the heavy lifting of grammar and vocabulary...and reading...and listening. Several of them have confided in me that they want to teach their own curriculum with ideas like current events, purpose-based learning and I also got to observe a teacher get shot down for asking to do a lesson that wasn't academic enough. So we can conclude that the higher-ups are occasionally staunching creativity.

So there you have it. I think that to have a generation of strong bilingual Japanese students; we need to make it clear that most speakers of English make mistakes all the time; we need to lower our standards by changing the test to include easier, more general questions; and the schools need to cooperate with creativity instead of keeping students' faces buried in books.

Visit from the 'rents!

Kinkakuji - Kyoto

Being visited and playing host is awesome for a few reasons:

1. You finally have an excuse to do "touristy" stuff. I know that where I'm from, there's a slightly negative nuance to doing things like exploring your own city that you've lived in for over 10 years, or taking photos of the statue you pass on your commute 5 times a week. In Japan, tourist stuff is affordable ($3 tickets to temples, all-day bus passes for $10, group pricing at restaurants), and in some cases cheaper for foreign passports than for residents! I'm looking at you, Japan Rail pass!

Check out japanican.com for more deets on tours n stuff. Also, make sure you get your rail pass BEFORE you come to Japan.

Chinatown - Yokohama

2. You get to see your stomping grounds through someone else's eyes. That creepy statue in the small alley where you saw a bum taking dump in the middle of the road? Well, the rain washed away that dookie and your host only sees an interesting city ornament and want to take pictures!

3. Your guests may give you an opportunity to interact with the city that you might not normally take. I discovered the many cheap buses to Haneda airport from all over Yokohama, as well as a station exit that would have saved me lots of time an energy getting to my private lessons over these two years! 

Anyhoo, here's how it went: the first night, I picked her up from Haneda. Baggage claim is pretty slow. That night, we checked in to their hotel in Landmark Tower. The front desk had trouble finding my reservation, and after 20 minutes, found and upgraded the room! We ate tonkatsu (breaded-and-fried pork cutlet) nearby and that was that.

Uhh ohh, will that double my credit balance?

The next day, I met them in the afternoon, and after trying Mr Donuts, we went to Kamakura to enjoy a nice walk to Zeni-arai benten. This is a temple where it's said that any money you wash will be doubled. We had to meet a friend for dinner and ordered random Japanese dishes: Chicken katsu, sashimi platter, and a pork bone soup. Because we were juggling luggage and lockers, we only had time to ride the Enoden line from start to finish and didn't actually visit Enoshima.

Freddie having way too much fun
blessing himself for love

Wednesday was Kyoto. We took the bullet from ShinYokohama to Kyoto, arriving just before 1pm. We scored discount daypass bus tickets, and saw KiyoMizuDera. We were going to see Ginkakuji but arrived just a few minutes too late. Then, we got lost trying to find our apartment. Once we did, turns out it was very new and very unused. The owner left us with his pocket wifi because I needed it to keep in touch. Parents tried 生搾りchu-hais (fresh-squeezed malts).

Kiyomizudera - Kyoto

We used AirBnB.com for our reservations.

Thursday was Kyoto part two. Parents tried double-soft toast and we buzzed off to Kinkakuji. Then Ginkakuji, where we did most of our gift-shopping. For lunch, we had Italian, but the dessert was a deep, rich green tea cake. 

Outside da Ghibli Building

Friday we started by going to the post office, where there is an assistant who helps you choose the right line to stand in for your bank or post services. Like a hostess or maitre'd for a post office! A month ago, I went to Lawson's, a convenience store to purchase tickets for the Ghibli Museum. It was fantastic, and worth the wait. The 'rents didn't really know what they were seeing, but they liked it for sure. In one of the first lower rooms, there was a 3d-animated mobile of Ghibli stuff going on. There was also a 3-4 minute animated short of evolving prey running from evolving predators. The bottom floor also had a 13 minute animated short about an old couple who help mice defeat rats in sumo games. The story is both sweet and cute. 

The second floor has a history and sketches of Ghibli classics as well as a bookstore. The third floor has the gift shop, a Neko-bus playground for preschoolers, and a deck with spiral steps to climb to the roof, which has the giant robot from...Friday night was capped off by an hour-long JR ride to my station Tsurumi, where we had yakiniku. Mom and Dad loved it!

Runebox - Ghibli

This thing is from Laputa...
just don't translate that
title to Spanish!

Saturday, we were all kind of exhausted, so the folks came over to see my apartment for a few hours. We whisked off to Akihabara and walked through a 5-floor arcade, just to take them into the antithesis of sensory deprivation. Then we headed to Shinjuku for Sekai-no-Yamachan seasoned chicken wings, miso-tonkatsu and microbrew. After that was the Robot Restaurant!

Sunday morning was breakfast at DeliFrance, my favorite pastries in Japan. Unfortunately, their coffee is both expensive and indistinct. We waddled out of that place and spent a few hours in Chinatown, where we had a few dumplings, bought some trinkets and finally headed off to Haneda airport!

Working in Japan: The creme de la creme of contracts.

I'm down to two months left before moving back to Seattle and am anxious about working in the states again after 2 years of quite the setup. This post isn't designed to create envy, though I'm not going to deny that it's delicious to feed off every once in a while. It's more for ESL teachers who are tired of getting financially jacked around, and wonder if it's possible to make a decent living as a teacher. Given my last 2 years of financial discipline, I would now argue that a 'decent living' can be had on my old wages (part-time teaching at roughly $20 per hour). But I digress. Here are the deets of this contract:

There are 365 days in a year, and I work Monday through Friday, and one or two Saturdays per year. Summer break is 5 weeks, Winter break is 2 weeks, and Spring break is 2 weeks. Ohh yeah, these are paid. (365 - 104 - 35 - 14 - 14) = 198 work days, but let's not forgot about the holidays!

There are 16 holidays in Japan. However, for the paid-days-off calculation, a few of those fall during holidays, so we'll count it as 12. What's often done is that if a holiday falls on a Sunday, it's moved to a holiday Monday. This is a Japanese law. 186 work days.

But wait! It's a Japanese school and their education system undulates students in 1-2 monthly tests if you factor in the 5 days of finals each term. Let's call that 15 days where I administer a test or take early leave because I'm not needed. 171 days. Finally are preparation days: the week before, after and during finals, the workday generally ends 3 hours early, which works out to almost 7 days of no classes. Not only that, but for Sports Day, classes are stopped for 2 days to prepare. 177. The contract is an annual salary. I work 48.5% of the year and receive the same paycheck every 15th.

Oops, I forgot that there are 10 paid personal holidays, which are basically used via going home or to appointments after classes are finished. It is also customary for Japanese companies to reimburse you for transportation, which is a big deal.

As if this wasn't all good enough, the salary itself is roughly what a public school teacher makes, with probably twice the work burden I have, under the current exchange rate. However, 2 years ago, the yen traded very favorably with the dollar, and I was making more like a programmer or someone in the IT field. However, this salary is by no means simply handed over.

Get dat contract!

I knew the right person, I speak and read Japanese in a limited capacity, and I am good at what I do in the classroom. My talent is imported because Japan needs native speakers to teach English, in a more useful way than rote rehearsal. The contract I have is generally signed inside of Japan, and is rare, but not completely impossible to find. Ohayo Sensei is a great place to start, and you'll either find the salary or workload that I've mentioned. Look for 'international school.' Finding both is a little harder, but you can make your money go pretty far by coming to teach English in Japan.

The yearly reflection: 2014-style!

While the end of 2014 isn't quite what I'd hoped for, the year itself has been quite a doozy! On a large scale, this year had a few themes, from police brutality to large-scale hack attacks. In my smaller realm, there was a little traveling, more investing, and a ton of gaming.

The summer weather report in Japan

TRAVEL: Spring Break 2014 was off the hook! I went to Italy and took a surprise venture to Munich, Germany.

 On the Japan side of things, I survived the summer without completely dying, thanks to my schedule of taking a shower at work before the day started. Classes have been excellent: ONLY teenage girl students, who are easily impressed and generally enjoy taking my lessons. I watched Death Note, a hugely popular anime,
Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人), and some of Bleach. I also took levels 2 and 3 of the
Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

During the summer, I traveled to the East Coast to see my friend Will, my mother and 4 cities! You could pretty much call that trip a scout mission because now I know I want to spend more time in NYC, DC, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

INVESTMENT: I got rocked by last overconfidence in 3D stocks. Last year, my initial investments almost doubled, and this year they...well...fell back to earth, and into Hell. Other investments, however, like GoPro, Apple and real estate have put me way ahead of the game, so it's all good. Also, this year my spending habits have become that much tighter, so I have that going for me.

BT...probably doesn't have any problem getting ladies.

The beginning of this video will make you jump, apologies ahead, but the track is sick. Korean singer Bada does the lyrics.

MUSIC: (trance DJ) BT's 2014 album Song Across Wires came out, and now I'm hot on Armin van Buren, another trance DJ. I also discovered Hall and Oates (30 years isn't too late, stop hatin'), which works perfectly for karaoke!

GAMES: For single-player experiences, Okami was probably the best quest I did this year. In terms of multiplayer madness, Mario Kart 8 with my dearest buddies in Seattle and in Japan; Titanfall, Destiny and Halo with my buddy Zack. One Destiny moment was joining a raid - a large mission with a team of 6 - with a bunch of teenagers and exchanging antics. Zack and I probably have 15 years on these kids...we still laughed at the same shit.

Lastly, this year has been very productive for my website, Grammar Pimps which is designed for ESL teachers in mind. It's been especially fun creating the site through Wordpress.

Voice acting

    I just started a game with a decent story, fun battle mechanics, and a good sense of progression. However, this three-year-old game (Tales of Xilia) still suffers from bad voice acting. I know it isn't as easy as it looks. I feel like good dialogue scenes have a couple components that can cause you to skip through the scenes or watch them: translation, lip-syncing, and context. The translation these days is quite amazing, but at times, I miss text-only dialogue because the other two aspects just aren't met.

I never understood why programmers can't write an algorithm for dynamic lip-synching. This would shape the characters' mouths to their words as they say them, instead of just flapping like games quite often do. A lot of newer games motion-cap the faces, and the voice actor is also the basic model for the character. This method produces cutscenes like this:

started at the 2:00 mark. No, it's not a sex scene!

This Californian game studio, Naughty Dog, has the absolute highest quality of games I've ever played. Every cutscene drives the story, is incredibly well-done, and is flawlessly animated. The characters point to the spots on maps that they're talking about. It's almost like they wrote a long movie, kept half of it in scenes, and drew the rest out of climbing, shooting, and artifact-collecting goodness. Very few studios make games like this, but that's not the standard I'm asking for, either.


For some reason, it's always decided that Japanese games need to be translated and voiced in English. We're often left with these bland scenes, done by actors who probably don't even play the game. Not only that, but a voice actor's talent has a chance of being thwarted by poor lip-syncing, or otherwise poor timing, like the characters giving WAY TOO MUCH room between lines of dialogue, or characters standing almost completely still while talking.

These dudes are a bit over-the top, but it fits the context of the game. Regardless, the timing is much better, though the lips still move to the original language. The characters are animated to do stuff, and sometimes the voice relfects that (like the straining of voice for the wounded guy at ~50sec).

Sometimes, it's quite obvious that the new voice talents don't understand the context of their lines and it really bothers me that this is still a persistent problem in video games. In a story-driven game that's over 30 hours long, the main character better be tolerable. Finally, there are also terrible scenes in general (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy 10 [2min in for the climax])

Staying with an immigrant host family? No Problem!

I've heard it a billion times, usually with a sigh or huff of disappointment, My host family is from the Philippines*. I want a "real" American family. My host mother's English is hard to understand! I can understand the initial confusion when someone arrives to their host who doesn't look like the people we see in most movies from Hollywood. The popular stuff that makes it overseas can really distort the reality of how diverse the US is, and international students expecting a white (or black, I'll dole out the benefit of the doubt) American family are in for a surprise, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

*Over the 4 years at my school that found host families, the most common immigrant hosts were families from the Philippines. I'm not trying to disrespect our friends from the Philippines, just reporting the comments I actually heard.

I think these students are missing out on the fact that these host families who immigrated have experience similar to the students themselves. This is extremely valuable! If you find yourself paired up with an immigrant host family, you can ask questions like, "What made you decide to stay?" or "How difficult is it to get into the workforce (after university) as a foreigner?" and very relevant questions that the "real" American probably can't help you with.

Of course, students who are visiting for their first time may not be considered with making a long-term life in the US. Some people write off parts of their town as 'touristy' and will use their intimate knowledge of the city happenings as substitute. I took a 'Ride the Ducks' tour of Seattle after living there for more than 20 years and still learned stuff about my city! My family did this to welcome our newest member, who's from Cameroon.

Your native hosts will know routes and restaurant recommendations, but might not know about how to get around without a car. Some of my friends wrinkle their noses at the mention of taking the bus somewhere! How many foreign students enter the US with a car?

Ultimately, a good host family will be ready to give personal tours and explanations whatever generation of American they are. This is part of the agreement of hosting. However, an immigrant family's empathy can go a long way.

ユー・アー・マイ・ゲスト (You are my guest!)

There are days where Japanese people won't speak Japanese back to me. First, they switch to terrible English, and then I start speaking quickly. Then they stop understanding me. If the person talking to me would have stayed in Japanese, then we probably would have been able to communicate better. So, sometimes I ask myself what's it worth learning the local language? In Rome, Italians let me struggle with their language and listen with a smile, give me a slow and simple reply. I learned from the smile that they appreciate that I am speaking their language. However, after 15 years, I still don't know how to read Japanese people's feelings (when it comes to language).

I don't clearly know the reason for the switch to English, but I think it's tied to the Japanese concept of convenience. Everyone knows that Japan is best at transportation, services and mail, but if you live here, you can see that there are also a ton of tangible things that make life easier. Food comes in easy-to-open packages, there are vending machines everywhere, and restaurant menus have 'recommended' in big letters. By the way, Japanese people almost never make changes to their order (like "Hold the pickles!") They just completely take the food how it is. You're probably wondering what this has to deal with the English-switch.

My earlier examples show that this culture is all about doing everything for the guest or partner. It's very important in Japanese culture to give wonderful and happy feelings towards your guest, and make sure they don't lift a finger. So, of course the person trying to help me, the English-speaking foreigner, is going to do their best to speak English - it's for my benefit!*

*Update: When I translated this and ran it by my Japanese friends, they couldn't see the connection between physical convenience (vending machines, small menus) and the convenience of using the guests' language, so the content is quite different from this post.

日本語を８年間勉強しましたけど、時々、日本人は日本語を話してくれない。その代わりに話し相手はカタコトの英語で話してくることして、僕はペラペラ英語をしゃべってしまうので、相手が分からなくなる。僕の日本語はまだまだですが、自分のレベルでなんとなく日本語会話ができる。でも、話し相手は英語で会話ができない場合が多い。僕の日本語は英語で答えられるのはいやです。その経験からなんで日本語を勉強したの意味はなんだろう気がしてくる。
ローマに旅行したときにイタリア語で話したら、イタリア人が笑顔で聞いて、ゆっくりやすくとイタリア語で会話しました。スマイルから「この人が私の言語をに感謝してる」が分かります。日本語を話すの経験と違う理由が分からないで、１５年後になっても、私は日本人の感覚が理解できないかもしれない。

日本人が英語で話しかけてくれる理由をよく考える。僕の結論はこれ：日本人は自分を助けようとしてくれる。日本の文化はみんなはストレスをなるべく減ることですが、やはり日本人は僕に難しい日本語じゃなくてや優しい英語でがんばります。

Japanese engineering

I've lived in Yokohama, Japan for 2 years and want to point out some little efficiencies that have been thought up by clever people. You probably know about the two-flushing toilets (big, small) and the fact that some toilets' refill tube protrudes out of the tank so you can wash your hands.

You may even know about the microwaves that also double as ovens (it took me 6 months to get the balls to put metal in this thing...works just fine!)

That's right: I made a collage to show
how to change toilet paper.

You know those stupid dildo spring things that fall apart all the time? None of that here. Just upward-folding tabs for one-way transfer in and transfer out of tp.

Mine is one of very few with no bidet

After a certain size of dwelling, it's pretty common to find the toilet in its own separate room from the shower and bathtub. You don't have to breathe in your girlfriend's methane-y deuce while you take a shower!

Speaking of baths, lots of tubs make you bend your legs, but submerge more of your body. Not only that, but this console (there's also one in the kitchen) lets me draw a bath at whatever temperature, volume and time I want. There's also a reheat button so I don't have to draw more water. Eco friendly, AND tech-sweet!

While they certainly sell washers that also dry laundry, most of us air dry our clothes. There's a panel that gives you control over a regular bathroom fan, drier fan, and of course you can set the strength and time. If the wetness doesn't evaporate, don't worry, the moisture falls into the bathtub.

Right over the front door is the kitchen fan duct, with a light to remind you it's still on. The doors have attached mailboxes for personal deliveries. Doorbells have attached intercoms and cameras, and this has been a standard everywhere I've been.

When it comes to food, I'm not completely satisfied with the portions designed for much smaller adults, but there is one final moment of genius. Trash is separated by burnables, plastics, and recyclable stuff, and Japan would really appreciate it if you put your stuff in the right place.

That arrow left-of-center shows where to tear

Every snack bag has a notch

Little glass spice bottles, soda labels and medicine bottled all come pre-perforated so that you can strip off the label and go about your business. My medicine bottles in the US required soaking them and growing out my fingernails to scrape them off...because fuck privacy in the United States, right?

This certainly isn't the most interesting of topics, but the fact is that a few people bothered to think about small innovations to minimize everyday bullcrap like the savage chip-bag tearing, the losing-the-toilet-paper-bouncy-rod-mid-duece, and the more-important aversion to house fires and water-wasting. Thank you, engineers!