I’m surprised people here think he’s going to live that long. He’s so old…

He probably got a boost from the mushroom he carries around.

Come to Japan but avoid the big cities. Check out our smaller prefectures instead. It’s not as glitzy as Tokyo, Osaka, or Kyoto, but there will be less crowds and beautiful nature.

This is the first news about Americans doing something smart in a little while. Great job!

How. Don’t government agencies have twitter accounts? Why don’t they just move it to an instance thats run by themselves?

If anything it’ll encourage/empower his base to mimic him.

Sorry, off topic, but that 10 - 20 year range is wild and I notice myself using it more often now as I turn 40 like, “oh I haven’t seen this movie in 10 or 20 years!”

Remember when we used to talk to the producers of the used panties?

American tomatoes would probably be smeared in e coli. Be careful out there my US friends.

Could someone explain what’s happening to a non-american? I was under the impression that this Madmani gentleman had already won the mayoral race. Are they having another election for something else??

We probably don’t have the workforce to replace since we won’t open up to immigration lol

Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.

That’s kind of an insulting assumption as I’m Japanese and live in Japan. So while I may have a biased opinion, I wouldn’t say it’s romantisizing.

In fact, I’d say you’re the one that seems to be making assumptions based on snippets of our culture that you see on the internet. The weird vending machines that sell letters from your pretend grandma to used panties aren’t found everywhere you go — they’re in specific locations for the novelty.

Also having regular vending machines for drinks and food doesn’t exactly contradict my point. The vending machines are more for the customers’ convenience. They’re not installed specifically for removing human contact. Yes, we lose human contact as a result, but it’s a tradeoff to better serve customers whereas most companies that deploy AI support agents probably do so to save a buck.

Sorry about the rant.

I’ve heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits,

We definitely have all that!

Also, I found it interesting that someone mentioned how you used “collectivist” as a negative feature of Japanese culture. While it certainly could be, it’s actually nice to see when people are genuinely wanting to help each other. The problem is our hierarchical culture where some shitbag on top takes advantage of our collectivist mindset for their own gains.

*Everyone else is working unpaid overtime, why can’t you?! *Almost nobody being worked overtime is going to say that. Workers will take it for the good of the imaginary “team” because some manager convinced them it’s the right thing to do. Luckily, probably thanks to my Canadian upbringing, I’ve always been able to say no to ridiculous shit like this. That, and I work for myself, so the only ones who boss me around are my wife and kids.

Edit: Whoops, maybe collectivism isn’t the right word for what I found to be positive after reading your other comment. Sorry, but I hope you got my point.

It might actually be China. All the robots I see here are the one with the cat face and I’m pretty sure that’s where they come from. We don have remote control robot cafes where people with physical/mental disabilities to serve you using avatar bots which is cool!

As a Japanese person, I find it really cringey when people speak like anime, but I do my best to applaud their efforts because no matter how silly it may sound, they appreciate my culture enough to want to learn.

Here in Japan, I used to use it to follow up and coming Japanese illustrators and webcomic artists, most of who tweeted fun, non-political, wholesome things. I got live updates whenever we had typhoons and earthquakes.

Obviously there’s toxicity if you look for it, but I didn’t really see it. Which is why I honestly didn’t understand why so many people shit in Twitter especially on “tech/bologicallysocially-aware” circles like Reddit calling it toxic. The reason why I stopped was because Musk bought it, not because of the content I was seeing. Maybe I was just lucky.

Note: This is just a single old man’s anecdote, so please take it with a huge grain of salt.

If he’s still alive he hasn’t changed enough imo.

Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.

Oh and maybe the shit exchange rate makes it expensive to use the service as everything is pretty much foreign tech.

Yeah, I’m appreciating how quickly the Switch games are loading. Smash, Zelda, and Splatoon used to frustrate me a bit with their load times.

As a Japanese person, I’d say this is pretty conventional. But manga panel orders can be pretty chaotic, just like our writing.