Weekly Complaint Thread – 01 January 2026

12 comments

1. I was in charge of some elementary-school students for an overnight (or part-of-the-night) New-Year-related event that ended at 1 AM. By 3 AM, one kid’s parents still hadn’t arrived for pickup and weren’t answering the phone. We had to walk to the kid’s house and find the key hidden in the garden. I waited outside until the kid had awakened the parents.

2. I got told, at the end of the work day on New Year’s Eve, that I have to leave my job and my apartment （社寮）six weeks earlier than expected. Effectively, this is only two weeks earlier than I had considered leaving to travel anyway (although I was worried about the cost), but I had hoped to leave my stuff in my flat while I travelled, then come back at the end to pack everything up.

   I asked them if they would at least store my stuff, and they said they would 相談 about it. Last time they said that to me about something, I got a no back in a couple weeks.

   Happy New Year, everyone. I stayed up watching Kohaku in the cafeteria, because I don’t have my own TV, but the lack of sleep is doing bad things to my emotions.

3. Stores not having their holiday hours posted on their websites. Saw something I wanted from hardoff on my way home from work yesterday. thought about it, then decided to go back and look at it again only for them to close early. No signs on when they were closing when I was there earlier, nothing on their website about holidays hours. No idea if they’re open today. I don’t want to waste fuel driving down there again.

4. Have a stupid ALT training next week. So tired of these things. I’ve always been diligent about going to them. But these day I just am sick of it. You learn nothing and it’s all for appearances. The trainers are so passive aggressive and snarky. It’s such a waste of a day but if I don’t go then I lose 10,000 yen from my salary. Ugh…

5. Found out my old, power harassing, racist, department head, of whom would literally scream at us when things weren’t going well, knows my current boss. Edit: forgot to add, not only knows him, but goes out of his way to chat with my new boss. Like, chatted him up and joined him for a round of tennis at the same country club or whatever from what I heard from the new boss.

   I chose to stay in the same city as my property to be close to my kids and ex wife but didn’t think about how connected this damn city is.

   I’ve seen the old bastard a few times while out and about and he always gives me a smug look since he talked down about my new job. “恥ずかしくない？” going from a management position to a grunt position.

   Well I make a fuck load more money now. Screw him.

6. I just did the Furusato Nozei for the first time and I think the system is stupid.

   Current system: 

   The government says that they’ll take X amount off of your paycheck per year. However, if you give/donate that amount to a certain city, then you can send the money to places that need it in Japan and get something from them for doing so. Sounds like a really nice idea. 

   But you have to look up the information yourself, donate, fill out a form for every single city that you donate to (some items go to multiple places, I got six cities), and then send it out for the government to not charge you later down the line. 

   When instead, if you are qualified, why not just send the money to people’s accounts as points and let them purchase these things. Then anything left they’ll take out of your paycheck. It’s trackable, you see the information easier, and way less of a hassle. 

   Currently, you are turning people off of donating because of the friction in between them and the people who need it.

7. i need a career.

8. The first sunrise of the year was a disappointment. It was too cloudy

9. Why is it that when a Japanese institution asks you to send documents, they require you to use these tiny envelopes that barely have enough room for a 1,000 yen bill?

   Rakuten bank asked me to send multiple identification documents, bank statements and a full translstion of all 12 pages of my job contract. The official envelope I had to use was so small that it couldn’t even fit the width of a normal A4 paper…

10. They wont be collecting any 燃えるゴミ for A WHOLE WEEK and I fill up at least 2-3 bags per week…
    Can’t put it into the trash station either because they’ll pick up plastic trash first on Monday and then 燃えるゴミ on Tuesday…
    And since I have 4 days off I’ll probably produce even more trash at home than usual

11. Me and my girlfriend ended up accidentally stealing from my local Konbini. They had these lucky bags they were selling with convenience store socks, and I ended up buying a pack at the self register.

    On the shelf was a plastic bag with a large a4 paper containing the barcode, so I scanned it, paid for it and left. Then later I opened it turns out the staff hadn’t unpacked it properly and inside the plastic bag there were two of these bags. So I ended up paying for one bag when there were actually two of them. Neither me nor my girlfriend noticed it at first, so it was an honest mistake.

    I’m debating if I should go back and pay for the other one, but after hearing similar stories here, I think going back is probably not the best idea

12. In the last week or so I’ve been using an express train I normally don’t use and see most other passengers taking their shoes off to use the foot rests. That’s all good and well, as the train company asks you to do so when using the foot rests, but god forbid some people have the worst foot odor.

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