RResidents in Japan

Weekly Complaint Thread – 21 August 2025

  • August 20, 2025

It's the weekly complaint thread! Time to get anything off your chest that's been bugging you or pissing you off.

Remain civil and be nice to other commenters (even try to help).

  • No politics
  • No complaints about users of JapanLife

by AutoModerator

23 comments

  2. I keep getting sent to work exhibitions that are just under the 100km requirement to make it a business trip, meaning I’m not eligible for hotel reimbursement. So here’s to today and tomorrow, traveling 2 hours by train one way, during rush hour both ways.

    Manager gets the hotel reimbursement, so it’s okay I guess!

  3. There’s one festival every year that my family and I always go to. It’s always on the same two dates so we know when to take time off etc. 

    I told my wife in advance we should take the two days off, but she was moaning about how she can’t take those two days at her low paying part time job where she barely works some days. Meanwhile me, the breadwinner, craving that little bit of yearly fun, fully prepared to take those two days. 

    Somehow she compromised by taking the second day and the next day off, so not both of the festival days. I don’t know why that’s better or how but ok. Guess what. Torrential rain on the second day of the festival. Can’t go there, festival is shut down. 

    Why couldn’t we just have gone there on the first day like I suggested months ago? Why does everything always have to be so complicated!? 

  4. Super excited to haul my ass all the way from Ibaraki to south Tokyo and pay out of pocket to go to a private clinic and try to get proper treatment for my disease because the useless lumps at my local university hospital won’t lift a finger to help me. My test results show that my hormone levels are low but my doctor literally said “It’s probably just an anomoly” and refused to re-test me or adjust my dose, then suggested I take anti-depressants when I pushed back. “But things are working fine, so if I change anything, it might cause problems.” Why would I be here if things are working fine?!

  5. My wife always wants to go out on my days off and all I wanna do is stay home and relax. She needs to work full time so she can feel how I feel

  8. want to get retinol skincare products but the reliable ones are those that are not easily available over the counter 🙁

  9. Went to a company nomikai last night. That is not the complaint. The hangover and lack of sleep, however….

  10. Hey, old guys: just because you were first in line last time doesn’t mean you go to the front of the line this time.

  11. Car is so rusty that the slider track for the door busted open and the rollers popped out. Of course this was at 9pm in a park parking lot too. Got le bf to come out and use his gym bro muscles to hold up the door while I figured out what the heck was going on. Did manage to get the roller back into the slider bar through the rusted out hole in the side, but not without the whole slider assembly popping out first.

    As much as I love my car, it may be on its last legs with the amount of car problems I’ve had this year.

  12. Not sure if it’s a complaint or not but…

    I guess my son is something of a …well-known… figure at his school. Not a bad thing, just weird because now random kids I’ve never seen will randomly shout “〇〇くん’s papa!” and I just have to wave because I have no idea who these people are.

  13. forgot to set my alarm last night (had a huge headache) and my cat that usually tries to wake me up 30 minutes early didn’t wake me up till 45 past. then even tho i still somehow made the train on time my last transfer was running late, cutting into the time i needed to swing by a conbini and inhale some food before work since i didn’t have time to eat at home. and it’s tooo fuckkkking hotttttt!

  15. Did my zairyu renewal online more than a month and a half ago.

    Got the email that it was approved yesterday. My card (and therefore my MyNumber card, too) expires tomorrow, but I selected it to be shipped to me.

    Now I gotta go through getting a new MyNumber card when it arrives, instead of being able to renew my existing card…

    I’ll probably only get one year, too >:(

  16. Vacation when having a house, yard, sanrin, and hatake comes with a cost. I bitched about that last week but I finally got basically caught up with just the yard work side of things late last night. Mowing took 3x the normal amount of time (and I hate having grass, but I don’t have the time to start putting in raised beds and more trees).

    Got stung by something as well. Another poster pointed out what it might have been (spike green caterpiller-looking thing), but I had never seen one. Late last night, as I was using the garden mulcher on some downed branches, spotted one of the assholes against the brown of the dead wood. Probably invisible to me on kudzu and now the likely culprit.

    Doing all of this in the insane heat or having to wake up at 3 am to beat it fucking sucks. Eastern Japan seriously needs to move a few time zones over to not have the sunrise so early.

  17. Went to Tochigi to visit friends and rode back with my two kids. The train was mostly empty, with one other guy and his two kids. I overheard them speaking Japanese.

    His kid: “Why are they speaking English?”

    Him: “Their mom is an ALT. An English teacher.”

    I was so surprised, it almost made me burst out laughing. On the one hand, I appreciate that he didn’t assume I was a tourist. On the other, if you call every English-speaking foreigner an ALT, you’re gonna make some enemies. 

  18. It’s too hot. Trying to do anything fun with my kid who only loves trains and that’s all he wants to do means being out in the sun, him getting hot and bothered, me getting hot and bothered and sweating like mad.

  20. A few days ago i was at a museum. There was a Noh theater section with old stage stuff. Off to the side i saw a small raised area with tatami and a sign in JP/EN saying you can sit here and rest. So i ​sat.

    Pretty fast the ​vibe got weird. Side eyes, little head tilts. A young couple walked by and the guy muttered “gaijin, right”. Someone else said “stupid gaijin”. I understood all of it. What stung wasn’t only the rudeness. It was that automatic idea that i must be doing it wrong even when the sign literally said okay. Funny thing, older folks didn’t react at all. Mostly younger people looked annoyed​.

    ​My br​ain started looping: did i misread it? Am i in the way? Is it me again. I went to the staff by the door and asked. They said yes, it’s allowed, those tatami aren’t historical, they’re there so tired visitors can rest. So i wasn’t imagining things.

    Small moment, but it sticks. Kind of a lonely feeling…

    TL;DR ​sat on museum tatami with a “you can sit here” sign. Got side-eyes and “stupid gaijin”. Staff said it’s fine. Still felt bad for days.

  21. I really hate when customer support in a shop brushes you off. This is one of times where knowing enough Japanese is a curse when you know when someone is bullshitting you and brushing you off and you can argue your point in a way that a Japanese person probably wouldn’t do and would let it go.

    The most recent case was that I was in the local supermarket where I shop on a regular basis and I always have to tell them that the magnet stripe on the credit card is weak. They know that they have to input my number by hand. What is stupid about this is that the magnetic stripe swipe is to enable you, to get, and more importantly use their points. I have over ¥20,000 in points so basicallyI shop for free as I am accumulating points by shopping and whenever I travel on the train. At times, I actually have to use the points proactively to get rid of them. This is the only time I need to use magnet stripe and I only use it at this shop. After about 6 months, I swear it is their machine, the stripe fails and I am fed up of renewing my card just to make it easy for them.

    Yesterday, I told the elderly checkout clerk that my magnetic stripe was weak and I checked out. However, there was no points shown on the screen. I told the lady at the checkout and she said to go to the customer service counter who would help. It was nearby so I got them to take a look and they said, “Oh, maybe it’s the wrong card, or you have no points blah blah .. call the credit card company to check your points…” fuming I told them “that’s enough…” and paid by credit card.

    Then when I paid by credit card she rushed back over and asked to see my receipt. I showed them and they ran back over to their booth and did something and came back with an additional receipt showing that they had processed my receipt by hand and given me the 7 points that I would have accumulated from this purchase. To be honest, I don’t care about these points, I want to _USE_ the damn points.

    Then I asked, “So you can check the points here…”, “Yes!”, she answered! “So I didn’t have to ring the credit card company…”, “Ah.. no she said, moshiwake-arimasen…” “I thought so… I replied.” She then squirmed and said “This receipt shows that the lady at the checkout didn’t process your card properly … probably typed the wrong number… moshiwake-arimasen”.. “I thought so… I replied.”

    I left at this point with them bowing deeply with more “moshiwake-arimasen…moshiwake-arimasen”.

    My teenage son, who is Japanese, was with me and saw all of this, and told him “I hate these kind of lies.. and this bullshit.” and he agreed.

    I think they were getting nervous as after paying, I was fiddling with my phone, trying to reinstall their app which also shows the number of points accrued. I was going to the make the point that “calling your credit card company to check” was ridiculous as I could check anyway with their app. At this point they came over to look at my receipt.

    I had a similar situation in the same building at the train station where I attempted to renew my train pass with this credit card. It didn’t work. The staff said maybe it is train pass, it looks old, we’ll make you a new one, came back the next day to collect my new train pass, it still didn’t work. Please try again. Still didn’t work. Because of my persistence, eventually, the station master came out and said sorry, after a recent update to the machines, they stopped taking payments and you’ll need to go to one of the major stations to pay there and it should work there. It will be fixed in the next update to the machines.

    This is got me really sensitive to be brushed off regarding IT related matters when staff give you the run around that is obviously not true.

  22. About a month ago, I booked flights to the US for November but never turned off the price alert I set up on Google. This week, I got a message that the flights were now ￥20,000 cheaper.

  23. My Gyomu Super has been out of oats for MONTHS. They’re literally 3x the price anywhere else (and there’s only one other store in my city that sells rolled oats, instead of quick/instant). I went in 3 or 4 days ago to find they were fully in stock. My first instinct was to grab like 5 or 6, but I was like no, I should wait until I actually run out. I’m trying to avoid buying a bunch of stuff I don’t immediately need. Well I ran out yesterday, and surprise surprise, already wiped out again. My mistake. 😐

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