I think they should keep up the tourism campaigns, but they need to focus them on areas other than Kansai and Tokyo.

There’s so many great place all over Japan, but of course most flights are into Kansai or Narita airport, so naturally people are going to look for attractions and accommodation nearby. There are many international airports, but they are of course only available from closer east Asian Countries, but that does make up the bulk of the tourist population (half of all tourists are from China, Korea or Taiwan), so advertising those cities heavily would be a good start - “Come to Miyajima, we don’t speak Mandarin, but we’ve got 50 varieties of mandarins!”

A big issue in my view is the increase in cost of the JR rail pass and the price of and difficulty to navigate shinkansen in general. A cool campaign would be a free/cheap train ticket from Tokyo to the north, or Osaka to the west included with your international plane ticket.

Also, I believe Chinese driving licenses aren’t valid in Japan, because of the IDP requirement - if the biggest tourist demographic could hire cars and go off the beaten track, that might distribute the crowds a bit.

That’s why I employ a staff of a few dozen multilingual interpreters to follow me to the supermarket to translate the ingredient labels in the import isle.

The Japanese version is just called: Bokujo Monogatari: For Girl

(Bokujo Monogatari (Farm story) is just the series name in Japanese)

Laughs in Lao. That bike doesn’t even have a wood oven.

I say it’s like Reddit but with more Star Trek and less everything else.

This is a poor facsimile of a genuinely popular dish in Japan: Yakisoba pan (fried soba bread). Can be bought at any convenience store.

That’s when they’ll intern him within the Golden Throne. Henceforth, we shall interpret his will using Trump tarot card NFCs.

I think the USA was already on a not-so-slow decent into fascism, and this assassination just gives another talking point to justify what they are doing, not change course. I can imagine people putting this at the back of their mind soon, just like they did with the assassination attempt on Trump. A civil war isn’t going to break out (there’s only one military in the USA, and no established apparatus for a coup (except for an auto-coup)), but there is a chance of war in a geopolitical conflict.

The last time Qatar was attacked was by the Ottoman Empire. Your comment indeed highlights how many think about the Middle East as a homogeneous blob.

There’s a difference in how people perceive Syria, Lebanon and Iran, and the Gulf states. An attack on a stable Gulf state is a big deal. SA and Qatar have been at odds historically, but you can see them being brought closer together by this event. If the Arab states are pushed much further, they may unite and fight back.

Given the amount of dehumanization of Arabs by Israel, I can imagine them “feeling justified” to drop a nuke on Riyadh or Mecca as a retaliation. Hopefully cooler heads prevail, but they will keeping poking the bear (falcon?) so long as they have support from the US. Of all the nuclear powers, I believe Israel is the most likely to use them. Russians at least see Ukrainians as fellow Slavs, but there’s little Semetic solidarity.

It’s true that what happens in the US has massive consequences for the rest of the world (including the Middle East, as stated above). But given the course of the federal government and the courts in the US already, I can’t see there being any fundamental change here; maybe some minor acceleration, but things are pretty far gone already.

I expected a megathread when Israel bombed Qatar, not when some white-wing guy got shot.

People really like a personal story over geopolitics, eh.

We “retired” when my wife was 30 and I was 33. That was nine years ago.

As Australians, healthcare is free, so that wasn’t a concern. (That being said, we also take out yearly travel insurance policies, which are surprisingly cheap compared to regular private insurance.)

That, not having kids (but we’ve met people who did a similar thing BECAUSE they wanted to spent time with kids), and living very frugally was what made it possible, and continues to make it possible. When we were working, after having paid off our small apartment, we could live on less than 20% of our combined income by being very tight.

The more you save, the more you can invest, and the less you’ll need invested to sustain yourself. It’s a positive feedback loop, and after three years of trying to be as frugal as possible, tracing every dollar, it became second nature.

After building our investments, our cost of living has gone up, but not by much. When you’re building your portfolio, being extra stingy pays off greatly. We have been slow traveling non-stop for the last nine years, because the cost of living is cheaper in (almost) every other country, even when you consider paying for short-term rentals. Next year we’ll hit 100 countries visited.

We’ve also done extra university courses, languages courses, and have a ton of hobbies. Even without work, there’s not enough time in the day if you have an active mind.

Fellow Australian, I retired at 33, which was 10 years ago now.

It’s crazy how quickly you adjust to living frugally, and spending any money just seems wasteful and unnecessary.

Healthcare is free, so doesn’t matter.

During the economic boom, Japanese people had money, but traveling overseas was still scary if it wasn’t Hawaii or Cairns, and even if they had the courage, they didn’t have the vacation time to get all the way to Newfoundland and back. Hence the many various theme parks that popped up all over the country, each more bizarre than the last. Most of them are shut now, many abandoned in various states of decay. Quite fun to explore!

We went to the mostly abandoned Anne of Green Gables theme park in Hokkaido, Canadian World, a couple months ago.

The translation of the book was done particularly well, I think. It was prescribed in schools. And the setting was attractive to those stuck in big cities.

Hey now, you’re a wok star, get your flame on, sauté.

Thankfully, lunchtime is pretty well enforced by law in Australia… didn’t prevent the “reasonable overtime is included in your base salary” contract clause, where “reasonable” is defined by the publisher, though.

When I worked for a big game studio, we had a clan, as did many of the other big studios in the country. Every lunch we’d join the same servers. Battlefield, TF2, StarCraft… good times. Well, good lunch times.

What they did in Tokyo? Drop 1600 tons of incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 civilians, destroying half the city, making a million people homeless? I’m pretty sure Israel is already emulating this strategy.

No no, I’m pretty sure that’s a Bienenstich.

Taking a page from the Singapore HDB, housing can be sold/bought by the state, and prices are set by what the applicant can afford, rather than what the market is willing to pay. This allows residents to move to different locations, or change dwelling size to fit their currents needs (marriage, children, empty nesters, divorce, etc.).

I imagine this can work in a multi-city state, too… just need to make sure there is ample supply to allow for migrations without waiting lists.

Unlike rent control on rentals from a private market, price control for a majority public housing system can work, as a black market is hard to establish.