Well, there’s still a hell of a lot of pressure to take that overtime if you want to or not, depending on company/situation. But yeah, I was a bit shocked first time I heard that it’s possible to get paid overtime as a salaried worker, though.

Maybe.  Expats outside of finance don’t really seem to work a lot of long hours, at least not more than they would in the US.

I’m talking salaried workers.  I don’t know of many salaried jobs that get paid overtime in the US (any?) but most do in Japan.

There are good jobs and bad jobs in Japan! Most are perfectly fine with good benefits and good work-life balance.

You’d be shocked at how many people in Japan do nothing all day in the office.

I regularly had to work 100+ hours a WEEK at my old job in the US (it was field work, and paid overtime).  It was actually 70 hours a week minimum (7 days a week work).

This overtime in Japan is usually paid, BTW.

Nonsense. I’ve worked in a Japanese office for 10+ years and US offices for 10+ years before that. Japanese offices are far better balanced than US offices. People get plenty of annual leave AND actually take it. They get company provided annual health checks, most overtime is PAID even for salaried employees.

Keisei buses as well, for points in Chiba. Very cheap.

I don’t know when you are arriving in BKK, but I’ve never waited more than 5 minutes for a taxi there, and I’ve flown in there dozens of times.  Don Mueang, yeah, that line can be terrible but BKK is usually smooth.

Nah, he’s certainly renounced his US citizenship to become Japanese as the law in Japan requires. He would have both citizenships as a youth but needs to choose one as an adult. For average Taros they don’t really check but for a member of the national team they certainly do.

Yup. Unless it’s a major Japanese holiday period there will always be places to stay.

I don’t think so. The bigger problem is a lot of people bought residential properties to live in with their families, and now there’s a hotel next door to them. Even before this law a lot of properties were banning owners/renters from allowing people to rent their rooms as minpaku.

I saw a lot of bitching about this on Twitter, but there’s tons of cheap hotels available even after this move. Plenty of Minshuku around, too (those are basically smaller family-run hotels). Rakuten travel is also helping owners of minpaku to get registered properly.

I used to live a few blocks from the Menil Museum and nobody walked there. All car, all the time baby!

What unwritten rule was broken here? A 5 run lead is nothing, is the team with the lead supposed to stop trying to score?

I realize there’s a price disparity due to it being somewhat rare and imported, but the Akashi Single Malt is less than $35 in Japan. Good value!

Counterpoint: Leading the AL West despite basically every batter hitting markedly worse than last year. Will that continue all season? I don’t think so.

Basically everywhere else I’ve been in the world manages to handle airport security much more humanely, efficiently than the US. I fly Japanese domestic through Haneda frequently, it’s one of the world’s busiest airports and it’s never a hassle. Can’t say the same for how the TSA runs the show in the US - it should be…

Zima never went away in Japan! You can and always could buy one.