10 Interesting Facts About Living in Japan

[rubyredknowsitall]

I've been asked to do an AMA on here a few times, but to be honest I'd never be able to be open or strong enough to answer all the potentially personal questions - some AMA I've looked through have got a bit brutal!

But I thought I'd share a few really interesting topic points about living here (if you're interested in Japan)

1. If you want an abortion - you need the fathers signature on the consent form before a doctor will proceed. In theory this should only be if you're married but in reality it's not as doctors are afraid of being sued. I whole heartedly disagree with this - my husband thinks it's terrible too. No signature - you're having a baby. I had an abortion two years ago and thankfully the man in question supported me, but I can say that requiring him to be supportive is a highly vulnerable place to be emotionally. They're also expensive and it wasn't until 2023 that medical abortion was legalized - I had to have surgery in 2022 at 6 weeks.
2. If you divorce/ sperate in Japan there is usually NO joint custody of children, so usually fathers are never allowed to see their children again. The man I stated above (Mr abortion) was in this situation, and has NEVER met his 14 year old son although he pays maintenance and has gone to court multiple times to try and get a single visitation right. It's broken him a bit I feel.
3. There's no such thing as GPs in Japan - you go to the specific doctor in question immediately. So if you have a stomach problem you go to an "internal doctor". The good point is basically no waiting times, but after leaving the UK system I still don't fully understand how conditions that require multiple specialisms get treated....
4. Before you get your provisional driving licence you have to go to a driving school (with classroom lectures), learn to drive on their internal course and pass a test. Only then are you allowed on real roads - they think we're mental! Despite their vigorous driving schools, I've not seen much better driving here........
5. House prices depreciate similar to cars - they're very much not an investment. Reason is they get torn down fairly regularly and rebuilt owing to upgraded earthquake regulations. As such houses are built very cheaply without central heating etc (winter is actual hell with many rooms in my home reaching 2 degree C last month). There's a reason uniqlo invented heattech!
6. There's no such thing as joint bank accounts - and if a husband or wife transfer money between each other, above a certain threshold is taxed. A member of the family needs to be legally registered as the 'head of the household' - so if I overpay something like state pension the refund can go directly back into my husbands bank account (or vice versa if I'm head of the household). This does also mean that when I passed my driving test and was added to my husbands driving insurance as a new driver, it cost us an extra 5p a month. :) Until I crashed the car into a fence............
7. Wives are legally able to be registered as 'dependents' on their husbands, so if they earn beneath a threshold, the husbands company will pay their pension contributions and health care contributions for them.
8. Minimum wage where I live is 931 JPY - £4.89 an hour, and state pension is equivalent to about £4,200 a year.
9. A major part of their economy is UPF - wafer ham with plastic cheese and lettuce sandwich is an example of a staple sandwich here - my healthy diet actually took a huge hit upon arrival. They eat a lot more meat and a lot less fish than I expected.
10. Ovens are not in most kitchens here - baking isn't part of the traditional Japanese diet - deep frying is. ALOT of food here is deep fried which unfortunately I can't digest.

To those wondering the good points about Japan - there's a lot! The nature is a million times more beautiful than the UK in my opinion, the country is seriously safe with actually too many police, education is outstanding and the gap between the rich and poor is much narrower. Customer service is brilliant and it's a culture with clearly defined rules that most people abide to (no eating or talking on trains or buses etc).

This last point is a bit more controversial so I'll just say it's from my personal experience but men seem much more prepared to get married and accept that women need "stability" to have children. They're much more aware of our biological clocks and don't approve of women getting picked up an put down if it's going to wind her time down. This attitude has done nothing towards the birth rate though 😂

I assumed everyone ate well and were slim - is this not the case?

Re: extra-marital activities (this is a very non-technical recounting of a conversation I had recently)

I have an acquaintance that is a health researcher at a major university in Tokyo. She was tasked by the government several years back to investigate if there was something medically wrong with the young Japanese population that was causing the extremely low birth rates.

Her conclusion after extensive research - something like 48% of married Japanese men have used sex workers and young Japanese couples basically don’t know how to procreate.

Add those two items together and you have men who are seeking sexual pleasure elsewhere and when they are having sex with their partner neither of them have an understanding of ovulation, fertile windows etc. One IFV doctor who the researcher interviewed stated that young, healthy, couples were coming in for treatment, upset that they were having sex once a month and it wasn’t resulting in pregnancy.

Also, turns out couples aren’t massively keen to have kids when they live in expensive cities in a country where wages have been stagnant for years!

More fun, sexy facts:

• “love hotels” are (very often) themed hotels you go to for sex. They are amazing and sometimes hilarious. Also, not all that weird to go to! So many young people still live with their parents that it’s a totally legit option if you want some privacy. I know married couples who sometimes go for fun.
• Yes, if your spouse is bangin’ someone else you can sue that person.
• You can’t sue a sex worker if that happens to be who your spouse is bangin’.
• Pregnancy is not covered by the national health insurance as it is neither an illness nor an injury. However, there are many subsidies that offset the cost of giving birth.

@CactusMactus They're very slim because they don't snack - and high fat foods aren't nearly as bad as we in the West think - they eat that and only that. Brown rice / brown bread etc still isn't common here though - it's white everything

Very high rates of salt though (about 10g a day) so they've got high rates of stomach cancer

Rrally, no talking? As in, no talking on the phone, or no conversation with the person you are travelling with?

First one I’d be totally signed up for, second one seems a bit harsh…

I've been there once for a couple of weeks and liked it.

Re point 2, actions have consequences. You can keep a child away from it's father for 18 years. But at some point it is more than likely going to want to meet them, and there is a realistic possibility at that point the child may resent the mother for not allowing contact, and the mother may lose the relationship altogether. So its something that cannot be done without significant risk to the future mother-child/adult relationship.

Do you know what the welfare system is like? Are there unemployment benefits etc?

🙄

Do they have top ups ...like Universal Credit here?

White women really do not get "an easy ride the world over" in some contexts.

Having recently visited Japan one of the most shocking things was the amount of UPF on offer in their convenience stores! I was always led to believe they have a really healthy diet.

I really didn’t find the people overly welcoming I have to say but that’s maybe because I was very very obviously a western female tourist

Possibly, I worked for a very large organisation in Osaka but I left Japan in 2008 so a long time ago now, I'm told that things changed quite a lot after the 2011 quake and tsunami as people started working from home more which hadn't really been a thing until then. Basically my knowledge is a tad out of date but I was there 8 years and it was marvellous 💐

Actually we always had KFC on Christmas day, things have changed 🤣😆

And this is why I said I'm not doing an AMA. I'm not here to be attacked

I'll leave this thread I think....

@rubyredknowsitall the drinking I’m basing on the teachers I worked with 30 years ago, so it probably has changed. Did see a lot of drunken people out in Osaka and Tokyo when we were there last year….but not lairy drunk like in UK towns.

shame yo7 are leaving thread, it was interesting.

OP- Please don’t feel you have to leave the thread. Whilst clearly “in some contexts” white women don’t have an easy time, in the context of the question you were asked about overt racism, they absolutely do. Maybe not in every country, but in most of the world what you said holds true.

I don’t think you did anything wrong. Your answer was a response to a question about racism, not a denial of the sexism white women experience.

Thank you for answering. Pretty much what I thought.

Is it true that rates of breast cancer in Japanese women is very low some believe because the Japanese don't eat much dairy ?

Breast cancer rates in Japan have been rising since the 60s due to the change in diet and high fat diet content. Maybe not specific to dairy.

😖😖

The Japanese (and Koreans) keep things exceptionally clean. It's been well documented at the World Cup their fans clean up after them and leave the stadium in the same condition (if not even cleaner) as it was when they arrived. Recall seeing it live when the BBC presenter during post match analysis looked over his shoulder and commented on this (Asians were the only fans left in the stadium tidying up). They seem to be a very organised/regimented society.

@tellmewhenthespaceshiplandscoz finally! Someone who gets it!

@rubyredknowsitall I’m sad that you left.

There was a dance group that visited the rural northern Japanese town. When they visited I was treated really badly by people in the town because they thought I was a dancer luring their husbands away.

when I was the only gaijin in town everyone was lovely to me.

somebody once stole all my bras off my first floor balcony and I was left with just one until my mum could post more out to me.

i think I would enjoy living there now more than in my 20s. I visit every 3-4 years and there have been massive changes over the past 25 years.

I’m finding this thread fascinating and learning a lot.