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).
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- No complaints about users of JapanLife
by AutoModerator
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).
by AutoModerator
35 comments
Board of Education in my area wants all ALTs, direct hires and JETS to work tomorrow to do an English camp even though tomorrow is our prefecture holiday. Technically not a holiday, but I’m sure everyone is salty about having to work tomorrow and deal with little kids all day. No one will say anything but we’re all feeling it.
I hate being a 40 year old ALT and doing this for 20 years. Board of Education doesn’t care about us. They just want more of our time. They squeeze every drop out of us without any extra compensation like above example. I have two schools, and at each they give me 6 classes to go to. At least I don’t have to prepare anything.
Dispatch companies don’t care about us. They just take more of our money. Staff at school treat me like a ghost and have no interest in me. Because I’m older I am no longer the young oniichan figure, so students aren’t interested in talking to me. Teachers don’t know how to really utilize me so a lot of times I just end up reading the same passage 20 to 30 times followed by with each individual student or I stand in the back of the room.
The only person keeping me sane at this point is my wife. I think if I didn’t have my wife to come home to every day. I would still be drinking and just slowly killing myself each day. I am so grateful for her support and love.
Work’s going some pretty illegal stuff regarding my annual leave, but at this point quitting would probably just affect my maternity leave/childcare leave benefits and I’m so close to going on that that I’m just going to go along with it for now. I just wish it wasn’t a battle for everything there, especially since I’ve already compromised enough with all of this and they’re still telling me it’s ’not enough’. (And, of course, all of this was done verbally so I have no written proof of anything at all🙃)
Got my flu vaccine, felt like I was hit by a bus the next day. Fast forward a couple weeks later to this week. We were exposed to several people in a confined space several of whom were confirmed to have the flu the next day. A couple of days later, I get to enjoy a low-grade fever, brain fog, and full-body soreness. Still, we were less miserable than the kids who hadn’t been vaccinated and I’m mostly back to normal already.
Feeling fairly burnt out at my main job. I think not really having anything to do outside right now (neither yardwork nor farmwork) has removed my outlet for dealing with that. I’m one of those people who has to stay busy and feel that what I’m doing is productive and meaningful or else my mental health takes a dive. Oh well, it will get better eventually.
My sleep is shit at the moment. Everything else is so much harder because of that. I just want to stay asleep the whole night, so why does some part of my brain/body not want that for me too?!
711 ATM have removed the Yen or Dollar withdrawal option, it’s now “with” or “without” convention. Before you pick Yen to get the better rate, now I don’t know which one will give me the best rate.
Sure I can withdraw twice and pick a different option each time and check my bank account, but that’s a lot of work. They “fixed” something that wasn’t broken.
Wake up to auroras all over my socials. As far north (in the souther hemisphere) as Brisbane.
Just flat and lights here, and I work, so driving a few hours to an appropriate lookout is not practical. And clouds.
Sigh…
I started doing some side work as a camera operator for a video production studio that produces entrance exam prep content earlier in the year. The job is fairly straight forward and my coworkers have been great. I’m the only non-Japanese person there so naturally I get a lot of attention from the various visiting teachers and professors, which come from all over Japan. That’s not my complaint though!
It’s actually a bit of a silly complaint. There’s a really well established gift giving / souvenir culture in the company and everyone loves to bring in sweets and snacks. The break room table always has an assortment of sweets from various places in Japan which has made a genuine impact on my healthier eating habits I’ve been working towards.
I like working in tourism but I am getting tired of the walking.. I guess now I don’t have to pay for a gym membership but I’m exhausted coming home every morning… I love to travel but I am really not looking forward to this weekend which is each day packed with Kyoto sights Ugg
Ticketgates at stations have a new scanner for touch id?users and it sucks! Pitapa, suica are all convenient because you just hover the card nearby, beep immediately and you go through, but these touch id scanners take 2 seconds to read the app and when it gets crowded this holds up the line, not a good improvement to ticket gates
Kiddo has a cold. So, I check his temperature. Two different thermometers, both say he’s 36.5. Yay! I put a coat on him, bring him to school, and now he magically has a 37.7 degree fever.
I don’t want to send my kid to school with a fever, I really don’t. But this shit has been going on his whole damn life. We got quarantined for every vaccination appointment because of this. Even if he’s 100% healthy, no sniffles or anything, he’ll measure as a low grade fever if he wears a coat.
Went on a week long trip by rental car, somehow managed to lose my house key on the last day, didn’t notice until we got home of course.
Now I’ve got to call up to a dozen places or more asking if anyone has turned in a lost key. I have a spare and all that but I’m sure my apartment company will try and charge a punitive amount for losing it just because they can, likely with the excuse of “well your mansion apartment has an auto lock entrance on the first floor so it’s expensive to make keys + we have to change all the locks etc” 😒
I’ve never lost anything (*anything*) in 35 years of life and I am not sure why or how it happened now, but, that’s life I guess.
I’m on my second mental health day this week because….just fuck everything. Workplaces and society in general are entirely run on malice, manipulation, fragile egos, and stupidity. Any attempt to challenge these corrupt fucking systems is met with circular reasoning and ostracization, or my personal favorite: victim-blaming. I’m fucking tired of literally everything.
We went to a well-run flea market last week: customers line up for the starting time, and attendants usher a few people at a time in. Older women behave at first as if the people standing in front of them do not exist at all, grab anything that looks like they might want to buy, then begin acting as if the people selling work at a department store and are there only to answer customers’ questions, so we’ve got geezers with an armful of ¥50 items asking questions like ‘Does this tissue box cover slip if you put it on a wood table?’
I go to university in Tokyo. There are plenty of completely absurd things I’ve had to adjust to compared to my home country (mostly infantalization, being treated like a grade schooler in my mid-20s) but this one made me laugh this week.
I accidentally lost my student ID card (don’t know how- I never lose things but oh well) which is a problem because I can’t get into the school library without it and I am there almost daily working on my graduation project right now. I’ll just make a new one, shouldn’t be an issue right? I go into the school office to ask for a replacement, and am told it’s 2000 yen and can only be payed for on a payment machine that only accepts IC cards. Okay, kinda pricey but whatever. I pay on the machine and take the form it printed back to the desk after which I’m told that I need to fill out the form (sure, it’s japan, I get it) and then get my home room teachers hanko. At this point I’m a little annoyed but whatever, I’m used to being treated like a kid who needs his field trip paper signed by a parent for everything. Teacher is in meetings all day so can’t get hanko until the next day. Finally receive the stamp and bring the paper back to the office. Perfect, they’ll print my new card and I can get back to my studies in the library. Right??
Ten days.
It will take them ten days to print my new card.
When it’s done I’ll receive an email at which point I can return to pick it up.
Love it here. (Genuinely do but LMAOOOO)
Local supermarket had some massive potatoes (as in, normal sized) – they were great for jacket potatoes. Went back a few days later, they’ve all gone and been replaced by wannabe small potatoes 🙁
Whenever I tell a tourist I’m living in Japan it’s like clockwork that a minute or so later they ask something like “Are you lonely?” or “Do you have any friends?”.
Where else would that be an appropriate question to ask someone you’ve only known for 10 minutes?
The newly-built house I’ve bought a few months ago already has a crack in a wall.
Insurance should cover it, but it’s still unnecessary stress.
Gakkyuu heisa ~ unexpectedly have a kid home for a few days while I’m actually busy at work. At least he’s not sick (yet)
I am stressing stressing stressing about what to do with my life after I leave Japan. Like, what jobs are rewarding, have a good work-life balance and don’t pay absolute shit? Do all jobs just suck? The job I have right now is by far the easiest job I will ever have for the most amount of pay. I still feel like a kid inside, I am so bad at making big decisions like this.
Finally caught the cold that was zipping around the office.
It’s shitty that I have to use a day of paid leave instead of dedicated sick leave like overseas.
Also excited to see the omnishambles I’ll come back to since we’re so chronically understaffed. I hate corporate life.
A new one courtesy of google. Apparently they misconfigured something related to support so my personal information leaked and was available for weeks. That might explain a couple weird phone calls that hung up immediately.
学科試験, 免許センターbeing so damn far away from everything
Escalators are already painfully slow here. I just went into a recently constructed building and the escalator inside felt like it was 10% slower than the already slow ones everywhere else. It felt like I was on a prank show where they keep nudging the speed down until someone reacts. Then they have the “no walking” signs on them? If they’re any slower, they’ll just be jagged stairs.
Either make it socially acceptable to walk up an escalator (let Tokyo and Osaka fight it out – left or right side) or speed the damn things up.
It’s so hard to find alcoholic ginger beer in this country. I used to drink it regularly back home, and I recently went overseas and had it again, and it’s reignited the craving. If anyone knows any pubs or bottle shops in Tokyo that might have it, please let me know!
My internet service sent me a notice saying my service type is ending in a few months and tells me I need to go online to select a new one. Go through the surprisingly smooth process to select a new type.
Get an e-mail a little while later. Please call.
Find time to call. Sit on hold for a while. Talk to a person. After several rounds of back and forth, the type the web portal said was available is not. Person on phone says I need to contact the rental company to sort out the connect type I can have. And if I can’t have that, I have to find a new provider.
Why the portal couldn’t tell me that…
Coffee getting more and more expensive
Chocolate getting more and more expensive
I can keep going….
The foot, the elbow, the shoulder… I knew something was missing, so my sciatic nerve decided to get pinched on Tuesday, because why not? And even funnier, it happened while I was just sitting at work, basically doing nada. My body is a temple, alright… a temple in ruin, ffs. I feel like a second-hand Toyota that the mechanics keep fucking up every time you take it to the garage. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, you need to change your taillight too!’
When will the construction at Sannomiya station (Kobe) ever end?!
It’s been going on for years now, and it doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near finished.
It completely blocks the main entrance to the station, which used to allow me a direct walk to my office.
And it keeps spreading: First, can’t use the main entrance. Then, the cross walk gets blocked off from various directions. Then, they block off the pedestrian bridge (in addition to the other pedestrian bridge that already got blocked off at the start of the whole thing.)
Every time I’m going to, or leaving work, I never know if I’m going to have to find some new way to navigate to the office.
I’m waiting for the punchline, after all this extensive construction with deep giant steelwork, is that it’s just going to be a car park with a conbini on the edge.
Posted a couple weeks ago, but I’m currently telling my company to kick rocks about the non-compete agreement.
They said ok but it’s just an excerpt from the agreement I already signed when I joined the company.
Checked the one I signed, it is completely different language that just says I won’t disclose information to third parties and that *if requested* by the company at the time of leaving, I agree to enter a separate agreement regarding non-compete.
That’s not enforceable, correct? I can’t lawfully agree to enter an undefined agreement, right? Anyway they can kick rocks.
Edit: they backed off when I said anyway, no.
Same old boring fucking chikan. At this point ive given up i dont think the government or police will ever do anything about it
I am jumping from iPhone 7 to iPhone 17. Yahoo Mobile wants to charge 5000¥ for changing my Sim card to an eSim. Really annoying but I was ready to do it. “Let’s do it”. Ok, please take an appointment. I asked why, there is 3 staff and 2 clients in the store, let’s just do it now. He said no. The process takes about 30min for some reason, and he has a client coming in 20min.
Now, it might sound like a valid reason, but I have taken appointments there before. I usually wait for 30-50min from the time of the appointment. Once they came to me after 50min to ask me to pick a new appointment time because they were just too busy that day. So when they are doing nothing and “might” make a client wait 10min because I need something, it kinda pissed me off.
Anyway, MNP is free, and Aeon Mobile is cheaper. So I applied online when I got home…
Life continues to be an endless cycle of work/sleep devoid of love and meaning. Thought about walking in front of a bus today. No one would miss me.
Japanese drivers are so inept… a few cars are turning left on a 3 lane road.. waiting for people to cross at a crosswalk ( no problem) .. pull in the different lanes.. don’t block the fucking intersection… .. irritating and have to lay on my horn
Reached the point where social drinking is social binge drinking. Every Friday or Saturday. Decided to get off it cold turkey but I can’t imagine what I’ll do with my weekend nights now. It’s not even the alcohol, it’s the people around and kinda taking a break from life but I’m getting older and would like to be around for a while longer
Made the mistake of opening Threads.
What an awful, awful app. I get just posts and posts of misinformation about Japan (from those influencer types) and shit like random people posting pictures of kids walking to school.
It’s somehow worse than Twitter.
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