h0nz4 comments

Unless there's an explicit signage that allows mixed pedestrian and cycle traffic on sidewalks, cyclists must use roads. Also if there is a dedicated cycling lane, it must be used instead of a road or sidewalk.

Riding in wrong direction (right), wearing headphones, speeding through interjections without even looking, smartphone usage, riding completely drunk… all these I can see all the time.

The real question is, will police actually do something about it finally? It's for the sake of everone.

@Blacksamurai the prices you wrote make no sense (hundreds of euros?)

Also to your example... Paris is definitely not a cheap city, very much the opposite in any thinkable way.

Incidentally, I've been to Rome two weeks ago and it definitely was not cheap either. I do not even mean places catering to tourists, just generally the prices went up even for locals. All over Europe pretty much.

And if someone were to travel with their savings in yen to Europe now, get ready for severe emotional (and financial) damage.

this popularity has raised concerns about overtourism in certain areas

This was not a concern but a real problem already before the pandemic. They have not done much if anything in preparation for international tourists coming back to Japan. And here we go again.

luggage forwarding

This service is amazing in Japan, as one would expect. Sadly, though, it's a bit pricey I think and also not common abroad so people do not know about it or hesitate to use it.

I have lived in Barcelona and Kyoto and I can say that crowds of clueless tourists blocking traffic and/or ignoring rules is annoying anywhere. I've seen a busy crossroads without a pedestrian crossing being surrounded with concrete roadblocks to stop brainless tourists jaywalking. Well, flocks of people (not locals) were climbing over the roadblocks and running through the traffic anyway.

It's a Japanese way of “solving” a problem and I doubt it will actually work. But jeez do I feel for the locals.

Japanese public is generally ignorant of traffic rules associated with cycling as well, speeding on a sidewalk is a normal thing. It's illogical to expect anything else with electric scooters. Mix it with some pedestrians with zero spatial awareness and blindly walking into traffic…

Yeah, all the sweet ad revenue from the sea of deepfake scam videos they vehemently refuse to take down. Meta hand in hand with Bytedance are detriment to society.

You never get a better deal than what you can get going directly to the hotel/ryokan or airline. It's a msytery to me

That's not true, there are various promo rates that properties allocate for OTAs. Another advantage is the unified search and booking experience. I gave up multiple times trying to book some Japanese hotels on their websites, not only it would cost more, the reservation flow was nightmare.

However, hotels and airlines like direct bookings because they have more money out of it. And it's generally easier to get support vs going through an OTA.

Meta does nothing at all. Reporting misleading or harmful AI generated content never goes anywhere. Showing a label is a great way for them to say "look how responsible we are" while protecting their cash flow.

Been there last weekend, the endless waiting aside, it's a "try once" experience at most.

I must admit, I don't particularly like KFC, especially in Japan. The chicken is extremely oily and kinda gross.

I managed to sample 3 pieces of chicken, a few pancakes, a bit of the other meals (random Japanese buffet, completely unrelated to KFC), salad, desserts. There was no mash and no gravy, as expected.

It was... ok. The best thing was the unsweetened rooibos tea which helped me to survive the whole ordeal.

I was stunned how some nimble girls went to town on a full plate of chicken each. Japanese folks seemed to really enjoy the whole thing. I'd just go to any KFC to get those few pieces of chicken that everyone goes for anyway and save some time and money.

My Instagram feed has been flooded recently with AI generated ads featuring politicians or actors promoting some BS financial platforms or online casinos. Interestingly enough, reporting those ads as scam or misinformation or any other malicious category does not anything and all my reports are closed without taking sny action. So FU Meta, it's all about money in the end, innit.

It's interesting because in Europe, afaik only left or right arrows are being used. When either is lit it means a right of way through the intersection – usually for cars turning left to exit the intersection (when driving on the right side). When an arrow is lit in a combination with a red signal (usually the right arrow), it means one can proceed in turning but has to yield to traffic coming in the cross direction. So the case presented in this article is a bit weird to me.

Some time ago I watched James Hoffmann's review of the Makita battery-powered kettle and coffee brewer. It's a cool concept but a bit silly. Considering the amount of batteries one would need for these devices and charging them daily – aside of those actually used for power tools. Also I have not seen a construction site without any electricity.

@StrangerlandJ it's not a Japanese problem but it's most certainly a problem in Japan, yes. Sorry to break it to you.

Domino’s Pizza holds the top spot in terms of market share in Japan

This says it all about the state of pizza in Japan.

@0rei0 roundabouts work and are safer than stop sign or traffic lights, that's a fact. Europeans know that and so you'll find them everywhere.

They would make the traffic more fluid, slow down and stop the issue of red lights. Nearby my building, there's a busy stroad, where the traffic lights are also every 200–300 meters or so. Yet this does not stop idiots speeding through a red light only to stop a bit ahead anyway.

@Strangerland nobody said it's ONLY in Japan. But it's definitely true that it's very common in Japan.

You see people running red lights every day, it's that common. Indicating before actually turning also didn't make it to Japan, not sure if people want to save their indicator light bulbs or what.

I strongly stand behind Japanese highways being dangerous by design in many places and also Japanese drivers not knowing how to drive on them. This despite all the training and having to sit through info sessions when renewing a license.

If Japanese police, for a change, did something about enforcing the traffic laws, the situation might look a bit different.

Getting off a train at busy stations, there usually forms a massive line waiting towards the left of an escalator while the right side is either fully empty or some folks walk up. If all the people split and went up in 2 lines, to the full capacity of the escalator, the total throughput would increase. Yes, a few people might be held back for a bit but the majority of people lining up for quite a while would be better off.

Garypen

It would be a lot more annoying to accidentally pay 30,000円 for something that cost 3000円, which is the point of the two different fonts.

I thought the same but I then I don't think that's a problem. The current notes both use "1". And I never saw this on any other bills either. Bad design or not, till 2024 we'll be even more cashless so...

I can get over the fact they use I000 and 10000 at the same time. I reckon in must be on purpose but still a bit annoying when they are next to each other.

To be honest, things would be way simpler if Japan dropped the requirement for their very own Certificate of Testing for Covid form. It was quite a challenge for me to find a place where they were comfortable to sign this piece of paper. Especially as the system in EU was set up to take a sample (not necessarily in a hospital or by a doctor), send them to a lab, lab putting the result it into an online system, you getting an SMS/email.

Now it's even more difficult as many of the collection spots have been closed in EU (PCR tests no longer required) or run only on a limited schedule so it can be very tricky to get tested in the 72 hours window and get the required JP confirmation.

Japanese expressways are like a mad computer game. Many extremely short merging lanes with poor visibility. My favorite is when the exit/merging lane is on the right (in the middle), that I never experienced before.

Also Japanese truck drivers are the worst. They pummel through traffic carelessly, way over their speed limit; those scare the sh*t out of me.

I can't imagine in Europe an ambulance would take someone to a hospital after an accident, they'd say “sorry mate, can't take you” and the ambulance would drop them off back where they came from. EMS in Japan works so strangely, it's scary to think I might need it one day.

I fail to understand why after seeing how the Tokyo games ended up, Sapporo is like: “hold my beer…”.

I think it's one of the Japanese virtues. How to take the tax money and waste it in the most creative way.

They do not report on it properly here (not sure about other news pages) but KDDI has been releasing technical information about the problem and following up with post mortems. Just because people don't understand it does not mean they are not open about it. Gotta love the IT pseudo experts in the comments here.

https://xtech.nikkei.com/atcl/nxt/news/18/13237/?i_cid=nbpnxt_ranking

This just confirms people are mental.

I'm wondering if police does show up sometimes to fine those illegally parking and regulate the situation. But I guess they might be busy being too hima for that.

Thanks god they didn't come up (yet) with the even more creative solution of cutting down the palm trees, that would surely solve the issue once and for all.

I think generally drivers in Japan are quite well behaved. I'd say it’s more common for them to stop when it’s a narrow 2-way street rather than on the wider ones when cars go faster.

On the contrary, in Europe I’m used to sometimes letting cars pass first not to block the traffic (e.g. a car turning from a main street would block the right lane if they let me cross the side street) and cross after them.

In Japan they mostly stop to let me go, I show them to go first, they don't go, things get awkward, I do the typical Japanese crossing while running move.

To use the words of the local government, I find it extremely regrettable how we ended up in a situation that so many countries are so heavily invested or reliant on Chinese economy that they need to tip toe just not to hurt the feelings of CCP.

Taiwan is one of the great examples of successful democracies in this region, being progressive on many fronts, yet it struggles to get the recognition it deserves. It's especially sad in the case of Western countries.

Many people in Japan are not aware of the laws regulating cycling, they just follow what other people do. Ironically, if you know and follow the law, you can end up in some dangerous situations – imagine some cars not following the traffic rules and driving randomly.

People do use sidewalks a lot and even the narrow ones which should not be used unless the bicycle is walked. Many times they pass pedestrians super close at high speed, this is very dangerous for everyone involved. Empirically, mothers on the big and heavy mamachari are by far the worst offenders, high speeds, sidewalks, going though interjections without stopping, even dashing through red lights—absolutely don't understand how they can behave in such way with children on the bike.

My reaction to the article: I don't like the bias in Japan of emphasizing “unemployed man”, this by default makes people see him as a weirdo and probably a bad person of some sort. If he really pushed them, he’s an a**hole, no doubts. But I also see how the mother just passed him very close, maybe he did a step aside (happened to me few times) and almost got hit by the bike passing near him. Just saying… objective reporting…

@Mickelicious exactly my thinking. Ingredients imported into Japan … in the heart of Belgium … whaaa? The idea seems really nice but this somehow doesn't make sense to me.

Also, and this may be the European in me, I hate how normal it is here to not provide proper information on weight/volume. Here they say one bar is 14x7cm. Umm sooo it’s like 60g? 70g? A bit expensive sustainability, innit?

Didn't know that being super hard is a sought-after quality for an ice cream. Learning something new every day.