ausvisaissues's comments

With noise, with garbage sorting, etc...

Japanese people tend to follow all rules, written and unwritten. I guess Americans follow only rules that can be enforced (cf. Uber, Airbnb, etc...)

Probably from a culture of rebellion against Britain colonial government... In some cases it is good and in some bad.

In Japan there is also no tolerance for the 1% that ruins public spaces for everyone (compare Tokyo subways against San Francisco subways). This allows true public spaces that can be shared by everyone.

It is also culture that plays a big part.

I've lived in very high density housing in Japan (20 floor manshion type apartment) and medium density in US (2 level apartment).

Higher density in Japan is much more pleasant due to the culture of being considerate of others.

If I have to live in the US, I will choose suburbia for that reason.

Processing time for highskilled visa is 5 days guaranteed. It is a refreshing change compared to US h1b lottery.

Perhaps that is true, but some incremental steps have the possibility of making driving infinitely better.

Imagine cars that refuse to tailgate, drive at excessive speed, drive with drowsy owners, drive on the right-hand side of the road in non-emergency situations, skip red traffic lights, etc...

If you have a highskilled visa with 80 points, it is 1 year (however, it takes 10 months after application to get it).

High-skilled visas are not connected to an employer and there is no lottery system.beats the hell out of US policies...

Most gates are automatic now in Japan (with a conductor sometimes checking tickets on Shinkansen after gates).

When I was in the US there was a guy handing me a towel in the bathroom. That is an incredibly meaningless and superfluous job!

In China, the poor living in rural areas cannot easily move to cities (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system). In India the poor can move to cities.

The problrm is that Japanese journals are less competitive. So, second-rate researchers can continue to publish in these and "work" (i.e., look productive).

The biggest problem with Japanese universities is not funding (there is to much), but the old chaff with tenure.

Unfortunately old second-rate researchers has a lot of institutional power (and funding).

Just deleted AccuWeather. I am 100% convinced by the blog post -- but the DarkSky App is unfortunately not available outside USA.

I really wish that the user could selectively switch on or off what permissions an app receives -- Instead of a blanket list of permissions at the install. For instance -- "lie to the App and give location obly within 100m".

I said "just" a rural urban thing. No doubt there are more leftwingers/liberals in cities. But it is not nearly as uniform as your experience would suggest.

Polling also said that Hillary would win the election, and brexit won't happen. People, including me, lie to pollsters.

Don't for a moment think it is just a city/rural thing (with a bunch of conservative country bumkins).

Many people having non-leftwing ideas simply hide it. Since most workplaces have become politicised and hostile to conservative/right/slightly right of center views, people just hide it. Some people (including me) even engage in fake virtue signalling.

I will immigrate to US in Dec. and think it is a vast improvement.

H1b lottery is a broken system which is gamed by outsourcing companies.

The current H1b system has a cap, with more applications than positions. This is resolved via a "lottery". If you apply, you have a 30% chance of being selected. Indian outsourcing firms started to game the lottery (for every position have 3 applicants).

The new system will resolve the above problem by selecting applicants with the most points (giving points for skills, etc...).

From person experience H1b lottery is heart-wrenching, and makes it difficult to plan. The Australian system (which is similar to this system), is much better.

Japan has a backwards view of mental health, and one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Yet public places are immaculately clean.

The fact is that western people and law enforcement tolerate vandalism, littering and antisocial behaviour.

Recently, on Seattle's airport train, I saw a person openly taking garbage out of their bag and throwing it on the floor. No one said anything - just another day on the dirty train.

I don't think someone would dare do that in Japan or Singapore.

IMHO, Paris is fairly dirty (like 60% San Francisco dirty). Especially the subway is a mess, and there is no law enforcement (e.g. minor children begging during weekday and no-one does anything). Many of the trains are vandalized.

St. Petersburg is much nicer than Paris (at least in the summer). Surprisingly, the it is cleaner even though the country is poorer.

Japan has public pools (run by wards) and they are lovely. The only minor complaint is that sometimes they are overrun with old people ;)

Two questions:

1. What is the harm for different drugs once addicted? (health, possibility to lead normal life)

2. What percentage of people addicted can successfully quit?

Yes, Japanese people drink a lot, and it is a social issue. But there are a lot of functional alcoholics in Japan.

> Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs

Japan is much stricter with medicine than US. Several medicibes that are OTC in US are illegal in Japan: https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resource...

I am sure that there are abuse of prescription drugs. But I have not heard anything about a systematic, widespread problem (comparable to prescription drug abuse in US).

A cursory reading of the WP says that the legal status of the drugs you mentioned is more or less the same as the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine

> whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of.

I am pretty sure the needles on the sidewalk is just there because everyone suffers from diabetes, right?

I think that, fortunately for most IT people like us, we can live in nice neighborhoods, where none of the social ills of drug-ridden neighbortlhoods affect us. So, we can support drug legalization, without being affected by the consequences.

> The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences?

Japan/Singapore imprisons much less people for drug crimes than the US - due to the USA's lenient laws on drugs (grey line vs. red line). The ill effects of drug use in japan is virtually non-existent.

You can moralize all you want, but it is a better system with less actual harm.

> It's people like you who don't really care that millions have been imprisoned over a personal choice.

Japan imprisons a very small percentage of people compared to the USA.

Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities.

Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.

Who would have thought that drug use by the mentally unstable would result in a bad outcome...

> You are an authoritarian,

Perhaps. But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.