Get_Off_My_WLAN

A magical barrier in the brain, as dense as lead. Maybe from all the leaded gasoline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B62ACxuq8Pw

To be fair, they might’ve been expecting the trash, but probably weren’t expecting all of the renegade pooping. Even at Ueno Park in Tōkyō, which is probably one of the most crowded places during sakura season, you’ll see extra trash bins, but not porta-poddies.

I also didn’t go to Arakurayama during the festival. I went in February, and if it was already crowded with literring tourists then, it must be awful during sakura season. Japan has been receiving record overtourism for the past few years (ever since re-opening in late 2022). I saw it mentioned on NHK News like almost every day. Yeah, they might be a little tired of the extra tourists now.

There are public bathrooms at the park. It was packed with tourists and their litter when I went in 2024 though.

As for the streets where people actually live, they shouldn’t need to have a bunch of ugly porta-potties occupying the streets in front of their home. It’s a place where people have always lived, not a place that exists solely to be a tourist attraction.

I guess I wrongly assumed all tourists would have the common sense to not defacate in someone else’s yard.

Maybe something like the plastic balls that are filled with bright orange dye that they have in convenience stores in Japan to throw at escaping shoplifters.

But with piss, of course.

“I am now competing with illustrations that may have been trained on my own work without permission.”

That’s fucked up.

Are you just stating a hypothetical scenario, or are you misleadingly implying this guy arrested his wife?

Because 1. he’s not law enforcement, and 2.

The uncertainty has left the newlywed questioning whether his time serving the country was worth it, he said.

Both are possible. I got to N2 in one year as a full-time student in Japan by studying (school + at home) around 6-8 hours per day. People outside of Japan don’t get as many chances to actually use the language, so the same amount of study of course might yield less in that case.

Most westerners take 2-3 years (3-4 hours per day) to get to N2, which is reasonable. So my hours are about the same, just I crammed two years into one (because I really needed to).

Whereas many Chinese speakers tend to pass it in less than a year of getting to Japan because they already have a huge head start on kanji knowledge.

The relationship with languages you already know changes things a lot. The proximity and opportunities to use it are really important too, I think.

Practically every European I’ve met has pretty good English, I’ve noticed that. But most people in Japan I’ve met don’t. Many, if not, most of them studied it in school. They also get tested on it as part of university entrance exams. But most of them don’t need it much outside of those contexts, so I don’t blame them for not being able to speak English either.

I had no idea they made an American version of Hachikō’s story.

Most people don’t really understand how many total hours of purposeful learning and actual usage is needed to become proficient.

For Japanese, it typically takes people who can’t already read 漢字 about 1,325 hours to reach N3 (conversational), and 2,200 for N2 (roughly business). That means if you want to get to N2 in only one year, expect to study like five to eight hours a day.

So don’t feel too bad if you can’t.

Or do, and use that frustration to motivate your study.